New Zoning Ordinance Affordable Housing Under Siege

"Our zoning rules were developed with the traditional family in mind. Should there be a maximum number of individuals (or adults?) who can live together in a single dwelling unit? At what number of individuals does the entity became a group rat her than a family?" - North Burns Park Association Planning Committee (from the Oct. 11, 1988 Planning Commission public hearing minutes).

The Ann Arbor Planning Department has proposed amendments to the Zoning Ordinance which will continue, if not exacerbate, the city's shortage of affordable housing. Residential neighborhood associations and the Planning Commission are advocating language which would tightly restrict the presence of non-biological family households - cooperatives, fraternities, sororities, rooming dwellings, and functional family households (households of unrelated people) - in the city. The proposed amendments could threaten these living arrangements which provide important sources of affordable housing in Ann Arbor.

A wide variety of Arm Arbor residents are likely to find themselves affected by the proposed amendments, which contain language biased against functional family households. Those affected may include many households, student and non-student, composed of unrelated single people, unmarried couples, and gay men and lesbians who cannot legally marry in Michigan. It may also include senior citizens who are able to keep their homes through renting out rooms, or who v ant to live in "shared housing." The list of those affected may also include a local Christian group, The Word of God, who have single adults living together or with a traditional family on occasion.

Hit harder will be students and low-income residents who live in organized dwellings such as cooperatives and rooming houses.

WHAT IS A FAMILY?

City attorney Bruce Laidlaw urged the Planning Department to revise the Zoning Ordinance in light of a Michigan Supreme Court decision. Delta Charter Township v Dinolfo. Laidlaw fears the ruling invalidates the-ordinance's current definition of a family. In the Dinolfo case, the court ruled against a Delta Charter Township zoning ordinance which limited a household to the biological legal family plus only one unrelated person.

Under the present Ann Arbor Zoning Ordinance, a biological legal family (the household unit which may reside in a single house or apartment) is one or more persons "related by blood, marriage or adoption. . . with not more than three additional persons, or in a multi-family dwelling, not more than five additional persons."

Thus, the size of a biological legal family is not limited by the Zoning Ordinance, but only by the Housing Code space requirements for their home. On the other hand, a functional family, consisting of unrelated persons in a single residence, may live in groups of only up to four people in most single family and duplex neighborhoods regardless of house size. In most downtown and student neighborhoods the limit is six.

Ann Arbor could comply with the Dinolfo ruling by dropping ordinance language which distinguishes between biological legal and functional families. Instead, both types of family would be regulated based on density.

The proposed changes, however, are designed to comply with the Dinolfo ruling while still preserving different density standards for biological/legal families and functional families. "The U.S. Supreme Court has said that the family is sacred," said Wendy Rampson of the city's Planning Department. "We're kind of dancing around that."

Under the proposals, functional families would still not be able to exceed four persons per household outside of downtown and student neighborhoods without a special exception permit. Houses in areas like the Old West Side (except that part north of Jefferson and east of Fourth St.), Burns Park, most of the Miller-Fountain neighborhood and the residential blocks near Pontiac Trail and Broadway would fall into this category.

To be approved for a special exception permit, the affected household must meet six standards. One standard is that there must be a "permanent domestic relationship among the occupants." (Unfortunately no one knows what a permanent domestic relationship is.) Another Standard is that households must have a lot size with at least 1,800 square feet per occupant (i.e. at least 12,600 square feet per lot in most student and downtown neighborhoods and 9,000 square feet per lot in most other areas).

Robert Magill, an Ann Arbor attorney who argued the Dinolfo case for the family and currently represents three local groups with similar concerns, rejects the special exception strategy for complying with the court ruling. "Delta v Dinolfo ," he argues, "gave functional families the right to live in family neighborhoods; the proposal would convert that right into a privilege obtained by the permit process. This was not the court's intent."

NON-FAMILY GROUPS

Other forms of group housing encounter even more opposition than functional family households. Cooperatives, fraternities, sororities, and rooming and boarding houses stand to lose ground in the proposed amendments.

Organized group dwellings would have to meet stringent standards to apply for a special exception permit. The current proposal "makes the creation of ne w affordable housing for students. . . a near impossibility," according to the Inter - Cooperative Council (ICC), which owns 17 student cooperative houses with 540 members. The most troublesome of the standards for organized group dwellings requires a lot size of at least 8,500 square feet in the student and downtown neighborhoods where the ICC expects to locate any future co-ops. Only three of the current eleven ICC co-ops in those neighborhoods could meet that standard, so while existing co-ops are not affected by these proposed changes, finding future sites may prove a real problem.

Rooming houses, which are currently allowed automatically in the downtown and student neighborhoods, will have to obtain special exception permits everywhere in the city under the latest draft proposal, but would be allowed for the first time in two-family areas. The North Burns Park Association's concern for an equitable distribution of uses throughout the city drops considerably at this expansion into their neighborhood of a less desirable use: "A rooming house is considered the most deteriorating and least desirable use of residential property, and decreases the value of surrounding properties. Rooming houses do not belong in the R2B (two-family zoning district)."

Residents of neighborhoods already zoned to accept these uses, such as the Old Fourth Ward Association located just north of downtown, take a slightly different view of the proposed changes. As the more residential areas rebuff any advances of denser or less desirable uses, the downtown and student (R4C) zoning districts necessarily host concentrations of these uses. To the Old Fourth Ward Asso-

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HOUSING (from page one)

Association, at least, "it seems as though R4C areas have not been treated as neighborhoods at all... (and are being used) as an escape valve."

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Although the terms of debate focus on legitimate planning issues such as density and compatible uses, the real loser in Ann Arbor zoning is affordable housing. The attack on rooming dwellings and organized group dwellings and organized group dwellings, plus the unnecessary attempt to preserve discrimination against functional families, intensify a zoning bias against the most affordable uses of residential space. 

Zoning ordinances add up to guarantees that poorer people will not be able to move into weather neighborhoods. A density limit is simply another way of limiting a neighborhood to those who can afford to pay for a certain amount of living space. Certainly there is a "quality of life" issue at stake; but whose life is as important a question as what quality. Imagine a zoning ordinance which offered poorer people similar protections: uses would be prohibited in a certain area which provide more that 350 square feet (or 500) per occupant.

There are zoning strategies which do more for affordable housing. Mixed-use approaches attempt to find the proper balance for a variety of uses throughout a city, instead of simply allowing or denying particular uses in each zoning district. To move in that direction, however, would require overcoming the desire of most current residents to reduce or maintain density in their neighborhoods in favor of a more equitable distribution of uses throughout the city. "It would need to allow group uses in single family zones. I think it's a great idea, but I don't think it's going to happen."

These proposal will be further reviewed at a March public informational session. There will be a public hearing and vote by the Planning Commission in April, and City Council will consider the proposals later in spring. For more information or to be informed of these meetings, call the Planning Department at 994-2800.