This was the first meeting where we took up particular language prepared by the City Staff concerning recommendations we might make to the City Council. The committee had been sent two sets of options (on Potential Building Modifications based on discussions from Feb. 22th and on Potential License Transfer/Termination Options from our Feb. 25th meeting discussion). (Please refer to the agenda for this meeting above or see: www.cityofeastlansing.com/1730/Non-Conforming-Use-Committee.

However, we devoted the first half of the meeting to discussion of Potential Zoning Options, which we received at the meeting. (Please see this memo transmitted above.) This memo dealt exclusively with the creation of ‘rooming house zones.’ It did this by first creating a new class of multi-family rental housing: In addition to group houses like fraternities and apartments, it added ‘Class C’ licenses for ‘rooming houses’. These would permit up to 8 tenants in a single house, and might exist in an older single-family house to which new bedrooms were added or in a new structure, perhaps like the ‘Townhouses’ on Albert built by Matt Hagan. Of course, various other zoning and building standards would have to be met. No details about the various new zoning requirements (such as building height, setback, ground coverage) were spelled out and apparently there was some overlap with Class A and Class Be licensed dwellings that would require fiddling.

The memo then suggested where such Class C rooming houses might be permitted. In general, licensing for a Class C might that would allow increased occupancies might require a reduction of tenancy elsewhere by a corresponding amount (hence probably requiring ‘rental license transfers’). However, the language here is not clear to me.

Such rooming houses might go into single- and dual-family zones that would be ‘upzoned’ to permit such houses, such as areas that are already primarily rental and unlikely to change. Alternatively, one could create new zones identical to our single-family and dual-family zones except that Class C rooming houses would be permitted in them. I’m not sure how this would work, since presumably any house in such a zone could become a Class C rental if it met appropriate conditions. In addition, such rooming houses might go into zones that were not devoted to single- or dual-family housing (such as those already permitting apartments).

Finally, the section suggested that an area could become such a new zone through an overlay process, whereby a majority of property owners in an area could petition the City Council to create such an ‘rooming house overlay district’.

When we had previously discussed a ‘rooming house district,’ I had believed this was a simple designation to indicate an area that might receive density from other ‘donor’ areas. I had not expected such a zone to actually allow rental to so many people! So I was quite concerned by this proposal. I acknowledge, however, that allowing BIG rental houses makes transferring licenses more likely, because it would create opportunities for such transfers that don’t now exist (since current rental houses don’t have space to receive extra tenants). On further reflection, I do not like this idea:

First, can’t one anticipate that rooming houses of such size would be likely to create problems with noise, parking and maintenance? Ordinance 900 reduced the number of tenants in new rental houses to two unrelated people in part because rentals with more than two were found to create problems. Those problems persist, as do problems from fraternities which are somewhat akin to these rooming houses.

Second, such zones would likely be created in areas close to campus and the downtown. But these are also the best areas for future redevelopment, such as commercial or houses for young faculty or graduate students. If small rental houses allowing four unrelated people are profitable, imagine having a rental house for 8! As property values would rise because of the profitability, it would be less and less likely that alternative uses of the land might be affordable, and landlords would not want to give up their rental ‘rooming houses’.

Finally, I dislike the idea of allowing a petition process to create such zones. Recall that the ‘rental overlay districts’ we now have REDUCE the property rights of those in such districts. If you live in such a district, you cannot be an absentee landlord and you cannot sell your house to an absentee landlord. This makes agreement by a large majority of property owners in such an area necessary before imposing such limitations. But in the case of creating zones that would allow rooming houses, the property rights of the owners are enlarged, and it seems very likely that the landlords who own most of those properties would easily approve such a change. This, too, would impede the City Council and Planning Commission from shaping the city in ways that served broader purposes. This is ‘do it yourself’ zoning without much coherence.

In addition, there was no discussion at this meeting or others of using ‘form-based codes,’ though this had been part of a major discussion in 2012.

The second part of the meeting took up Potential Building Modifications. I will not review each option, because you can read these for yourselves and they are quite clear and cover matters reported on for prior meetings. These basically involve altering our nonconforming use ordinance, or rather I assume that is how this would be done, to permit various kinds of changes that are not now permitted. Please keep in mind that our current law does not allow nonconforming structures to have additions or to move supporting walls. Here are the items suggested:

(1) limited impact additions with little impact on the properties architecture but allowing small enlargements of the structure (such as bumping out a wall for a new bathroom);(2) allowing some modifications (presumably not now allowed) in exchange for parking reductions (but the city staff did not think they could monitor this);
(3) create a design review board that would ensure additions fit in with the neighborhood (but again, creating such appeared unlikely);(4) allow interior modifications only if living/family/dining area ratios were preserved (but allowing movement of supporting walls); presumably this would not allow enlargement of the building; discussion occurred about the exact ratios of common space/bedrooms etc. should be retained (if reorganized), or if that ratio should be determined by current building/rental/zoning law.
(5) use variances to allow changes (but again, the city staff dismissed this as unworkable); and(6) allow modifications in exchange for landscape improvements. Here too, the staff indicated that it did not have the person power to monitor such plantings.
Note that all but (4) imply that our ordinance should be altered to permit enlargement of a structure, and even 4 differs from our current ordinance by dispelling with changes affecting support beams or walls. However, 4 is quite similar to the ordinance proposed by the City Council last November.

We also discussed allowing modifications as a percentage of the square footage of a given rental house. This had been previously discussed. Again, we did not vote on any of these yet.

Not on the table was keeping our current ordinance, even though it appears from comparison with other Michigan cities that it is not unusual and is designed to prevent the enlargement of nonconformities. I have no problem with the law as is.

My thinking thus far is that even if it is perfectly proper to continue our current ordinance, the challenge by the House Committee on Governmental Affairs has influenced the city to amend its law to permit changes to nonconforming structures that have not been permitted in the past. I believe that there has been ample documentation that differences exist between owner-occupied structures, conforming rentals, and nonconforming rentals, thus justifying different treatment of each. At this moment, I am inclined to favor minimum changes to our ordinance.

We didn’t get around to discussing the Potential License Transfer/Termination Options.

Link to March 24, 2016 meeting agenda and package.