Housing Justice Series Kick-Off

On Feb. 5th, the Connecticut College community welcomed Sean Ghio ‘93 to speak on the fundamentals of housing justice. The “What is Housing Justice?” event kicked off the College’s Housing Justice Series presented by the Center for Housing Equity and Opportunity of Eastern Connecticut (CHEO) and the Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy. Ghio, who earned a B.A. in Economics at Connecticut College, is now the Policy Director at Partnership for Strong Communities. This organization is a partner with CHEO and launched at Connecticut College last March.

Ghio spoke to students, faculty, and staff about his work with Partnership for Strong Communities, which involves examining how housing insecurity affects families across Connecticut. The organization started out working towards ending homelessness and has since maneuvered to advocating for affordable housing at the state level. Ghio began his talk by introducing what he called the “housing continuum,” which describes various housing experiences, ranging from homelessness to having a stable home. Currently, much of the housing situation across the state is considered “less than permanently stable.” Ghio also explained that housing in Connecticut is heavily segregated by income and race due to zoning, a system which he described as a way to legally create and maintain segregation.

As a state-level lobbyist, Ghio advocates for the adoption of policies that will help families secure stable homes. One of these policies, Just Cause Eviction, prohibits landlords from evicting tenants without good reason, since it is currently common for tenants with month-to-month leases to be evicted with just a 30-day notice, and without proper reasoning.

According to Ghio, rents in Connecticut have increased by 21% since 2021, and over 50% of renters (more than half of which are Black and Latino residents) spend more than half of their income on housing. Ghio argues that a lack of lower-income housing in an area has a negative economic impact on everyone, emphasizing that one of the biggest reasons for the perpetuation of the housing crisis is that the voices of those who are impacted by these issues aren’t being heard. He therefore stressed the role of tenants’ unions as the frontline for changing exclusionary zoning.

Bethany Smith ‘24, a scholar in the Program in Community Action (PICA), shared her experience attending the session. Smith highlighted Ghio’s emphasis on the role of institutionalized classism and racism as primary drivers of the housing crisis and the need to dismantle these systems in order to tackle the problem at hand. Smith said that Ghio’s talk provided an opportunity to learn more about the housing crisis in Connecticut, which can inform future solutions: “In order to go out into the community, you need to understand what is happening…then we can talk about what we can do in our local community to help with this crisis.” An explanation of this, Smith highlights, are the actions that the Holleran Center takes to work towards housing justice in the New London community, including the Walk to End Homelessness and drives that help families experiencing housing insecurity. Smith feels that this session was important to have at Conn due the New London community’s perception of the College as an isolated “college on the hill.” Smith said that besides the Holleran Center, there isn’t much outreach or opportunity for engagement with the city. “This is a real issue that’s affecting their [the students’] community if they drive two minutes outside of campus,” explains Smith.

If you’re interested in learning about housing justice in Connecticut, the next session in the Housing Justice Series will be on Monday, March 4th and will explore the relationship between housing justice and race.