SALISBURY — Housing affordability is a daunting challenge throughout the Northwest Corner, but a coordinated, regional response is reportedly making strides, one new housing unit at a time.
The past year’s success stories were front and center during the Litchfield County Center for Housing Opportunity’s (LCCHO) Annual Housing Affordability Summit held on Sept. 20 at the Salisbury Town Grove Community Center.
Guests included state Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno, members of local housing nonprofits, area legislators, first selectmen, town housing committees and others passionate about create housing opportunities for those who live and work in the community.
“Housing is not just a roof over our heads. It is the foundation of our lives, yet the cost of housing is a growing concern,” Mosquera-Bruno told the crowd that surpassed 100 attendees. “When families can afford housing, they are investing in their future.”
Millions in state, federal funding in 2023
Jocelyn Ayer, LCCHO’s director, pointed to a “doubling of the number of affordable housing units in the pipeline since we got started a few years ago.”
She recited her organization’s impact by the numbers: 15 local housing nonprofits being provided with day-to-day project management support; 323 affordable housing units being supported to move forward as part of 18 developments in 13 towns; a 100% increase in the number of affordable housing units in the development pipeline (increase of 160 to 323 since 2022, and $4.8 million in state funding accessed by local nonprofits to construct and/or renovate housing in 2023.
Also, Ayer pointed to $4.25 million in federal funding accessed by local nonprofits for affordable housing in 2023 units and $176,000 in pre-development seed funding committed to support six developments.
She said $33,800 in pass-through funding was provided for community engagement projects in Barkhamsted, Canaan, Cornwall, Goshen, Kent, Litchfield, Morris, Norfolk, Salisbury, Sharon, Warren and Winchester, the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative and Kent Affordable Housing.
Mosquero-Bruno offered suggestions on how towns could add to their affordable housing stock, including the revision of zoning laws to allow for duplexes and townhouses and the promotion of public-private partnerships.
“Don’t just think about building, but also acquiring. It’s not just about construction it’s about engaging community members” through education and advocacy, she noted.
A team of stakeholders cut the ribbon on 10 new affordable housing units in Salisbury, From left, Peter Halle, president of the Salisbury Housing Committee, Inc.; Jocelyn Ayer, vice-president, SHC; U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.); State Representative Maria Horn (D-64); Marcus Smith, Connecticut Housing Finance Authority; Seila Mosquera-Bruno, Commissioner, Connecticut Department of Housing; T.J. Magnoli, Community Relations, Eversource; and Curtis Rand, Salisbury First Selectman.
Patrick L. Sullivan
Sharing successes and challenges
The evening included a brief update on Litchfield County success stories, including the ribbon cutting earlier in the day for 10 new units at Salisbury’s Sarum Village III.
“Unfortunately, we don’t get to do that every day,” said Ayer of the newly christened rental units. “So we need to celebrate the little wins.”
One by one, updates on various stages of housing projects, from rental units to single-family homes, unfolded from representatives of the Barkhamsted Housing Trust, Cornwall Housing Corporation, Falls Village Housing Trust, Goshen Housing Trust, Kent Affordable Housing, Litchfield Housing Trust, Litchfield/Morris Housing Authorities and the Foundation for Norfolk Living.
Also represented was the Salisbury Housing Committee, Salisbury Housing Trust, Sharon Housing Trust, Warren Affordable Housing Corporation, Washington Community Housing Trust and the Winchester Housing Partnership.
Peter Halle, president of the Salisbury Housing Committee, explained that in addition to the 10 new units at Sarum Village, projects in the pipeline include Dresser Woods, a 20-unit affordable housing project and the long-awaited Holley Place. “NIMBY is a reality, but it’s moving ahead,” he reported.
Earlier in the day, attendees were encouraged to take a self-guided tour of current/planned housing developments in Salisbury. In addition to Sarum Village, Dresser Woods and Holley Place, other sites on the tour included the Pope Property, two affordable homes by the Salisbury Housing Trust and Lakeview Apartments.
“We really have an embarrassment of riches in Salisbury when it comes to working on affordable housing projects,” noted Jennifer Kronholm Clark, vice president of the Salisbury Housing Trust.
‘The real success stories are our tenants’
Chris Sanders, president of the Goshen Housing Trust, said he was happy to report that 13 out of 18 rental units in his town have undergone major renovation since May of 2021 and are occupied, despite the fact that “Goshen, Connecticut is not necessarily a friend to affordable housing.”
He said “the real success stories are our tenants.”
Sanders spoke of the single mom with an infant who was a tenant for 15 years and recently purchased a home in Winsted. He recalled the long-time senior who lost his home due to healthcare costs and “didn’t know where to go next but wanted to live close by and has been with us for two years.”
Sanders recalled the professional couple who are employed locally, and the mom with three kids who was a victim of domestic violence “and found a safe home with us.”
Just last week, he said, one of our tenants gave birth to a baby girl. “It was the first tenant who snuck in!” he said, eliciting laughter from the crowd. “These are really the success stories affordable housing is about.”
Deidre DiCara, representing the Winchester Housing Partnership, spoke of the planned renovation of the vacant Batcheller school building on Pratt Street into 35 rental units. The vote to sell the school to the nonprofit Northwest Senior Housing, she said, “squeaked through” by a heart-stopping four votes.
The summit, sponsored this year by National Iron Bank, concluded with panel sessions on the upcoming Legislative session, and financing resources for affordable housing.
