The General Assembly foolishly passed a bill, Substitute House Bill 6880, “An Act Concerning the Affordable Housing Land Use Appeals Procedure,” that would modify the state's affordable housing law to make it much easier for municipalities to achieve affordability thresholds which would allow them to hide behind multiyear moratoria, staving off efforts to bring social equity to the exclusionary housing patterns that plague our state. It is troubling that there was bipartisan support for the legislation and that it passed both the House and the Senate with wide margins, 116-33 and 30-6, respectively.

The governor did the right thing in vetoing the legislation and we urge the General Assembly not to attempt to resurrect the harmful legislation by overriding the governor's veto.

The bill allows a municipality to include resident-owned mobile homes with initial purchaser income restrictions in its affordable housing inventory, even though the income limitations only apply at the time of the sale. It also decreases the threshold that towns over 20,000 people must meet when seeking a second moratorium from the requirements of the statute from the creation of new units equaling 2 percent of housing units in the town to 1.5 percent and extends the moratorium period from four to five years.