Massachusetts is among a handful of states that is looking to break the death grip that local planning boards and restrictive zoning laws have on the development of affordable, accessory dwelling units like this one. But change won’t come easily or quietly. An article in the Washington Post describes L.A.s struggle.
We heard from our own Sen. Will Brownsberger at Town Meeting in the spring about efforts on Beacon Hill to do a big and important re-write of zoning laws for the Bay State. The goal is to find a way to address one of the biggest impediments to economic growth in Massachusetts: the high cost of housing (and by extension, the high cost of living). Senators, including Sen. Browsberger, voted 23-15 to pass the bill, S2311, which would have prohibited restrictive local zoning ordinances that stifle the development of new housing and also created financial incentives for communities to encourage “sustainable” (read: high density, close to public transit) housing.
As it turned out, S2311 didn’t go anywhere in the House – especially coming so close to the end of the legislative season. But its likely to be reborn in the next legislative session – possibly tied to a larger housing bill that will also include reforms to the State’s 47 year old 40B affordable (“anti-snob”) housing bill.
It’s worth noting that Massachusetts is hardly the only state to wrestle with issues related to cost of living and the skyrocketing cost of buying and renting. As this article in The Washington Post notes, efforts are afoot across the country to break the strangle hold that local planning boards have had on new and affordable housing development over the last 30 to 40 years and provide ways for existing housing stock to be repurposed.
The article focuses in on Los Angeles and the Coffees, a retired couple who built what was supposed to be their retirement home – a 1,200 square foot flat – in the back yard of their daughter’s suburban home. That project was put in a deep freeze, however, after complaints by neighbors brought the project to a halt, leaving the Coffees with a finished home, but no permit to get the power and water turned on. The problem: irate neighbors worried that so-called “accessory units” or “granny flats” like the Coffees will ruin the suburban idyll of their community.
From the article:
Homes like the Coffees’, proponents argue, could help ease housing shortages that have made $2,000-a-month one-bedrooms look like a bargain in cities such as Los Angeles. They could yield new affordable housing at no cost to the public. They could add rentals and economic diversity to more neighborhoods. And they could expand housing options for a population in which baby boomers are aging and millennials are stuck at home.
Many neighbors, though, protest that a glut of back yard building would spoil the character of neighborhoods designed around the American ideal of one family on one lot surrounded by verdant lawn. They fear that more residents will mean less parking. And they question whether small homes, particularly in wealthier neighborhoods with the most room to build them, would really constitute affordable housing.
And so across the country, homes like the Coffees’ remain extremely difficult — if not outright illegal — to build.
The article quotes LA Mayor Eric Garcetti saying that the goal of the city is to “remove barriers to second units.”
“We are determined to add needed units to communities without changing the look and feel of our neighborhoods,” said Garcetti. He has committed to adding 100,000 new housing units by 2021 in LA, with 15% of them affordable.
Other cities are already moving ahead on Garcetti’s vision. Washington, D.C., for example, recently adopted an updated zoning code that makes it easier for more homeowners to build and rent out second homes. As of September, many more properties — smaller homes, rowhouses, homes with garage apartments once limited to “domestic” workers and relatives — will be legally allowed to have accessory rentals, the article notes.
While stories from LA, D.C. or Seattle may seem barely relevant to towns like Belmont, this article over at CityLab.com by Anthony Flint (who, it turns out, worked in the Office of Commonwealth Development in the Romney Administration) makes note of the example set by the city of Durango, Colorado (pop. 17,500) which undertook a rewrite of its land use and planning guidelines in an effort to fight sprawl. Among other things, Durango created a predictable process for creating ADUs with “reasonable standards” that included a limit on the number of occupants (no more than five unrelated people), rules about how small the living space could be (550 square feet), an owner-occupied home requirement (so absentee landlords couldn’t rent out both the home and the ADU), a ban on short-term vacation rentals such as through Airbnb, and design guidelines for balconies, window placements, and exterior staircases.
Faced still opposition from residents offering mostly FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) about creating “slums,” Durango stuck to its guns and has benefitted from them ever since.
Flint lays out a possible path to victory here in the Bay State: demonstrating the benefit to the community at large including owners and renters. Planners also need to be flexible, without giving away the farm.
Stay tuned for more on this – I’m sure it will be a major topic of debate on Beacon Hill and at the local level heading into the Fall and Winter!