City one step closer to allowing denser housing
An ordinance that would allow smaller, denser housing in multi-family zones survived its second reading Tuesday. Housing in single-family zones could be considered next.
The Laramie City Council has advanced an ordinance that would allow denser housing in several residential zones throughout the city.
The current minimum lot area per unit — in other words, the square footage each dwelling unit must legally have — is a barrier to affordable housing development, according to city staff.
So Original Ordinance 2036 would lower that minimum lot area for parcels already zoned for multi-family development.
City staff is hoping that allowing smaller units will let developers build more units per lot. The argument is this: Multiple, smaller units can be rented or sold more cheaply than a single large unit that dominates a lot. But with the current high minimum area required for each unit, developers are incentivized to build one, large house rather than townhomes or apartments. This leads to a shortage of low-income housing, as well as middle-income housing, and to a shortage of housing overall.
The ordinance seeks to make smaller, denser housing more cost-effective and therefore more appealing to developers.
“In Laramie, we have no silver bullet,” Laramie City Planner Derek Teini said. “There’s just simply not one solution to solving our housing problem within our community. And this is one aspect of that that we think is going to make changes in a positive direction.”
The ordinance only impacts multi-family zones (R2, R2M and R3 for the wonks). It does not impact single-family zones (R1, RR and LR, again, for the nerds).
At the council meeting Tuesday, Teini broke down Laramie’s residential zoning, highlighting how R2 and R3 each account for nearly one-third of the city’s residentially zoned parcels. The single-family zones, together, also account for about a third of all residential parcels.
“What’s encouraging, at least from a planning standpoint, is we have a really good balance of residential zoning across our community,” Teini said. “What’s encouraging about that is many communities struggle with having just too much single-family zoning. Many communities range in the 70 percentile of all their land in their city being single-family zoning. And that’s tough.”
By acreage, single-family housing makes up less than half of Laramie’s residential acres.
The proposed changes have garnered support from organizations like Laramie Interfaith, an organization that works with the city’s poorest people. That’s a segment of the population severely impacted by Laramie’s housing crisis. Teini said developers also supported the changes, as did the Laramie Chamber Business Alliance, which views the housing shortage as an impediment to economic development.
“The public comments, and where these public comments are coming from, show really broad support of why we need to see these changes,” Teini said.
But the public comments painted a different picture in their universal derision of the proposed changes.
“It would blight most of the residential neighborhoods in Laramie with incongruous development,” said Brett Glass, a local landlord. “Packing people in like sardines doesn’t do anything to make housing more affordable. But it does destroy quality of life.”
Others were concerned about the historic West Side neighborhood, in particular, which could see some of the new developments the council is hoping to encourage. Residents of that neighborhood have organized before to oppose other council ordinances related to affordable housing.
Karen Bard, who co-chairs the Albany County Historic Preservation Board, warned that the ordinance could diminish the historic nature of the West Side. In fact, the board is seeking a historic designation and Bard asked the council to exempt the West Side from the ordinance or delay their decision until that proposed historic overlay designation was in place.
“I’m also concerned this isn’t going to meet your intended goals of affordability and that it will also be a general decrease in quality of life here in Laramie,” she said. “I would be very concerned about how many high density projects will go in the West Side during the approximate 12-18 months for you to work through putting a historic layer over the West Side.”
Councilor Brian Harrington clarified that the council has not scheduled a time to address a historic overlay.
The council advanced the ordinance out of its second reading on a 7-2 vote, with Vice Mayor Jayne Pearce and Councilor Sharon Cumbie voting against.
On most topics, that would have been the end of the night’s discussion, but the council ended up discussing zoning regulations for another 40 minutes.
Following the vote on multi-family zoning, Councilor Fred Schmechel brought a motion that would have directed city staff to investigate single-family zoning.
Teini agreed with the idea of taking a “holistic” approach to housing in Laramie and to looking at all residential zoning.
“There are definitely changes that could be made in those (single-family) zoning districts as well that could aid toward our housing,” he said. “We just haven’t gotten there yet. It’s not been something we’ve been directed to work on. It was not in our Thrive Plan. It has not been in our Community Builders work.”
So, Teini requested that the council schedule a work session, to give his staff direction before they started crafting proposals.
“There’s a lot of ways communities are looking at their single-family zoning districts,” he said. “I would be a little bit in the dark just bringing things forward. I don’t think that would be a wise use of our time.”
Schmechel’s motion failed on a 7-2 vote — with even Schmechel voting against it — as the council debated reopening the multi-family housing ordinance the council had just passed.
Councilor Andi Summerville put forward a motion to do just that — reopen discussion on the already-advanced ordinance. This would give council an opportunity to add in single-family zoning and craft a “holistic” ordinance, and also the opportunity to postpone their vote, giving city staff the time they needed to add in recommendations for single-family zones.
Councilor Brian Harrington said reconsidering the ordinance they already passed “doesn’t feel like good decision-making” on the part of the council.
“This ordinance has been through a lengthy public process and has been extensively vetted by the public, by the planning commission, by the staff,” he said. “Any sort of changes in R1, LR and RR (single-family zones) are significantly different changes than what we’re talking about in this ordinance. So to hold it up because we want to do something else is really just impractical and I don’t know that that’s in the best interest of our constituents.”
Harrington’s argument won out and the motion to reconsider the ordinance was knocked down on a close 4-5 vote.
That means the earlier decision stands — advancing the ordinance for denser multi-family housing and sending it to its third and final reading.
The city council was not able to set a work session, as Teini had requested, before the meeting ended at 9 p.m.
It was a busy meeting Tuesday. The council also advanced rental regulations.
These changes would be a HUGE gift to rich builders and developers, who would build and sell smaller, skimpier dwellings at a higher price per square foot than they could before. They wouldn't help those who need more space at affordable rates - families, for example. The housing would be premium priced for its size and then bid up yet higher by the parents of UW students seeking to escape the inflated rents of the University's new "luxury" dorms.
In short, this isn't an affordable housing measure! The housing it would allow would look a lot like residential motels - with units packed tighter than those in squalid trailer parks - and wouldn't fit into the R2 and R3 neighborhoods where it would be located. (The city bureaucrats spared the R1 and LR zones in this ordinance, knowing that there WOULD be a tremendous hue and cry from the affluent residents of those zones if they did this there as well.) This ordinance would also be an "end run" by those bureaucrats - whose remarks quoted above were false and disingenuous - around Council's previous vote not to allow this kind of housing in the historic West Side neighborhood. It's a bad idea, and shouldn't pass. If there's a need for more affordable housing, let's adopt measures that work to provide it - not this one.