2026 Pro-Homes CT Legislative Agenda
“Starter and Senior Homes Package”
This year in the short session, Pro-Homes CT is focusing on increasing homeownership opportunities with our “Starter and Senior Homes Package.” We want to make it easier for young people to become homeowners, for seniors to have more housing options to age-in-place, for developers to build homes to own, and for towns and cities to support all of the above.
The stats tell a bleak story: we are not doing enough for starter and senior homes.
40% of senior homeowners are struggling with property taxes or housing costs.
The average age of first time homebuyers has reached 38.
The average cost of buying a home in Connecticut has reached $442,300 – up from $313,000 just five years ago.
Connecticut continues to lose young people and seniors to other, cheaper states.
We believe this package of concepts - many of which have passed in bipartisan majorities in red and blue states across the country - will help leverage the generational opportunity our state has with the passing of PA 25-1 to build the future that we can all benefit from in Connecticut.
The “Starter & Senior Homes Package” includes:
Making Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) as of right across the state to lower construction costs
Making it legal to rent ADUs for long-term renters to give seniors more income
Banning outdated deed restrictions on ADUs in older homes
Making it possible to buy/sell ADUs with state homeownership assistance programs
Make it safe and legal to rent a room long-term in a single-family home aka “Golden Girls”
Promoting starter homes and townhomes statewide
Reforming condo laws to encourage more multi-family ownership buildings
Look for our upcoming report on Accessory Dwelling Units to be posted here!
In addition to this package, we’ll be supporting a number of other initiatives to support homerenters, housing insecure individuals, and more funding for housing production, including working on the implementation of PA 25-1. Stay tuned for more information as the session unfolds on these efforts.
We’ll update this page as bill numbers, language, and public hearing dates get updated!
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Many towns and cities allow some version of renting out bedrooms in your own home, but there are also many places that have made home-sharing functionally illegal. Even in the places where home-sharing is legal, the laws can often be patchy or make things difficult for homeowners. For example, towns may require special permits or limits that don’t make home-sharing a practical option. The "Golden Girls" bill seeks to standardize and expand the practice to include all municipalities across the state under the same law, to provide options and protections for homeowners as well as their potential tenants.
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The nickname comes from the hit television series of the same name from the ‘80s and ‘90s, where four older single women share a home and experience their “golden years” together in friendship. States across the country have passed or are considering similar bills, often taking up the same nickname for the law. Colorado, Iowa, and Oregon all have “Golden Girls” laws to permit home-sharing, and Pennsylvania has a similar bill up for debate this session.
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Connecticut faces a massive shortage of available homes. At the same time, 28% of seniors in the state live alone and nearly 40% of seniors experience housing cost burdens (meaning that they contribute 30% or more of their household income towards housing). According to a 2024 survey from AARP, three out of four American adults want to stay in their home or community as they get older, but fewer than half believe they’ll be able to do so. Home-sharing allows homeowners to rent out bedrooms in their own home, but some places in Connecticut make this practice illegal or unnecessarily onerous. This bill expands housing flexibility by preventing local ordinances from blocking people from renting bedrooms in a single-family home to unrelated adults. It allows seniors to stay in their homes while avoiding complicated and endlessly varying permitting schemes. There are many towns that already allow for home-sharing, and this bill extends the practice statewide.
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This bill increases options for seniors who may be on a fixed income, worried about property taxes, or worried about taking care of a big house. Home-sharing is a great way for seniors to stay in their long-term home in an affordable way, according to the AARP. The AARP also recommends home-sharing as a way to reduce the social isolation that may accompany living alone as an older adult.
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Seniors, both homeowners and renters alike, stand to benefit most from this legislation because it may allow them to stay in their homes or communities at a lower cost. But the bill will benefit anyone who may be looking to rent out a room in their home for supplemental income or anyone who may be looking for an affordable room to rent, like young workers looking to rent near their place of work.
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This bill is in line with public health codes. It does not impact the ability of municipalities to enforce health and safety codes. The goal is to stop local limits on unrelated roommates unless there’s a true safety reason to regulate occupancy.
