Are you suggesting that a court-yard apartment complexes can go on any lot? You’re saying that every lot is appropriate for row houses?
I suppose that’s one point of view – kind of makes the concept of zoning irrelevant, doesn’t it?
Yep, that’s what I mean. I understand it’s an extreme position, but I don’t see any reason why it’s not possible other than for political reasons. But in the interest of pragmatism, I’m ok backing down on that point. I just struggle to find the right way to say “appropriate locations” that would apply to all neighborhoods with out letting them off the hook. Maybe you can give me some examples? What would be an appropriate location in North Loop for additional housing types? In Hyde Park, I’d say the best places would be any street with transit. So that includes Guadalupe, Speedway, Duval, Red River and 45th.
2 Likes
the City of Santa Ana has design standards for bungalow courts that require a lot of 100-180’ x 130’. So, in Hyde Park, replacing two houses next to each other (each with one house on a 50x130 lot), and replacing them with a bungalow court yields five houses that don’t loom over the neighbors like super duplexes etc… Irrespective of the aesthetics, there are dozens of ways to add density to a neighborhood, but right now, our city code has reduced this to one or two (for SF properties). You can add an ADU, you can add bedrooms to your house, or you can build a duplex.
1 Like
I can see the argument for not allowing apartments (5 or more units) on all lots like SF-3 since that might not go over very well, but I don’t see any reason why row houses wouldn’t be allowed on all SF-3 lots along with all other missing middle housing (duplexes, 3-plexes, 4-plexes, bungalow courts, etc). There are a lot of SF-2 lots and other types that should also be included in the same category though, so it should probably just be any lot in central Austin. I think it’d be reasonable to allow apartments with 5 or more units on major streets and maybe something like within .25 miles of any public transit like bus lines, etc.
2 Likes
I’m afraid I can’t really support this. I just think zoning is a good idea (although I agree there are some restrictions within our current zoning and use regulations that are unrealistic).
What your neighbor builds next to your home may have profound effects on the value of your home. We saw this with Stealth Dorms – when one went in, the houses around it would often go up for sale. While other houses in the neighborhood would sell within 30 days, the houses next to Stealth Dorms would stay on the market for much, much longer. Ultimately, the home-owner would drop the price to a point where it would finally sell (typically to the developer who built the Stealth Dorm in the first place), costing that home-owner tens of thousands of dollars.
Without restrictions, your neighbor may build something that severely undermines your ability to sell your home, and people don’t like living with that level of vulnerability. I personally think set-backs and height-compatibility restrictions are kind of silly, but I fully recognize that my views are in the extreme minority. If you have a zero-lot-line home on either side of your house, you might think it is a fine and efficient use of real-estate, but you’ll probably be a little frustrated when you try to sell it and nobody wants to buy it.
Adding insult to injury, an identical house 2 blocks away may sell for 30% more than your house. The way we assess property values for the purposes of taxes means your tax burden will be aligned with that “comparable” house. But if you try to sell your house, you will not get the same return on your investment as your neighbor with the identical house. So you pay the same taxes as your neighbors every year, but your property is actually worth much less.
This is to the greater good, in my opinion, because it creates even more affordable housing. But you may not care so much about the greater good if you are the one taking the loss on your investment.
I can’t speak for every neighborhood, but I can tell you that there are places where more varied housing stock could go in my neighborhood that will not be politically untenable. 51st Street and North Loop could probably have row-houses – Most of Avenue G could not. We have a few new tri-plexes close to Lamar that work very well. We already have a new 4-plex and 5-plex on 53rd and Guadalupe (respectively) and neighbors like them and would likely support building even more in similar locations.
We have a big co-op where about 40 people live on Nelray and Guadalupe, and I could imagine a half-dozen other locations where a similar development would be welcome and appropriate. But I can tell you there are about 600 locations where that would NOT be welcome or appropriate.
Location matters, and these regulations really do exist for good reason. I’ve had dalliances with Libertarian ideas myself, so I’m sympathetic, but I assure you that tossing out the regulations just isn’t the right response – I think shaping the regulations to give people more options is the right response.
And that’s what Code NEXT is supposed to be.
1 Like
I think there is a big difference between allowing rowhouses and eliminating zoning. Nobody is suggesting that we allow high rises and large apartment complexes within neighborhoods; rather, we allow a greater variety of middle-density low-rise housing types. Of course, the City will come up with design standards for these housing types. I don’t think well-designed rowhouses will lower anyone’s property values, but I do think expanding entitlements somewhat to allow missing-middle housing will actually help to raise property values a bit, as it gives future owners more options for redeveloping the plot in the future.
Just to clarify, the proposition on the table here is to allow all types of housing on every property currently zoned for residential use, right?
I agree. Well-designed row-houses on appropriate locations probably will not lower anyone’s property values.
What if it isn’t well designed? What if it isn’t in a very appropriate location?
Would you defend my right to redevelop my property into a row-house? I don’t own the properties adjacent to mine, but if I build my zero-lot-line row-house, maybe my next-door neighbors will, too.
