State pricing out younger workers

5/23/07
The Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University unveiled a report this week that showed people are being priced out of the state’s housing market, but it wasn’t that conclusion that was alarming; anyone with a glimmer of the real estate market knows that. What’s genuinely worrisome is the rate at which people are giving up entirely on making a home here.
Connecticut is No. 1 in the nation in terms of 25- to 34-year-olds leaving the state in search of more affordable lifestyles. And once they land someplace else, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever come back. This is the future of the state’s high-earning, highly taxed work force, and it is disappearing.
Buying a house in the southwestern corner of Connecticut means either lucking into an incredible deal or settling for something too small or too far out of the way. Even good-paying jobs offer far too little in salary for workers to settle down here.
Add in the other cost-of-living hikes — gasoline at an all-time high, electricity rates through the roof, a big water increase in the offing. It’s almost as if the state doesn’t want a middle class here.
The report said workers would need a salary over $100,000 to afford Connecticut’s median home sale price, and that can only be higher when the rest of the state is excluded. The push with Monday’s presentation was for legislators to enact affordable-housing laws this session that would allow people who were born and raised here to stay here.
The Assembly should get to work on the legislation before them, epsecially the innovative HomeConnecticut bill that offers a new way of building affordable housing in specially designated municipal zones.
Their current session, though, has been disheartening — no sense of urgency, a budget that may just make it in under the deadline and dwindling chances for energy-price relief. If they had their priorities straight, the ongoing drainage of young workers out of state would be the top item on the docket.
The trend isn’t slowing down; the state needs housing its work force can afford to buy and live in. Connecticut’s economic future depends on it. Not everyone can count on that trust fund kicking in.