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No, this bill allows for up to three bedrooms to be rented in a single-family owner-occupied home, where health and safety codes—including those regarding occupancy limits—still apply.
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This bill is about helping people stay in their homes where it might otherwise be unaffordable. For these homeowners, renting out bedrooms will help defray their housing costs. In the case of ADU legislation, we’re looking to solve a different problem. Owner-occupancy requirements significantly impede the functionality of ADUs by limiting the homeowner’s ability to receive financing and to rent out the ADU and by restricting the pool of potential buyers in case of a sale of the primary property and.
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Renting a bedroom in a home is significantly more affordable than renting an entire home for yourself. It also increases affordability for existing homeowners, who may be looking for supplemental income to help them stay in their homes. Home-sharing allows for increased availability, too, where a large single-family home that previously may have housed just one person can now act as a home for multiple unrelated people.
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No, this bill does not mandate any building changes but instead lets people share existing homes without altering their design. The changes brought about by this bill won’t be noticeable from the street.
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No. The truth is that many multi-generational families share a single-family home, with multiple vehicles in the driveway. For example, families with teenagers, adult children, or grandparents may have multiple cars in their driveway. The bill does not in any way change local zoning regulations around street parking, so the rules will remain the same.
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An Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) is a smaller, secondary housing unit on a single-family residential lot. It can be attached (like a converted garage or basement) or detached (like a small structure in the backyard).
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The property owner, the tenant, and the entire community! ADUs constitute additional housing options that are usually on the more affordable end and offer new income streams for homeowners.
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Yes! ADUs offer seniors a chance to either “downsize” into an ADU (and let another family member or tenant live in the main house) or earn extra income by renting out an ADU. It’s also an option for a senior to rent an ADU from someone else in their town.
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Yes, Connecticut passed PA 21-29 in 2021, which contained some reforms to support ADU legalization as of right across CT. However the law also contained an “opt-out,” which 68% of CT municipalities utilized, meaning many still require special permits, public hearings, or don’t allow them at all. This year’s proposal aims to make ADUs more widely legalized across CT by ending this opt-out, while also introducing other reforms that make ADUs more accessible and easier to build, such as preventing towns from imposing owner occupancy requirements or deed restrictions.
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Most likely, but how easily it is still varies a lot in CT! If you live in one of the 54 municipalities that opted in to PA 21-29, you can build an ADU as-of-right without any special approvals. If you live in one of the other 115 towns, the answer will vary. Some allow ADUs with additional permitting, some may allow them with particular restrictions, and some may prohibit you from building an ADU entirely. You can check your town’s website for ADU policies.
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The cost of an ADU varies widely depending on the location and type (attached v.s. detached). In Connecticut, builders have estimated detached ADUs cost between $350 and $600/sq ft (making a 700 sq ft ADU cost between $250,000 and $400,000), with attached ADUs and conversions being significantly cheaper.
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There are numerous options for financing an ADU, including some options that are more ADU-specific. You can refinance your mortgage, replacing it with a construction or renovation loan to finance the ADU. You can also take out a Home Equity loan to finance the ADU, backed by the equity you already have in your main home. But many banks will want to know if you can legally rent it out to recoup the loan.
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Depends on your town’s particular regulations and ADU availability, but unfortunately many towns do not allow this.
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Yes! Statistics from places that have seen significant ADU construction, such as California, show that they play an important role in alleviating housing shortages and can make rents more affordable.
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A restrictive covenant is a clause in the deed to a property that limits how it can be used. Many properties in CT have very old covenants that prevent ADU construction, such as by enforcing that a lot has only one single-family-home.
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These covenants prevent us from adding much-needed additional housing supply amidst a housing affordability crisis, while also limiting the agency of the homeowner to build on their own property. If a property owner does not want to build an ADU or develop multifamily, they never have to; removing restrictive covenants simply gives them the option to.
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If you do not have easy access to a copy of your deed, you can search the online property records for your town, or email/visit the town clerk’s office.
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The owner occupancy requirement requires the owner of a property to reside in either the ADU or the main house. These regulations heavily impact flexibility and the value of constructing an ADU—they prevent a homeowner from moving out of a house and renting both their main home and the ADU (even though right now people can rent out their homes anyway).
