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Friends and Supporters,
The city needs to hear from you about three proposed city-wide zoning changes:
- Revising short-term rental regulations (think AirBnb and VRBO)
- Eliminating minimum parking space requirements and letting the market decide
- Making it easier to have an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on your property
On Thursday, March 2nd at 6 pm Councilmembers Katherine Jordan and Stephanie Lynch will be hosting a meeting on these proposed changes with Planning Director Kevin Vonck and planning staff at Binford Middle School (1701 Floyd Ave). This meeting is a chance for the community to learn more about the proposals and get questions answered.
You can also fill out this survey until this Sunday, February 26 to add your comments and questions ahead of the meeting.
At PSG, we fully support the proposals to eliminate parking minimums and to make it easier to have an ADU on your property.
Eliminating parking minimums is a great first step towards other parking reform and will bring a host of benefits to the city and residents, including:
- Reducing building costs and making new housing more affordable to build;
- When linked with better transit and bike/walk facilities, it helps reduce the need for car ownership, and reduces driving and greenhouse gas emissions;
- By reducing or eliminating the surface parking, it helps reduce the urban heat island effect, and stormwater runoff.
We are particularly excited that this proposal will lower costs for new development and create more leasable and livable space in buildings that would have otherwise been dedicated to cars.
ADUs are Accessory Dwelling Units include basement apartments or other separated living space in your main home, or a backyard cottage or apartment over a garage. Allowing ADUs in more areas of the City will lead to:
- More options for aging-in-place;
- More affordable housing options;
- Provide homeowners with a stream of income, and offer opportunities for economic investment and growth.
- Allowing ADUs throughout the City by-right will help reduce the time and costs for homeowners.
Proposed revisions to short-term rentals (like AirBNB or VRBO) prompt some concerns for us. While some of the proposed changes are good, such as limiting short-term rentals per neighborhood and per owner and improving compliance and enforcement of existing short-term rentals, the city should NOT remove the residency requirement. The current regulations require a short-term rental to be a primary residence for at least 185 days and is an important protection against large-scale investors buying up Richmond’s already limited housing supply to only be used for short-term rentals. Removing the residency requirement would mean yet more conversion of long-term rental apartments and homes to short-term rentals, reducing housing supply and affordable housing.
Don’t miss out on your chance to have a say on these important proposals!
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