Crowded Hill Neighbors Blast Zone Changes

Parking is so scarce in parts of the Hill that neighbors put trash bins out on the street to try to preserve coveted parking spots. Homes are so close together that people hear toilets flushing next door.

So neighbors expressed skepticism about proposals to update the city’s zoning rules — including allowing smaller lots sizes and ​“accessory dwelling units” (or ​“ADUs,” like garage or mother-in-law apartments) with no parking requirements.

Neighbors heard about the proposals Wednesday night at the online regular monthly meeting of the Hill South Community Management Team.

The gathering over the Zoom teleconferencing app drew approximately 30 neighbors and presenters.

A spirited discussion pivoted around a long-in-the-works proposed updating of New Haven’s zoning code, announced last month by City Plan Director Aicha Woods.

Woods said that the city will seek to make it easier to build attic, basement, and garage apartments (aka ADUs) — and to drop the minimum required lot size for new housing to 4,000 square feet.

Making it easier to build ADUs — in their attics, basements, and garages, for example — would allow for New Haven to significantly increase its much depleted affordable housing supply without eating into more open space, Woods argued.

Click here to read the text of the proposed ADU amendment.

“We all know zoning matters,” Woods said. Zoning laws ​“can have an incredible impact” on what kind of housing is built where.

Historically, ​“exclusionary zoning” regulations around housing type restrictions, minimum lot size, parking minimums, and density have reduced housing choices and artificially increased the cost of building new places to live, she said.

“I think exclusionary zoning has specifically been used to continue racial segregation,” she said at last month’s City Plan meeting. ​“I just want to name that as an underlying reason for the work we’re doing and the disparities that we are recognizing the need to correct.”

She added that making it easier to build ADUs in particular ​“can create new housing units while respecting the scale of our historic fabric.”

Those positions were summarized Wednesday night by Angela Hatley, a Hill South homeowner and chair of the CMT’s housing committee. Hatley established that committee several years ago in response to pressures from builders, both nonprofit and for-profit, and the city seeking to build in the already dense Hill neighborhood

“On the face of it,” she said of the proposed zoning update, ​“it’s good, but not requiring any additional parking areas and a lot of our neighbors, for them parking is a premium. I don’t know how we feel about more units without parking. I know people who drag toters out to preserve parking.

“They also want to amend the minimum lot requirement to 4,000 square feet citywide. To give context, we are in an RM‑1 high density [zone], and our requirement currently is 5,200, so they’re deducting from us. We are already so close to each other people can put hands out windows and touch each other, hear phone conversations, toilets flushing. Someone in another part of town has 6,000 or 7,000 square feet; they already have room to breathe. We live already like sardines. I think each [neighborhood] should be judged separately to see if they can accommodate the density.”

It didn’t take long for other Hill South neighbors to echo Hatley’s concerns.

“It’ll only get worse if a two-family becomes three, and all of a sudden they are living in basements,” said another longtime homeowner. ​“If you go to 4,000 square feet, that’s a 40 by 100 lot; that’s no place for kids to play. And if you’re close to your neighbor, if he gets reckless, yours burns down too. That already happened recently on Arthur Street.”

CMT and neighborhood stalwart Johnny Dye said he recently came back from a city meeting and found himself refereeing a fight between two neighbors ​“complaining about parking. The two combatives were talking about the garbage can on the street. You just can’t put the garbage can on the driveway or sidewalk. I’m particularly opposed to” the proposed change.

Pamela Delerme echoed: ​“I’m against it for all the reasons, the fire hazards, the close quarters, the parking.”

Parking, Fire, & The Next Pandemic

Then she added another reason: ​“This won’t be the last pandemic, trust me. I hate to say that, but it’s true. Putting people in close quarters is not a wise idea. I’m against it unless someone can give me good reasons. The whole of New Haven is not the same. This has not been an ethical process to say let’s do it across the board. It doesn’t work for me.”

CMT Chair Sarah McIver then turned to Claudette Kidd, who was at the meeting. Kidd is a member of the city’s recently established Affordable Housing Commission.

The committee was spawned by the Affordable Housing Task Force, which recommended more ADUs.

“I am a member of the Affordable Housing Commission,” Kidd responded in the chat function. ​“It has been in discussion because of the homeless and housing shortages. Some home owners want to build a second home on their property to help with the lack of housing.”

“We don’t have a housing shortage over here,” neighbor John Carlson responded, also in the chat. ​“We have a PARKING shortage!”

“Nothing is being ​‘pushed,’” Kidd replied. ​“It is a discussion.”

Dye had heard enough when Kidd referred to accommodating the homeless as one of the concerns of the commission and the proposed amendments.

“There will be holy hell around here if people want units for the homeless,” Dye said.

At the discussion’s end, McIver and Hatley agreed that a speaker from the commission or the city should come to address the CMT, and to do so soon.

“We need to do this before the alders vote,” said Hatley. ​“I think they are pushing this through. I think they’d know they’d encounter opposition on this and that’s why they’re not coming out.”

After a presentation on April 26 to the City Plan Commission, the zoning changes formally were referred to the affordable housing commission for review and then they return for further discussion by City Plan. Only then are the changes forwarded to the Board of Alders for review and a final vote up or down.

Although no formal vote was taken at the CMT meeting, the consensus appeared to be unanimous and immediate.