On Tuesday, February 24, the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation (formerly the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving) submitted testimony on legislation to keep rental costs affordable and preserving housing stability reflected in the intent of Senate Bill 257, An Act Concerning Evictions For Cause; House Bill 5257, An Act Prohibiting A Landlord From Requiring A Security Deposit In Excess Of One Month’s Rent From Any Tenant, House Bill 5092, An Act Protecting Renters From Rent Increases Upon The Transfer Of Residential Property; House Bill 5230, An Act Exempting Income Of Up To One Hundred Thousand Dollars Earned By A Child Under The Age Of Twenty-four From Inclusion In The Parent’s Gross Income For Determination Of The Parent’s Eligibility To Participate In The Rental Assistance Program; House Bill 5258, An Act Concerning Tenant Organizational Activities; and House Bill 5260, To prohibit municipalities from enacting or enforcing a prohibition on the performance of certain activities of daily living.
Our perspective is grounded in data on the lack of affordable rental housing in our region and the state, and the foundation’s experience from its investments supporting increasing access to affordable housing and promoting housing stability, especially for Black and Latine low- and moderate-income people and other vulnerable populations struggling included in the legislation.
We are not experts on all aspects of the recommendations and encourage the Committee to continue balancing the needs of people of with limited income needing to secure and sustain affordable rental housing and the pressures of landlords who are keeping properties up and looking for a fair return on investment. Our approach to policy elevates the voices of people who live the issues firsthand.
We recommend also finding ways of encouraging or incentivizing landlords to give people who may not have solid credit or have been out of the workforce and just getting back the opportunity to secure and sustain affordable housing. The proposals seek to protect residents from the landlords who impose security deposits and rent increases higher than typically needed and many people struggle to pay which affects housing stability. We also recognize that other landlords are doing their best to operate fairly and remain open to giving people a chance to secure housing essential to work and overall wellness. The Committee also should consider putting in place mechanism to assess whether these proposals have the intended effect. One option would be to provide funding to the Department of Housing to track the impact of the proposals and report their findings to the Committee.
As part of our efforts to dismantle structural racism and advance equity in social and economic mobility in Greater Hartford’s Black and Latine communities, Greater Hartford Gives focuses on creating thriving neighborhoods. This work recognizes that achieving equity requires strengthening neighborhoods so that opportunity for social connection and economic mobility reaches everyone. This means increasing the number of residents living in quality, affordable housing, and the growth of prosperous, resident-owned small businesses across the region.
According to EcoNorthwest’s Connecticut Fair Share Housing Study, Connecticut has the most constrained housing supply in the nation, with only about a seven percent vacancy rate despite a demand for more with the state needing needs at least 110,000 more units. A reportfrom the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that Connecticut has only one unit of affordable and available rental housing for every three households classified as “extremely low income.” Approximately 87 percent of these households spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, while 73 percent spend more than half their income on rent. According to the Partnership for Strong Communities’ Housing Data Profiles, in Hartford, 55 percent of renters are cost-burdened, spending 30 percent or more of their income on rent and associated costs.
According to the Partnership for Strong Communities’ The State of Housing in Connecticut 2025 report, rising levels of homelessness, evictions, and households that face foreclosure each year reflect a persistent challenge to housing stability among the state’s most vulnerable residents.
Each bill is designed either to make securing affordable rental housing (e.g., requiring one month’s security deposit instead of two) accessible or sustainable to people with limited incomes and vulnerable populations with mental health challenges or when they live with caregivers.
In Hartford, the foundation supports increased preservation and development of neighborhood assets such as parks, gardens, and other places where neighbors can gather and connect as well as resourcing activities that bolster a sense of belonging and mutual support among residents. The foundation prioritizes planning and developing solutions that are community-informed or -driven and responsive to needs and aspirations that reflect all community members, especially those who face barriers to having a seat at the table. The foundation also invests in efforts designed to increase the stability, availability, and quality of affordable housing in the Greater Hartford region; align and leverage additional investment in Hartford neighborhoods; and increase the social strength and connectedness of Hartford neighborhoods.
