The Planning and Zoning Commission (PZC) approved a text amendment that establishes a moratorium on applications for all residential multi-unit housing developments at its meeting on June 7.

Text Amendment 23-09 establishes that “the East Haven Planning and Zoning Commission shall not accept, consider or approve any applications for residential multi-family or multi-unit housing, and hereby prohibits the issuance of any zoning permits to permit the construction, reconstruction, enlargement, alteration or relocation of any residential multi-family and multi-unit proposals in any Zoning District within the Town of East Haven.”

The moratorium will go into effect on June 30 and expire on Oct. 30. It will not be applied to “any applications for multi-family or multi-unit housing approved or submitted prior to the effective date of this moratorium,” reads the text amendment.

The moratorium was established in light of the goals the PZC is determined to meet in its Affordable Housing Plan that was approved by the town earlier this year. One component of that determination is to meet Connecticut General Statutes 8-30g, which mandates that at least 10% of a municipality’s housing stock must be deemed “affordable,” according to the state Department of Housing.

The town’s current stock stands at 8.27% of units being considered “affordable,” according to Land Use Attorney Jennifer Coppola. The moratorium determines that that rate should not decrease in the future.

The PZC has made efforts in the past to ensure that affordable units at recently approved developments are available to potential tenants. A recently approved development for a 378-unit housing complex on Sperry Lane and Foxon Boulevard submitted by Bluffs LLC has that requirement attached.

Joe Budrow, the town’s Zoning Enforcement Officer, said the approval of the Bluffs development and several other applications for developments have landed on the PZC’s desk. In response, the PZC has decided with the moratorium to look into attaching a “set-aside requirement” to previously received applications to ensure the town’s affordability goals are met. It will also be a way for the current housing stock percentage to decrease, according to Budrow.

“With having just passed the Bluffs [development] and getting quite a number of units up there, we started seeing on the horizon a lot of multiple multi-family dwelling projects come in. We just approved our housing plan a few months ago….so that just leaves [us asking] ‘what’s our strategy,’” said Budrow. “So we put a moratorium in to bring in these applications so that we could put a zoning regulation in place where such proposals will require a percentage of the proposal to be affordable units.”

One recently received application Budrow raised as an example of a possible “set-aside requirement” is for a proposal from Vigliotti Construction for a 3.4 acres luxury apartment complex at 71 South Shore Drive that would consist of 72 units.

“Imagine we don’t have a set aside [requirement]… with Vigliotti, they’re proposing 72 units… let’s just say they said ‘I will give you five [units] and we said ‘okay, we’ll take five.’ Then our percentage went down,” said Budrow. “The set aside will maintain that of new dwelling units coming in; we will not see a decrease in percentage,” said Budrow.

During the moratorium, the PZC will conduct a short-term evaluation of the town’s zoning regulations “to establish a plan to encourage creation of affordable housing” that will also consider the set-aside requirement, according to the text amendment. This will likely involve carving out spaces in the town where housing developments consisting of a required number of affordable units can be constructed.

Budrow said the PZC would craft language as part of another text amendment that determines an exact percentage for the required number of deemable affordable units at a new development within the next month.