Agenda - Council - 02/08/2021 - Laserfiche WebLink

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work to make residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (P.A.C.E.) programs viable for local governments. Cities should use their communication tools, such as newsletters, web sites, and staff communications to promote these efforts and to help link property owners to educational materials and program resources. Additionally, cities could be incentivized to adopt strategies to disclose energy usage data for building owners to identify options for cost-efficient energy improvements. LE-13. In -Home Day Care Facilities Issue: There are restrictions on the ability of a city to regulate licensed day care facilities. Minn. Stat. § 462.357, subd. 7, states that certain licensed residential facilities and day care facilities must be considered a permitted single-family use for zoning purposes. The restriction is designed to protect "in -home" daycare facilities, but the law applies even if the facility is not the primary residence of the day care provider. This creates a loophole for providers to use a single-family home as a commercial daycare facility, which might not otherwise be allowable under a city zoning ordinance. Response: The Legislature should amend Minn. Stat. § 462.357, subd. 7, to clarify that a licensed day care facility serving 12 or fewer persons is considered a permitted single-family use only if the license holder owns or rents and resides in the home. LE-14. Residential Programs Issue: Minnesota's deinstitutionalization policy seeks to ensure that all people can live in housing that maximizes community integration. Minn. Stat. § 462.357, subd. 6a. states that "persons with disabilities should 80 not be excluded by municipal zoning ordinance or other land use regulations from the benefits of normal residential surroundings." Minnesota cities support inclusion of people with and without disabilities in their communities, but these policies are best implemented with minimal encroachments on municipal zoning authority and positive working relationships between cities, care providers, and the state. On one hand, treating persons with disabilities differently generally raises questionable issues of disparate treatment with the Federal Fair Housing Act. On the other hand, without some regulation, cities are powerless to protect individuals with disabilities from a clustering of residential programs within one neighborhood. As the Department of Justice has stated, while density regulations are generally suspect, "if a neighborhood came to be composed largely of group homes, that could adversely affect individuals with disabilities and would be inconsistent with the objective of integrating persons with disabilities into the community." (Joint Statement of the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.) To this end, and in upholding a state and local dispersal requirement, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals stated that the requirement was designed to ensure that people with disabilities "needing residential treatment will not be forced into enclaves of treatment facilities that would replicate and thus perpetuate the isolation resulting from institutionalization." Familystyle of St. Paul, Inc. v. St. Paul, 923 F.2d 91, 95 (8th Cir. 1991). City authority to regulate the locations of residential programs is limited by state statute and the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA), although Minn. Stat. § 245A.11, subd. 4, prohibits the Commissioner of