To support these efforts, the Hartford Foundation is a part of the statewide HOMEConnecticut Campaign. Its mission is to ensure everyone in Connecticut has access to safe, stable, accessible, and affordable housing in an equitable community of their choice. The partners of HOMEConnecticut recognize that when people have stable housing, their economic and health outcomes improve.
The foundation supports Senate Bill 257, An Act Concerning Evictions For Cause which seeks to expand existing Connecticut law that protects some renters from no-fault evictions, including people who are 62 years or older with certain disabilities in buildings with five or more units, and federally subsidized or public housing. Currently most Connecticut renters, including those in mobile homes, can be removed from their homes with no legal recourse despite paying rent on time and otherwise being a good tenant. Tenants with month-to-month leases can be evicted with only a 30-day notice, leaving little time to find replacement housing. Greater Hartford Gives has provided grants to the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Inc. and the Connecticut Tenants Union to support their efforts to expand “good cause” eviction protections for tenants.
We know that evictions can have traumatic and lasting effects on families. Evictions often perpetuate housing insecurity, increase homelessness, and make communities less stable, cohesive, and safe. According to an analysis by the Connecticut Data Collaborative, Connecticut Fair Housing Center and the Eviction Lab people of color, families with young children, and renters with disabilities are often the target of no-fault evictions. Connecticut’s Black and Latine renters are two to three times more likely to be evicted than white renters. Tenants who advocate on their own behalf or support their neighbors by requesting repairs, reporting unsafe housing conditions, or contesting rent increases may be retaliated against through no-fault evictions. By expanding just cause protections, Connecticut can empower tenants to assert their right to safe, stable housing. These protections also will also help to reduce housing discrimination by requiring justification for evictions, balancing the rights of tenants and landlords. Landlords would still be permitted to evict tenants in cases of nonpayment of rent, violating the lease, or refusing to agree to a reasonable rent increase. By limiting these protections to tenants in buildings with five or more units, small landlords of owner-occupied buildings would not be impacted.
According to the American Community Survey 5-year estimates, one in three Connecticut households rent their home, with the number and proportion of renting households increased from 2010 to 2023. During this period, renter-occupied households grew from 419K to 480K, raising the proportion of renter-occupied households from 31 percent to 34 percent. In Hartford, three out of four households rent their home – t he highest proportion of renters of all towns in Connecticut.
The foundation supports the intent of House Bill 5257, An Act Prohibiting A Landlord From Requiring A Security Deposit In Excess Of One Month’s Rent From Any Tenant. With vacancy rates among the lowest in the nation creating an extremely competitive housing market, lower income households face significant challenges to obtaining an affordable apartment. Preventing landlords from demanding excessive security deposits is one way to increase access to housing options and ensure housing affordability. Removing upfront fees helps households to maintain savings to cover moving costs and resources for emergency needs.
This bill would also start to standardize security deposits across the state. According to research from Zillow, 93 percent of renters of color pay significantly higher security deposits compared to white renters. Black and Latine renters also incur higher application fees and submit more applications, adding to the financial pressures they already face. By capping security deposits, Connecticut will better align with its neighboring states of New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, which have already enacted limits on security deposits to promote access to housing while allowing property owners the ability to mitigate risk. The Foundation also supports the security deposit guarantee program in the legislation to ensure that people with housing vouchers can also manage the security deposit requirement.
The foundation also supports the intent of House Bill 5092, An Act Protecting Renters From Rent Increases Upon The Transfer Of Residential Property. Like the proposal to limit security deposits, this proposal from Governor Lamont seeks to ensure that renters are not unfairly cost burdened at a time when rents are historically high and affordable apartments increasingly difficult to obtain.
We recognize that property owners have the right to make a reasonable profit on their investments and can face financial challenges when taking on a new property. At the same time, we applaud House Bill 5092’s effort to ensure are not subjected to destabilizing increases in rent with limited notice. The provisions in the legislation strike a fair balance. Allowing fair rent commissions to determine if a rent increase of property sold within the last twelve months has undergone “major renovations” (defined as improvements costing over $50,000 per dwelling unit) is fair and makes sense. Providing guidance to fair rent commissions on what a fair rent increase entails If major renovations have not been completed also should be considered.
