McMansion Task Force Feedback Forum | by GlennM
Here are my notes from this weekend's McMansion Task Force feedback forum at the Yarborough Library this last Saturday (5/18/2006). It was led by Chris Allen, a local architect, with two other Task Force members in attendance. They're under the gun to come up with permanent recommendations within the *next month*. If you want to learn about the process and/or make suggestions, now's the time.
The web site where you can provide input is http://www.residentialregs.org. See note below about giving good feedback.
Style and Esthetics are outside the scope of the Task Force and Ordinance.
The main, actionable concerns prompting the Ordinance:
- Flooding in central Austin, especially after new construction at the impervious cover limits. The old storm sewers aren't up to handling current impervious cover limits (going from an average of 30% IC in some areas to the current 45% limit). A complete solution to this problem may be in the $1Billion range. Half the people in the room were affected by flooding.
- Concerns about "massing", with side effects as change in neighborhood character and/or no longer being able to being able to use one's back yard due to decreased sunlight, etc.
Other concerns that came up:
- Property taxes: If a large building is built next to a smaller house, the taxes on the smaller house may go up yet it may be harder to sell.
- Parking and other issues around "stealth" apartment buildings. The Task Force may ask the City Council to develop rules around occupancy limits without waiting for the McMansion recommendations. This is an issue seems to deserve being fast-tracked and handled separately.
- Being able to add on to one's existing house, to be able to keep growing families living in the central city.
- Effective enforcement of existing zoning rules. The city takes builders at their word about impervious cover and setbacks, so those being honest about adding on to their houses are often at a disadvantage.
As part of the recommendations, there seems to be a desire to make zoning setbacks, etc. relative to the neighborhood. For example, front setbacks in Tarrytown? may be 75' off the street, further back than normal while in Hyde Park 15' may be common. Matching your neighbors in either location requires a variance.
Another issue on the table is providing good tools to the neighborhoods in the neighborhood planning process. One of the Task Force members had been involved with a couple of neighborhood planning efforts, and when they tried to address some of the zoning issues there were no tools currently available to help direct proper growth. Possibilities include separate zoning for true single-family homes vs. duplexes (both currently fall into SF-3, which really doesn't mean "single family" anymore).
To keep things lively, there were some builders in the room. I think they were Metro Builders, and were doing what Chris considered to be good developments in town. From the builder's perspective, they're just trying to put out an "affordable" product for folks that want to live in central Austin. Here, "affordable" means building a duplex that can be split into two $330K (on average) condos. This is within the means of a professional couple making a total of $100-$150/yr. New houses in central Austin are averaging $550K, with some up to the $800K range, well outside what many professional couples can afford. There seems to be no love lost between the "good" builders trying to make duplexes for families and the folks building stealth apartment buildings. While there were a couple people in the room who didn't like any form of duplexes, most folks in the room didn't have a problem with duplexes if done with the neighbor's concerns taken into account and designed for families instead of dorms. In general, folks didn't seem to have a problem with duplexes being built at the edges of neighborhoods or blocks. The main issue was when very large buildings were mixed with smaller houses mid-block.
The problem facing the Task Force is to come up with a set of actionable guidelines that can be recommended as a permanent ordinance. All in the next month. The current temporary rules will run out soon, and builders and their workers will be in a bind if the Task Force doesn't meet their deadline.
The Task Force members are doing a lot of drive-bys around the city, looking for "good buildings" they want to make sure can still be built under whatever guidelines are developed as well as "bad buildings" they'd like to keep from being duplicated under the new rules. Their meetings are on Friday's (1:30? pm, in or around council chambers) and have time set aside for public input. But, as with the web they're looking for suggestions not more flaming. One of the interesting data points that came up was that a city in Colorado has rules about the amount of sun that needs to be available in one's back yard during certain times of the year. So if you're going to build up, you've got to give your neighbors enough sun to grow vegetables, flowers, etc. Suggestions along these lines (something measurable and enforceable) are the ideas they could use.