At the General Assembly’s Planning and Development Committee public hearing on February 7, 2011, many people testified in support of and against bills to require some type of notice (e.g., public hearings) on the location of group homes. A February 7, 2011, Hartford Courant article summarized the debate, as the ‘struggle’ “between the rights of homeowners and the legal protections for residents of group homes.”
As many argued at the public hearing, and as discussed in OLR Report 2009-R-0361, the law protects individuals with current, past, or perceived disabilities against discrimination in housing (which would include people with disabilities who are clients of the departments of Developmental Services and Mental Health and Addiction Services). However, certain groups are not explicitly protected. Therefore, as the CTMirror.org news site reported on February 7, the debate becomes whether it is “legally possible to create categories of group homes that would treat facilities for certain groups, like juvenile offenders or sex offenders, differently from homes serving other groups.”
