Well, between a trip to South America and the busyness of the holidays, I’ve taken a long break from blogging!  But the legislative season is nearly upon us, so I guess it’s time to get back at it.

A couple weeks ago I saw this write up about a roundtable held in early December at the PEW charitable trusts with local planning and building officials and national housing stakeholders and experts, to discuss the housing situation in the country.  Participants included reps from the International Code Council (ICC), National League of Cities, and the American Planning Association. What I found particularly notable was the summary of land-use reforms that the participants found to have helped spur more housing.  Here’s the list:

• Allowing apartments on commercially zoned land: Meaning that if office buildings, shopping centers, stores, or restaurants are allowed on corridors or in parts of the municipality, then apartment buildings or sometimes town houses are also allowed to be built by-right. They can use an approval process that doesn’t require a variance or rezoning. Some jurisdictions have specifically adopted this while others have done so through a form-based code that allows a broad range of uses. Examples: Minneapolis; Hartford, Connecticut
• Allowing apartments by-right near transit: Permitting apartments near train stops and sometimes bus stops without a variance or rezoning. Examples: Columbus, Ohio; New Rochelle, New York
• Allowing commercial buildings to be converted to apartments: Letting builders convert offices or other commercial space into apartments without a variance or rezoning. Examples: Denver; Salt Lake City
• Allowing accessory dwelling units: Enabling owners of single-family homes and sometimes duplexes to add one or sometimes two additional small homes on the property. This is done through either converting a basement or garage into an apartment, adding a second story above a garage, or locating a small home on the property, usually in the backyard. Examples: Gainesville, Florida; Phoenix
• Providing clarity on use of off-site construction, including modular and manufactured housing: Off-site construction involves building sections or an entire home in a factory. Manufactured housing is built entirely in a factory to preemptive HUD standards, whereas modular construction is built to state or local codes and then delivered or assembled on site. Clarifying that modular construction is subject to the same zoning restrictions as site-built structures and allowing manufactured housing by-right—without a variance—can significantly reduce costs and timelines by leveraging more efficient production. Examples: Jackson, Mississippi; Hagerstown, Maryland
• Addressing parking mandates: Allowing builders and consumers flexibility around their parking preferences, with jurisdictions increasingly reducing or eliminating parking mandates, sometimes just for residential uses and sometimes including both residential and commercial uses. Approximately 100 jurisdictions have eliminated parking mandates, while others have applied this reform in targeted areas, such as downtown, mixed-use areas, or near transit. Examples: Buffalo, New York; La Crosse, Wisconsin
• Reducing minimum lot sizes to enable starter homes: Allowing smaller amounts of land mandated for each new house can help increase the number of starter homes, which have become a much smaller share of new houses in recent decades, pushing homeownership out of reach for many younger families. Homes on smaller lots tend to cost less than homes on larger lots. Examples: Durham, North Carolina; Houston

It is interesting to compare this list to the actions we’ve seen in our own state legislature over the last few years, and what some cities have undertaken on their own.  It also tells me what we can likely still expect to see coming from the legislature – notably, external ADUs, maybe more on parking, and maybe minimum lot sizes.

The roundtable also listed permitting and procedural reforms that they thought were beneficial in reducing housing costs:

• Using digital processes for permitting: These include handling applications and payments and reviewing plans electronically. These systems often facilitate transparency for all stakeholders, providing greater predictability and access to information. However, to get the greatest value from investing in such systems, extensive outreach and training of stakeholders is required. Examples: Miami; Morgantown, West Virginia
• Adopting preapproved plans: Some municipalities offer a library of preapproved designs that builders may use. These can address ADUs, single-family detached homes, town houses, and small multifamily buildings, such as those with two to six units. Other municipalities allow builders to reuse their already approved plans for future projects or gradually create a library of preapproved plans submitted by architects. Examples: South Bend, Indiana; Kalamazoo, Michigan
• Allowing third-party inspections and plan review: Generally this means the building department offering applicants the flexibility to work with approved municipal service providers, architects, engineers, or others with credentials similar to municipal inspectors and plan reviewers to conduct inspections and plan reviews and submit the results to municipalities. Municipalities in turn treat those results as if they were conducted by a public inspector or plan reviewer. Examples: Atlanta; Falls Church, Virginia
• Using administrative rather than conditional approvals: Some localities have transitioned certain approvals that used to be discretionary, conditional, or require a special-use permit, into administrative or ministerial ones, meaning they are reviewed by city staff and do not require public hearings or a vote of a planning commission, city council, or other body. Examples: Raleigh, North Carolina; Spokane, Washington
• Pre-submission reviews: Some jurisdictions offer applicants a chance to meet with building officials prior to submitting applications to clarify expectations and offer guidance on how to obtain a permit as quickly and easily as possible. Examples: San Antonio; Perry, Georgia
• Phased approval: Some jurisdictions offer applicants the chance to obtain partial permits for elements such as foundations and other preliminary work so that construction can begin before the full permit process is complete. The International Residential Code and International Building Code address this approach in administrative sections that address construction documents. Examples: Fairfax County, Virginia; St. Louis County, Missouri.

Again, we’ve seen some of these actions in our own state, such as use of third-party inspectors, pre-approved plans, and phased approvals.  I think we’re likely to see action upcoming on limitations on conditional use processes and maybe a couple of others.

Bills are starting to pop out, and there’s discussion about several more in the works.  We’ll try to keep you up on all that’s going on.  The legislative session starts on January 20!