The foundation also offers its support for the intent House Bill 5230, An Act Exempting Income Of Up To One Hundred Thousand Dollars Earned By A Child Under The Age Of Twenty-four From Inclusion In The Parent’s Gross Income For Determination Of The Parent’s Eligibility To Participate In The Rental Assistance Program.
This proposal has the potential to support families who have youth under the age of 24 working not to have their income counted as parent’s gross income. It is important to allow families who experience an income boost to remain in the Rental Assistance Program to sustain their housing security and build family economic mobility. Often jobs youth may initially secure may be seasonal or short term.
The foundation has been a long-time supporter of efforts to provide our youth with career readiness development and paid work opportunities. This includes the foundation’s work with Capital Workforce Partners (CWP), other local nonprofits, and the City of Hartford, Connecticut Department of Labor, and other funding partners to provide hundreds of youth in Hartford and the Capital Region workforce development and job experiences through the Summer Youth Employment Learning Program (SYELP). Greater Hartford Gives also provides support to the Hartford Youth Service Corps and its lead agency, Our Piece of the Pie (OPP).
These programs provide hundreds of Greater Hartford youth with an invaluable, real-world opportunity to learn what takes to hold a job and what is expected in the workplace. Perhaps just as important, these programs allow youth to have their own income to assist themselves and their families. Children who work also use this income to save for college at a time when the cost of higher education is historically high.
House Bill 5230 would ensure that youth seeking to benefit from these early job opportunities to better prepare them for the workforce do not hinder their families’ ability to access state rental assistance. While legislators can debate the limit of earned income, some version of this proposal is needed .
The foundation also supports House Bill 5258, An Act Concerning Tenant Organizational Activities which seeks to ensure that tenants can engage in organizational activities on residential property. This will facilitate the ability of residents to organize and voice their perspectives on issues they live. As noted previously, Greater Hartford Gives has provided grant support to the Connecticut Tenants Union, as well as other nonprofits including the Center for Leadership and Justice (CLJ), who led Hartford’s successful No More Slumlords campaign which helped to organize residents of the 150-unit Clay Arsenal Renaissance Apartments (CARA). With CLJ’s support, residents organized to put an end to the landlord’s contract with HUD and secured CARA residents housing choice vouchers to relocate anywhere that accepts the voucher within or beyond Hartford. CLJ also worked with neighborhood organizers to successfully update the City of Hartford’s housing code and are holding city officials accountable for these agreed upon changes to ensure that every apartment in Hartford is inspected and licensed for the protection of every resident.
Unfortunately, many apartment residents seeking to organize their neighbors are subjected to threats of retaliation from their landlords. House Bill 5258 would allow tenants, their representatives, and tenant organizers to distribute leaflets and post information in common areas, initiate contact with tenants, conduct door-to-door surveys about tenant organizing, and hold meetings in common spaces. The legislation also creates guidelines to ensure these activities are conducted reasonably and lawfully. The foundation supports the bill’s inclusion of protections for tenants’ right to organize by prohibiting landlords from taking retaliatory actions, such as eviction, rent increases, or service reductions, for six months after a tenant has participated in these tenant organizing activities.
As part of the foundation’s work to dismantle structural racism and advance equity in social and economic mobility in Greater Hartford’s Black and Latine communities, Greater Hartford Gives focuses on basic human needs in our region by ensuring food security, reducing homelessness, and expanding access to health care. We support nonprofits working to reduce homelessness and food insecurity and improve the physical and emotional wellbeing of Greater Hartford residents, prioritizing Black and Latine residents who are disproportionately impacted by structural racism and bias. Our grantmaking helps to strengthen the local and regional safety net and ensure people have the stability necessary to participate in education, the workforce, and their community. We support activities that increase the coordination among basic needs providers, and collaboration with local and state agencies to ensure services are responsive to community needs.
