H.B. 5208, An Act Concerning Housing Opportunities for Justice-Impacted Persons

All people in Connecticut, regardless of whether they have a criminal record, should have the right to safe and stable housing. Yet at any time, approximately 25 percent of the state’s homeless population has a criminal record. This results directly from unfounded discrimination on the part of housing agencies and landlords. When affordable housing is insufficient, as it is in this state,2 strict admissions policies on the basis of criminal records are one way to decrease the number of qualified applicants. These often appear as complete bans on people with a criminal record. Unfortunately, these blanket bans do not bear a rational relationship to safety or landlords’ financial interests. To the contrary, recent research indicates that most criminal offenses have little to no impact on housing outcomes. For that reason, HB 5208 represents a signficiant step forward with its rejection of blanket bans and focus on individualized assessments.

For the few offenses that impact a person’s future success as a tenant, that impact declines rapidly over time until it is statistically insignificant within two to five years. House Bill 5208, though, proposes a three- or seven-year window for disqualification for people with convictions for misdemeanors and particular felonies, respectively. This bill could be vastly improved by shortening the seven-year lookback period to a much shorter period of time in conformity with recent research.

Because homelessness and housing insecurity are linked to higher recidivism rates, public safety dictates that we should try to encourage stable housing for people with criminal records, rather than discourage it by codifying permissible discrimination. House Bill 5208 would be much strengthened by lowering the seven-year lookback provision. The ACLU-CT asks this Committee to support House Bill 5208 with the amendment suggested in this testimony.