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Yes! At least 18 states from across the political spectrum have passed statewide ADU bills. Some are “weaker,” like Connecticut’s, which contains few mechanisms to ensure towns adopt effective ADU regulations, while others are “stronger,” like Oregon and Iowa.
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As mentioned above, Connecticut currently has relatively weak statewide laws on ADUs. This bill contains similar provisions to what other states have passed recently, helping catch us up to peer states and ensure that ADUs are actually built across the state without unnecessary local restrictions. For example, 11 of the 18 states with existing ADU laws already ban localities from imposing owner-occupancy requirements, which this bill also does.
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Minimum lot size requirements dictate how large a parcel of land must be before a home can be built on it. Because land is expensive, large lot requirements can significantly increase the cost of homes and limit how many homes can be built in an area.
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In Connecticut, 81% of all residential land is zoned to require approximately one acre or more for a single home, and 49% requires two acres or more. Many minimum lot size rules were adopted decades ago when towns were growing rapidly and favored large-lot suburban development over denser, multi-family developments. But minimum lot sizes are still a relatively new phenomenon in the history of our state. That’s why there are many older homes on small lots in some of the most beloved areas of the state.
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S.B. 151 would cap minimum lot sizes at 5,000 square feet in areas served by existing or planned public water and sewer infrastructure. It would also reduce excessive setback requirements (rules that determine how far a building must sit from a property line) and allow greater lot coverage (the percentage of a lot that can be occupied by buildings). The goal is to allow smaller, more affordable homes where infrastructure already exists.
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Minimum lot size reform can help Connecticut communities create more housing options for young families, seniors, and workers. By allowing smaller homes on smaller lots—in areas with existing infrastructure—it can support walkable neighborhoods and make it easier to build the kinds of starter homes that have become increasingly rare.
By reducing the amount of land required per home, S.B. 151 could help spur new home construction, expand homeownership opportunities, and allow more people to live in the communities they already call home.
There is growing bipartisan momentum for minimum lot size reform across the country, with states as diverse as Texas and Maine recently adopting similar legislation and 10 other states currently considering them.
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When zoning requires large lots, it increases the amount of land that must be purchased for each home. This drives up home prices by inflating the price of land itself, and makes it difficult to build smaller, more affordable homes by limiting how many homes can be built. In 2024, Connecticut had the fourth lowest housing production rate in the country. Our housing stock grew by only .4%, while our population grew by 1.6%. The result is a market where single-family starter homes are increasingly scarce and unaffordable, just as our population demands them the most.
A recent nationwide study showed that doubling the minimum lot size increases home sales prices by 14% and rents by 9%. On the other hand, halving minimum lot sizes in Connecticut specifically would, over 30 years, lower home prices by approximately $26,900, increase home construction by up to 122%, and raise the homeownership rate by 3.2%.
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Minimum lot size reform under S.B. 151 would apply only to areas served by sewer and public water infrastructure. This approach helps reduce sprawl, accommodating gentle housing growth and protecting rural areas.
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No. Minimum lot size reform simply allows smaller lots to be created; it does not require towns or property owners to build homes. Development would still occur only when property owners choose to build and when projects meet local zoning rules.
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Smaller lots reduce the amount of land required for each home, which helps to lower the overall cost of housing. Historically, many starter homes (smaller, more modest homes designed to be affordable entry points to homeownership) in Connecticut were built on relatively small lots. Allowing these lot sizes again can help create more homeownership opportunities for first-time homebuyers.
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Not necessarily. Many neighborhoods in Connecticut already include homes on lots smaller than what current zoning requires today. Minimum lot size reform would allow similar types of homes to be built again—in areas with existing infrastructure. It’s also unlikely that existing single-family home areas would suddenly change, if ever.
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In addition to addressing minimum lot sizes, S.B. 151 would make it easier to build other modest housing types. The bill would require municipalities to allow townhomes in areas zoned for single-family homes, subject to the same three-story height restrictions for single-family homes from existing building and fire code standards. Townhomes can look similar to single-family homes but allow more homes to be built on a smaller amount of land. The bill would also allow certain residential lots to be subdivided into smaller parcels.