Or is this just a boondoggle for wealthy land-owners who have multiple adjacent properties?
I would absolutely support your right to redevelop your property into rowhouses, given an appropriate height limit. I think it would be great if property owners could subdivide a lot into 3, sell the other 2 lots and build a narrow row house on one of the lots
1 Like
There’s no proposition on the table yet. Somebody would have to propose one and that would have to be sponsored by a board member. I think we’re making good progress on reaching some sort of consensus on what that proposition should be.
1 Like
I think allowing “all” types of housing on "every"residential lot is a bit of a stretch, when currently there are only two types of housing allowed on most residential lots. Somewhere between the all-every and the current frozen-in-amber lies what people are hoping for. Thus, the “missing middle”. Witness what the builder of my previous house did for his unmarried sister: he built two Calcasieu cottages on the lots he owned next to his (he owned 5 Hyde park lots, each 25’ wide by 130’ deep). He did this so that the rents could support her. They are both 500sf or so, on 3000sf lots. One of the houses was just on the tour of homes (imagine that! A prefab kit home, built expressly for renting). I think asking the code to give us aesthetically designed buildings is asking too much - it will give us safe, livable buildings that do not encroach or loom over the neighbors any more than is allowed. Right now, no landowners, wealthy or not, can add housing to the land they own. It’s left to wealthy investors who are only interested in larger parcels - that leaves out you and me, who might want to do what the previous families in Hyde Park did: build a garage apartment or small cottage on the land they own in order to earn a little extra income. This also leaves out the person who owns three or four lots in Hyde Park, and wishes to “develop” some income from their land before they die. The sad tale of the house at the SE corner of 43rd and Ave G comes to mind.
1 Like
I can’t speak to what the rules are in Hyde Park – being a registered historical district, I don’t know what the restrictions are. But I’m pretty sure the rest of us could build an ADU of fairly generous size. In my neighborhood, that’s an entitlement that most land-owners enjoy.
Again, in the past 10 years, within a few blocks of my home, there have been many, many examples of new-construction duplexes, primary dwelling with ADUs, and triplexes. We have a new 4-plex and a new 5-plex. And of course we have several large apartment complexes that have been built recently (and more are coming soon). Every type of housing you can imagine has been built within a few blocks of my home in the past few years.
The exceptional, unusual new-construction in my neighborhood for the past 10 years has been the detached single-family home on a standard-sized lot.
I know not every neighborhood is like this, but it just seems weird to claim that there are only 2 options for residential construction. Or that there are NO examples of the type of construction you are talking about. People who make claims like that just lose credibility.
Completely agree with the spirit of the comment, and respectfully ask that we consider looking at “compact & connected” more the way Opticos does with a blank sheet of paper, and help them / us realize that vision by removing obstacles in the path today.
How about “it would be great if property owners could… with XXX square feet of land, have a choice of building a structure with 3 attached row houses, or subdividing the land to do something similar. With YYY square feet of land…” Because:
- there is an enormous variability in “lot” sizes - the metrics should be in relation to space & that space in relation to other space nearby (think “form” from the pin-up sessions)
- many properties in central Austin had “deed restrictions” created in another era on “subdivision of lots” (which are often misunderstood) - and not on the number of housing units per “building” or “residents” (or some other variation on the theme) - so options & flexibility are helpful.
Sebastian, until a couple of weeks ago, Matt’s comment was correct - you could not build a garage apartment or small cottage on many (most?) lots in Hyde Park - because the neighborhood plan required 7000 square foot lots for secondary dwelling units.
Until that citywide change happened, with support and hard work from many of us here, the neighborhood plan contact teams were unwilling to budge on this at all.
1 Like
if you look at the map here, you can see that the majority of central Austin property is zoned as single-family. My understanding is that whether it is SF1 or SF6, you can have either a single family home, a single family home with an ADU of 850sf max, or a duplex. In many cases, not all of these are possible due to lot size, flood plain, parking, etc… My point was that even if you had a 10,000sf lot, you would only be allowed (roughly): a 4000sf house, two 2000sf duplex units, or a 3150sf house with an 850sf ADU (all of these max out the 40% available FAR, independent of impervious cover, parking, etc). You couldn’t build 4 1000sf cottages, 3 1333sf townhouses, or 5 800sf apartments. And that’s with the allowable 40% FAR - most multifamily zoned lots have greater limits. I don’t know where you live, but I assume that the triplexes etc you mention up must all have been built on MF zoned properties, which you can see on the map, don’t represent much of the residential land in Austin.The reason I said there have been none of these “missing middle” types built on SF lots (I apologize for conflating SF & MF zoning as “residential”) is that it’s impossible without a rezoning.
1 Like
Ricky - agreed - this is a core issue, and based on the discussion is perhaps more than one issue that warrants more than one resolution being created, perhaps even several that could be subject to stand alone polls - with those that pass potentially combined into one statement. included in one statement.
For those of you who might have missed Roger’s posting on “Do Our Land Use Restrictions Cause Segregation”, it is well worth a read - occupancy limits were cited as a key contributor to segregation - and Austin was recently declared to have the biggest segregation problem of any major city in the country.