Many of the foundation’s past and current grants focus on preventing and reducing homelessness in Greater Hartford. Each year, the foundation awards approximately $1 million to local nonprofit organizations that provide access to emergency shelters, warming centers, housing subsidies, case management, eviction prevention, and other services to residents at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
Also critical is our support of work to address systemic barriers to quality, stable, affordable housing, including the Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network. Led by Hartford-based, foundation core support grantee Journey Home, the Coordinated Access Network focuses on ensuing homelessness and housing nonprofits and groups work together. To further these efforts, the foundation also supports the policy agenda of the CT CAN End Homelessness (CCEH).
In the past year, Journey Home reported a seven percent increase in homelessness in Greater Hartford. The organization expressed concern that continued inflation in the rental markets and inflation overall combined with reductions in federal benefits programs and federally funded housing programs will continue to challenge household budgets resulting in more people falling into homelessness.
Journey Home also conducted a data analysis on racial/ethnic disparities in 2025 and found that Black/African American individuals were seven times more likely than white individuals to experience homelessness in Greater Hartford. This disparity grew by 21 percentage points from the previous year. Hispanic/Latine individuals were four times more likely than white individuals to experience homelessness in Greater Hartford. This disparity decreased by 24 percent over the previous year.
In 2025, Hartford’s 2-1-1 Information and Referral Service received more than 515,800 calls. From January 1 through November 1, 2025, housing and shelter ranked as the top request category, accounting for 36 percent of all calls. Within this category, requests for information on low-cost housing represented the largest share at 37 percent, followed by requests for shelter bed availability, which made up 25 percent of housing- and shelter-related calls.
Overall, Connecticut’s homelessness response system continues to struggle from inadequate funding as the demand for services continues to rise. According to the 2025 Annual Point-In-Time Count of Individuals and Families Experiencing Homelessness:
- The number of people experiencing homelessness in Connecticut increased by 9.5 percent from 2024 to 2025.
- There was a 45 percent increase in unsheltered homelessness across the state, with 833 people living without shelter in 2025 compared to 574 in 2024.
- While family homelessness and the number of children experiencing homelessness decreased slightly to approximately 590, the number of single adults experiencing homelessness rose by 14 percent.
Despite an increase in state shelter capacity to 3,358 beds in 2025 from 3,227 in 2024, the demand for shelter beds continues to outpace available resources.
Connecticut can effectively employ prevention and diversion strategies to prevent people from becoming homeless, representing the most cost-effective ways to reduce homelessness.
The June 2024 U.S. Supreme Court Case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruled that cities can punish people experiencing homelessness for sleeping in public spaces, even if there is no shelter available. This essentially allowed municipalities the ability to enforce fines and arrest people for public camping and threaten people with jail time for people who refuse to move indoors or accept assistance. Homelessness frontline workers and advocates have fought against this ruling which essentially criminalizes homelessness, recognizing that these acts will only worsen conditions for unhoused individuals.
Research from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty has shown that criminalizing homelessness can have a ripple effect on physical and mental health outcomes. Additionally, BIPOC individuals, who comprise around 60 percent of homeless populations, are more likely to experience homelessness and be targeted by police for enforcement than white individuals. Individuals experiencing homelessness who identify as LGBTQIA+ are also more likely to be marginalized by criminalization.
The foundation supports House Bill 5260 which establishes legal protections for homeless individuals when performing life-sustaining activities in public spaces. The bill prohibits municipalities from creating ordinances that discriminate against homeless individuals and guarantees specific rights, including conducting necessary life-sustaining activities on public land without obstructing traffic, using public accommodations without discrimination, soliciting donations, maintaining privacy of personal property, practicing religion, and occupying vehicles when parked legally. The bill allows these activities only if they do not create safety hazards and, in some cases, only if no adequate alternative indoor space is available.
The foundation looks forward to continuing its work with policymakers, nonprofits, philanthropy, government leaders, and residents to develop effective long-term policies that will ensure all Connecticut residents have access to safe, secure, and affordable housing.