Maybe this'll work: City Plan Director Laura Brown, Housing Authority chief Karen DuBois-Walton, and Congressional staffer Lou Mangini at Thursday's presser.
The Elicker administration is looking to update a law aimed at encouraging people to develop “mother-in-law” apartments — so that someone will actually build them and create needed new housing.
Officials gathered inside City Hall Thursday afternoon to pitch a plan to amend a 2021 ordinance that allowed owner-occupants across the city as of right now to develop such apartments — formally known as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
They discovered that not a single person has built an ADU without still having to seek zoning relief first in the two years since the ordinance passed with the intention of increasing affordable and high-quality housing stock. (Eleven applications have sought Board of Zoning Appeals permission to build ADUs.)
“As a city with lots of historic structures, we have lots of space that could be used for denser housing,” City Plan Director Laura Brown said during Thursday’s presser. ADUs, she said, “allow that increased density without big housing developments — in some ways, they’re almost invisible.”
Mayor Justin Elicker defined ADUs as “residential units that are on the same parcel as a single-family dwelling but provide complete independent living facilities for more than one person.” He called ADUs one pathway for property owners to develop small-scale housing for renters in need of affordable options — or for elderly relatives. (Hence their common nicknames as “mother-in-law apartments” and “granny flats.”)
The Elicker Administration is proposing the following changes to the original ordinance in an attempt to remove barriers believed to dissuade residents from building ADUs:
- Eliminating the owner-occupancy requirement, which was originally imposed to keep megalandlords from cashing in on the legislation.
- Abolishing minimum lot size mandates; 4,000 square feet of land is currently required for an ADU.
- Permitting entirely new housing development as opposed to limiting development to conversions of attics, basements or garages.
- Standardizing setbacks between ADUs and property lines to just five feet, instead of continuing to require that building setbacks match those of the principal structure on a property.
Deputy Director of Zoning Nate Hougrand told the Independent that dimensional restrictions are largely at fault for forcing ADU hopefuls to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals.
Hougrand said he has had “a lot of conversations” with people interested in developing ADUs who ditch the idea in totality upon realizing their ineligibility, typically because they’re not owner-occupants. “We can’t count how many people have just backed off, who decided not to move forward,” said Laura Brown.
Simply getting rid of lot size restrictions, Brown added, would make another 4,000 parcels eligible for as-of-right ADUs. That would up the number of properties primed for such development from 19,000 to 23,000.
The Board of Alders will now review the proposed ordinance changes and decided whether to vote them into law.
Reached for comment later Thursday afternoon, Dixwell Alder and board President Pro Tem Jeanette Morrison said that while she can’t speak for the entire board, she anticipates her colleagues will support policies intended to increase housing supply and affordability.
“As a leader of the board, and looking at our legislative agenda, housing is one of the top priorities. Anything that supports housing, the board wants to support,” she said.
No.