Garage-Apartment Change Advances, Sans Parking

A proposed zoning reform designed to make it easier for homeowners to build basement, attic, and garage apartments — without also adding new parking spaces — cleared a key legislative hurdle, as alders and city staff pledged to prioritize housing for humans over land use for cars.

That vote took place Tuesday night during a two-hour Board of Alders Legislation Committee meeting, which was held online via Zoom and YouTube Live.

The five committee alders present voted unanimously in support of a proposed update to the city’s zoning code that would allow owner-occupants to add one accessory dwelling unit (ADU) as of right to a single-family or multi-family home in a residential zone. The proposed zoning reform would also reduce the minimum lot size in all residential zones citywide to 4,000 square feet.

If approved by the full Board of Alders, the ADU part of the land-use update would allow homeowners to create a new apartment ​“within the envelope of an existing primary structure” — as City Plan Director Aicha Woods put it Tuesday night — simply by pulling the necessary building permits and passing the necessary fire code and building safety inspections. Homeowners would not have to also hire a lawyer and seek zoning relief from the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, as they do today.

The joint ADU and minimum lot size zoning update now advances to the full Board of Alders for further deliberations and a final vote later this fall.

Click here, here, here, and here for previous stories about the ADU proposal.

Parking Waiver Preserved

As part of Tuesday night’s favorable vote, the committee alders left in place perhaps the most controversial part of the ADU proposal: a provision that waives any parking minimum requirement for new ADUs.

Hill residents in particular consistently pushed back against that part of the proposal. They have argued that their neighborhood has too many cars and too few parking spaces as it is, and that allowing for more apartments without more dedicated places for residents to park will exacerbate the crunch.

City Point resident and Republican mayoral candidate John Carlson was the only member of the public to speak out against the ADU proposal at Tuesday night’s hearing. He dedicated most of his three minutes at the virtual mic to that very issue of parking.

“The Hill neighborhood is already dense with homes, and there’s not enough parking as it is,” he said. ​“Waiving the parking requirement will only increase the problem.”

He noted that the BZA already has an established process in place to handle special exception requests from homeowners and other landlords who want to add more housing without adding new parking. That process — which has the BZA take in parking relief requests, refer them to the City Plan Commission for advice, and then vote on them after City Plan weighs in — should be left in place, he said.

“I see no need to pass this at this point in time based on the lack of parking, the dangerous conditions it will cause, and also the fire hazards. But mostly because of parking. There is no parking in the Hill.”

The five other members of the public who spoke on Tuesday, committee alders, and Woods all responded to that parking concern by emphasizing that the city’s zoning code ought to prioritize places to live over places to park.

“If you imagine requiring driveways and additional paved surface in people’s backyards, it just adds a lot of real estate that’s dedicated to cars that otherwise could be green space or housing footprints,” Woods said. ​“It’s really a question of prioritizing the land use for housing over land use for cars. … We have to think about if we’re prioritizing land use for housing and greenspace versus prioritizing it for car storage.”

The parking problem is also really a transportation problem, she added. She encouraged the alders to task city staff with conducting a ​“comprehensive parking study to really look at the numbers behind it, also really to prioritize land use that allows people to live close to where they work and that reduces our dependency on cars.”

East Rock resident and public transportation advocate Lior Trestman agreed.

“I think it’s much more important to give people a place to live,” he said. ​“I don’t think that parking should be prioritized over keeping people homed.”

New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell applauded the parking waiver for ADUs. ​“I think it’s very important that the parking reduction remains as of right and that people would not be required to get a special exception for parking,” she said. If a small property owner needs to hire a lawyer to go before BZA on top of paying for building permits and possibly a designer, that could be just enough of a barrier to discourage the creation of a new ADU altogether.

Westville Alder Adam Marchand said he remains concerned about parking — but ​“not concerned enough that I won’t support this item.”

“I don’t think we should require working class people to go before the BZA to get that [parking] relief,” especially since the BZA grants parking waivers for new housing units all the time.

Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said recognized the challenges of finding parking in a densely built up part of the city. But, she said, ​“if I had to park a couple blocks further down the way, I would, if that’s gonna help a family to be able to have safe housing. As alders, as a community, we’re responsible for one another. I think this is really good legislation.”

Legislation Committee Chair and East Rock Alder Charles Decker also threw his support behind the proposal, parking waiver included.

When he served on the BZA, Decker said, he’d frequently see homeowners come before the board seeking parking relief for new apartments they wanted to add onto their existing homes.

While coming before the BZA is ​“an extremely important step for large developers, it is genuinely a burden for individual homeowners, particularly those on fixed incomes.”

Decker asked Woods how many new ADUs she expects this law will result in any given year. Two? Dozens? Hundreds?

Woods replied that it’s difficult to estimate exactly what the impact will be, but it will likely be closer to a few dozen each year rather than single or triple digits.

“It is a modest step forward,” Marchand said about the ADU proposal. ​“More steps will be taken in the future.”