Perhaps more than just voting on whether to let the four person occupancy limit expire, we should recommend that something replace the prior (& current) six person limit. Recognize that idea may be a concern to some here, let’s keep open minds as others (i.e. every city) has apparently figured out how to do this better than us.
I found this article interesting - do know enough to validate the statements though:
http://www.austincontrarian.com/austincontrarian/2014/02/fact-checking-occupancy-limits.html
“Of the largest four cities, Austin is the only one with a zoning occupancy limit.”
“First, a bit of background on Texas occupancy limits. The Texas Property Code imposes a maximum occupancy for residential leases of three adults per bedroom. Cities are free to impose their own, more restrictive occupancy limits.”
“Historically, cities have adopted two kinds of occupancy limits. One is a true maximum occupancy limit. It typically requires a certain amount of floor space per occupant. The goal is to prevent overcrowding for health and safety reasons.”
“The other kind of occupancy limit is a zoning regulation adopted for the purpose of preserving the “single family character” of neighborhoods or similarly nebulous goals. There are many ways of writing a zoning regulation, but the typical regulatory scheme is to define “family” to mean “people related by blood or marriage or up to X unrelated adults” and then limit the use of dwellings in single-family districts to “families.” Austin’s occupancy ordinance of this type, even though the city has gone out of its way to avoid defining “family.””
1 Like
@Pete_Gilcrease, @tcb, @rickyhennessy, @rcauvin, @NatalieGauldin, @harren, @mdesloge, @Larry_Sunderland
Please let me try to make the point on the need to change our thinking on “occupancy limits” another way - via ADU’s.
The restrictions on ADU’s were relaxed, great achievement, however if the “occupancy limits” for the property remain unchanged (which I was told is the case), then we are getting far less from this than we could, & it could actually work AGAINST affordability in some cases.
A group of young professionals share a 4 BDR house - 6 occupants - 2,200 SF. Landlord wants to house a young family with a baby and build an 1,100 SF ADU - 3 occupants, so 9 total, & still 367 SF per person - right? Wrong - if only 6 unrelated people are allowed, the property now has 550 SF per person, a 50% increase - what happens to the price? Is the landlord greedy or doing the logical thing this ordinance provides incentive for?
Please tell me my math is wrong! This is critical for “form” infill as the example could look much worse for many of them…
Regret missing some of you - so many have contributed with postings…
I think the word “unrelated” has been overlooked.
So let’s say my wife and I want to build an ADU. We’re related, so we can have an ADU for 3 unrelated roommates. No problem.
Now, I don’t want you to be victimized by your example of a couple with a child. Did you really mean to advocate for 9 truly unrelated adults on one single-family zoned lot?
Is the issue you have the people or their cars?
1 Like
That’s an interesting question. Certainly if you could separate people from their cars, then density would be a lot more appealing to a lot more people. As it is, though, if you plan for people, you must plan for their cars.
The primary objections to unplanned, unstructured density and infill that I have collected from people are the following:
-
Yes, cars are an issue on several fronts. One is that large-occupancy properties on SF lots usually end up with a sea of concrete – indoor parking for 3 to 4 cars plus driveway parking for another 5 to 7. And yet somehow, that is inadequate, so all available on-street parking is also taken. People can’t park near their own homes, but more hazardously, the street becomes more unsafe for pedestrians. (Weirdly, some of the younger residents seem to enjoy racing as fast as they can down the aisles of cars. I think they’re pretending they’re driving down a trench on Star Wars… )
-
Noise and obnoxious behavior. The more people you get near your home, the more likely it is that you’ll get a bad neighbor. Most of the people in the stealth dorms in our neighborhood are perfectly nice. But some of them are not so nice, and the more of them that move in, the more likely it is that you’ll get a neighbor who is not nice. Parties, music, loud talking, drunk driving – nobody wants to live next to that. But the fact is, if you live on a street with 5 or 6 stealth dorms, odds are good that at least one of them is going to be obnoxious on a regular basis.
-
Trash. I’m not sure how these people generate so much trash. And I’m really bewildered by their inability to actually put trash IN the trash cans. But for some reason, they seem to think they can just throw trash and bulky items out near the street, and fairies will clean it up for them. And, before you say anything, we all know that we can call Code Enforcement about cleaning up the trash. But again, if you live on a street with 5 or 6 stealth dorms, you’ll be calling Code Enforcement every damned week.
And by the way, we called Code Enforcement about a stealth dorm this past summer. Everybody moved out, and apparently they just flung their trash all over the yard and street on the way out. Code Enforcement never came and it was not cleaned up for over a month.
- Safety. These places really aren’t safe for the residents who live there. No, I don’t think they’re THAT dangerous, but they should have regular health and safety inspections just like any large MF development. There is a cluster of stealth dorms in my neighborhood that houses about 50 people – all next door to each other – all owned by the same company. Isn’t that basically an apartment complex?
Again, the way to address these issues is to promote dense housing options that are DESIGNED to alleviate and address these problems. That’s what building and use codes are for.
1 Like