Attendees were treated to the debut of a short film screening showcasing the region’s collaborative effort and the strategies that have come out of it.
“I am truly grateful and committed to our shared vision,” the state housing commissioner told those in attendance. “Despite these challenges there is hope.”
KK Kozik in her studio
It is a particularly fitting philosophy for an artist whose paintings often begin with the world around her but rarely end there. There might be something recognizable — a stone wall, an apple tree, a crow — but then there is something less certain. Something that appears to be one thing becomes another upon inspection. Memory gets involved. So does imagination. So does time.
Since moving from New York City to Sharon, Connecticut in 2006, the landscape around her has become increasingly important to that process.
“I just saw things differently,” Kozik said.
The change was not immediate. She remembers an earlier version of herself driving through Vermont without paying much attention to what was happening beyond the windshield.
“I didn’t have the means to see what was happening around me,” she said. “I just sort of la, la, la, la, la, driving to Vermont.”
But, she said, she started to pay attention differently.
“I became more sensitized as time went on,” she said.
Asked whether that change came with age, she said, “Age and so-called wisdom.”
There’s a sense of loss in her landscapes, but a particular kind of loss that also has a twinge of redemption. Specifically, what happens to a landscape when people leave it?
“When the people go away, the wildlife comes back,” Kozik said.
KK Kozik in her studio with her painting “Golden Delicious.”Natalia Zukerman
Kozik’s work has never settled into a single recognizable formula. She has painted landscapes, figures and still lifes, moved toward abstraction and returned to representation. Her subjects change, but the underlying impulse remains: to take what is in front of her and discover what else there might be.
Kozik describes herself as someone who is always trying to figure things out. Her paintings often have the feeling of a thought in progress rather than a conclusion. They have been called “single-line novellas,” a description that makes sense: They can contain the suggestion of an entire story without telling you exactly what happened.
The animals are part of that storytelling.
They arrived partly because of what was disappearing.
“They were like the new redemption in a way,” she said.
There is something almost funny about the way Kozik talks about this — not because the loss itself is funny, but because she refuses to turn it into a grand pronouncement. She observes something, considers it, and lets it complicate the work.
That same sensibility comes through when she talks about her own development as an artist. Her paintings make room for interpretation. They don’t always tell the viewer what an animal symbolizes, or why a landscape has been altered, or where a particular image came from. Instead, they leave enough evidence to make you curious and enough room for your own stories.
The effect is not accidental. Kozik has spent years thinking about how images work, both as paintings and as containers for ideas.
Her work is currently included in “The Naturalist,” a group exhibition on view through Sept. 13 at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, alongside Richard Klein, Sally Maca, Rick Shaefer and Tricia Wright. The exhibition brings together artists whose work engages with the natural world, including its forms, histories and mysteries.
Kozik is an especially apt fit for the exhibition. She is described by the gallery as a landscape painter, figurative painter and interiors/still-life painter whose work frequently moves toward painterly abstraction. Her practice, the gallery notes, is “fluid and continuous” — always searching for new pictorial problems to solve.
That search has also extended beyond her own studio.
For several years, Kozik ran ICEHOUSE Project Space, an 18th-century icehouse on Sharon’s town green that she transformed into an unusual venue for contemporary art. It opened in 2018 with Dan Devine’s “Inside-Out NASCAR” and went on to host site-specific projects by artists including Mark Dion, Eric Aho, Janet Biggs, Richard Klein, Kristin Jones, Lisa Hoke and Ryan Frank. The projects addressed everything from the decline of winged insects and native and invasive plants to Sharon’s iron industry, its gardens and its history as an ice-producing community.
The space is now closed, but its premise still feels connected to Kozik’s painting practice. Each project responded in some way to the physical location, turning what might otherwise have been a little historic outbuilding into a setting for contemporary art.
Kozik’s own work does something similar with the landscape. She takes a place and lets it become more than a place.
Kozik’s paintings tell us that something happened before we arrived, and that something will happen after we leave.
And then there is the question of what to do with the space in between.
Maybe Kozik’s paintings are less about that space and more about an idea, as she put it, of “which questions to think about.”
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Jazzmine Bone and A Stitch in Tyme power through the Gambler’s Choice run during the 2024 Lakeville Open.
The event, which has been held continuously for 69 years, is open to the public with free admission.
Individual competitions will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors can stop by briefly or settle in for the day.
A food truck, bake sale and portable restrooms will be available on-site.
The show is the primary fundraiser for The Lakeville Pony Club, with proceeds supporting young riders who need financial assistance to participate in lessons. Members and their families work throughout the year to create the event for both competitors and spectators.
Members of the Lakeville Pony Club and Echo the pony arrive for the costume class during the Lakeville Open in 2024.Caitlin Von Graf
For those new to horse shows, the day offers a chance to learn more about the sport and understand what happens in the ring. In equitation competitions, judges evaluate the rider’s skill, from beginners learning walk and trot to more advanced riders navigating cantering and jumping courses.
Hunter competitions focus on the horse’s style and smoothness over fences, while jumper classes emphasize accuracy and speed as horses and riders race against the clock without knocking down rails.
The day also includes a crowd favorite: the costume class, where horses and riders dress up in creative ensembles for a chance at the top prize.
Programs will be available onsite to help spectators identify competitors and horses. A full list of competitions, entry information and details for those interested can be found at rigameadow.com
Whether an experienced equestrian or simply curious about the sport, the Lakeville Open Horse Show offers a chance to enjoy a Hudson Valley tradition that continues to bring the community together.
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