Agenda - Planning Commission - 12/03/2015

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hood of tiny houses as a source of affordable housing, or just to accommodate a different lifestyle? That is a bit tougher. While the Internet has many stories of individuals or property owners intending to create tiny house com- munities, it seems that few if any have been created to date. And some of the existing com- munities have been created for unique reasons and through 'one-off' procedures. For example, places like Opportunity Vil- lage in Eugene, Oregon, or Quixote Village in Olympia, Washington, have been created as alternatives to homeless camps in or near the same location. In both cases, it appears that the local government adopted a contract or resolution approving the use of land for tiny houses without requiring it to comply with some standard utility or construction require- ments precisely because it would house very low-income households under better living conditions than the occupants had previously. White inspiring as initiatives to address the challenges of housing affordability and home- lessness, both of these examples required individualized negotiations and agreements to vary from normally applicable public health and safety standards—flexibility that might not have been approved for a market -rate housing development. However, there are at least three different ways in which a tiny -house community for the general public could be created—each mod- eled on an existing form of land -use approval. The choice of an appropriate tool turns heavily on the question of whether you intend the oc- cupants to be able to sell the house and the piece of land it occupies to someone else in the future. ATailored Zoning and Subdivision of Land If tiny -house owners are going to be able to sell their lots and homes to others, then the community will need to be subdivided into individual lots, and those lots will need to meet the minimum size and dimension re- quirements of the zone district where they are located. If you want to allow tiny house com- munity developers to create very small lots (say 1,000 to 2,000 square feet), it is likely that your city or county does not have a residential zone district allowing lots of that size. So the local government will have to create a zone district allowing that type of lot. If the roads within the community are going to be narrower or more lightly constructed than those in stick -built Quixote Village in Olympia, Washington, provides housing for 3o previously, homeless adults. Photo from Tent City Urbanism: From Self -Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages by Andrew Heben. subdivisions, then the community will have to adopt subdivision standards (or excep- tions to the current standards) allowing those types of construction. In many cases, the local government is only willing to allow "lower -than - normal -standard" infrastructure if the property A PUD for a tiny - house community should be drafted assuming that conditions will change in the future, and to avoid locking in an overly specific development plan. owners agree to own and maintain it over time (i.e., the city or county will not accept it as dedi- cated infrastructure for public maintenance), so the developer will likely have to create a home owners association to do so. These types of specialized standards have been adopted be- fore, however, for unique forms of housing like manufactured home subdivisions or cottage home subdivisions, and those types of stan- dards are good places to look for guidance. A Planned Unit Development If the community expects that there will be only one of these communities or it does not want to create a new zone district or subdivi- sion regulations to address tiny houses in general, the tailoring of zoning and subdivi- sion standards described above could be accomplished through a planned unit develop- ment (PUD) tailored to a single development and a single developer. While single -project PUDs are relatively easy to adopt, they often reflect a very specific picture of the approved development that is hard to amend over time as conditions change. A PUD for a tiny -house community should be drafted assuming that conditions will change in the future, and to avoid locking in an overly specific develop- ment plan. For example, it may not be wise to require a community building of a certain size, or a park or storage area of a specific design in a specific location, because those items may need to be moved or resized in the future. Similarly, if the home owners association is responsible for roads and utilities, it may be wise to offer some flexibility to relocate or resize those facilities in the future as needs change. The Greater Bemidji Area of Minnesota has thought through these issues and adopted a PUD approach for tiny -home subdivisions (§iio1.F). ZONINGPRACTICE 11.15 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION Ipage 6