The mayor of Connecticut’s capital city is offering to sell city-owned land to affordable housing developers for $1.00.
Fox61.com reports Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam says the city has teamed with the state government on a new $4 million fund to help builders who put out a dollar for the land to complete their projects. A vacant-lot task force identified 18 underused city-owned properties for potential development.
“We are opening up city-owned properties for local developers to build at zero cost if they can build real housing ownership that is affordable, actually affordable, for working families in the city,” Arulampalam said, adding, “So many of these properties, especially the vacant lots, just sit there for a while. We’ve got a ton of these vacant lots that have been on the books for 20 or 30 years. This takes something that is really a source of neighborhood problems, of blight, of crime, of dumping and turns it into a source of neighborhood solutions.”
The mayor stated between 20 and 60 units to come from this endeavor, with plans including both single-family homes and duplexes. Groundbreaking on some of the projects could start in the spring, with the first homes being completed by next fall.
Gov. Ned Lamont joined Arulampalam in announcing the initiative, declaring, “Maybe there’s an empty lot, maybe there’s a parking lot, maybe it’s an old mill that’s sitting empty, maybe it’s an office building that’s not at full capacity, and how can we make that available for housing. That’s what Arunan is doing and that’s why I’ll keep working with you because you know how to get it done.”
Photo: Bart Everson / Flickr Creative Commons
