City Council Meeting

Melissa Shinaberryclerkwork session item is a policy options for detached accessory dwelling units I'm going to recognize Eric Foreman city planner to provide a staff presentation

Eric Foremanstaffthere we go better various policy considerations regarding potentially allowing detached accessory dwelling units. Now back in February we held a work session where we discussed ADUs in general. We spent some time on the topic of detached ADUs and at the end of that meeting council asked staff to look at some of the details for detached accessory dwelling units and specifically asked staff to report back on how we would make this work, how could we make work in the city and that's what we're focusing on tonight focusing specifically on potential details for detached accessory dwelling units should city policy makers have interest in moving forward on the issue and what that means is how we could accommodate detached

In the case of detached ADUs the accessory unit is typically a separate structure in the backyard. A few city documents mention ADUs in general. So, for example, the citywide housing assessment here on the left and the comprehensive plan as well. One of the housing actions in the comprehensive plan calls for the city, like it says down here, to research changes to expand opportunities for accessory dwelling units. and there's that phrase right there, while ensuring that they do not negatively impact the surrounding neighborhood. Now, before we get into some of the details on things like height or measurement, I think it's helpful to have some visual examples of detached accessory dwelling units,

Should Fairfax City allow detached accessory dwelling units? If city policymakers think no, then we would keep our existing standards, and the existing standards allow ADUs when they're part of a house, when they're attached within a house. answer is yes, then what we need to do is to consider what standards would be most appropriate. And again, that's what city council had asked us to investigate by saying, how would we make this work in the city? Now as you may know, accessory dwelling units are currently allowed in the city. Like I said, attached to the house and under certain conditions, we won't go through every detail tonight, but it's helpful, I think, just to look at what the significant standards

Okay. Uh, so we can move along. Uh, we'll start now with the big three physical standards. These tend to be the biggest issues when looking at detached accessory dwelling units, setbacks, height, and square footage. Uh, and again, providing an overview of how these standards could apply to detached ADUs and hopefully this can inform council's discussion when we finish up so we can start with setbacks. So right now like I'd mentioned we have a required five foot setback for accessory structures so any structure that's the size of an ADU or a garage needs to be set back at least five feet from a lot line, and that setback is shown in the red here. Now, some ADU ordinances also have a required separation from the main house.

We can, these are standards that involve the potential size of accessory dwelling units. There's different ways of looking at this, so either in terms of building footprint or square footage. Size standards are very common in ADU ordinances, and this is because, this is what helps prevent accessory structures from overwhelming the lot or the main house. helping to maintain that neighborhood character that the comprehensive plan talks about. And when it comes to current standards for accessory structures, and again, this is something that might be similar to ADUs, we do have a limitation on footprint. So like I had mentioned earlier, an accessory structure right now must be under 50 percent of the footprint of the main

combined green area. So that's how it's calculated kind of in real life. So there's also building coverage requirements that are applied throughout all zoning districts, regardless of ADUs or structures. So I know it's somewhere. Well, it's just how the day's going. Parking standards tend to be a point of a talking point of community members. Folks tend to be interested in parking standards for ADUs because there tends to be concern about whether ADU occupancy will increase parking load and affect the community. We do right now have a parking standard for accessory dwelling units. Here is no more than two vehicles utilized by residents of the ADU shall be allowed. And that's putting it mildly.

In terms of expectations versus reality, these units can just as easily be very plain affairs like the one on the bottom. And sometimes in ADU discussions, sometimes the topic of design review comes up as in setting standards for what these kind of structures should look like. Staff does not recommend design review for ADUs. The reason for that, now here in Fairfax, we have an architectural review board, but our BAR does not review residential properties, does not review detached houses. Having a design review for accessory dwelling units, but not for the houses themselves or for additions would be inconsistent with policy. The houses themselves are much more impactful from a community standpoint.

City does not have to take this step by opting not to, like it says there on the left. We'd basically be saying to keep our existing standards of allowing only detached accessory dwelling units. Or we could opt to pursue a zoning amendment to allow detached ADUs, and really doing so could take a variety of forms, and you see all of those yes columns there. So like it shows here, really could range from a very limited application of detached ADUs, so something like just permitting them if they're physically attached to the main house, which would be a very cautious approach. or, like it says in the middle column there, to permit detached ADUs but not to permit them in required yards, so a bit removed from the property line, to something a bit more generous, which is the fourth column.

Speaker 18mean unless we're very productive here in the city looking at other surrounding jurisdictions there aren't hundreds of these a year it's manageable whether or not it fits within the context of existing resources is something we'd have to examine but there is a possibility another possibility is maybe design pattern books or something along those lines which some jurisdictions have used for houses commercial accessory dwelling units and things of that nature

Catherine Readother comments so I I want to see this go forward I think accessory dwelling units have a lot of benefit to the community I think when we first started this conversation the number of attached accessory dwelling units was like 25 and that's a tiny percentage of the housing in the city. The thing about detached ADUs is that of the 5,000 single-family homes, many of our neighborhoods are in post-World War II neighborhoods with civic associations and not homeowners associations. So when you're looking at 5,000 single-family homes, how many of those are in neighborhoods where you're not going to be able to build an accessory dwelling unit because of covenants or other restrictions because it's got an HOA? So we're