Denver City Council members cut down on how many rezoning hearings they will have to preside over and brought the city into compliance — mostly — with a new state law on Monday when they voted to allow accessory dwelling units in residential neighborhoods citywide.
The housing units, often referred to as ADUs, are smaller, secondary residential structures that can be built on the same lots as traditional single-family homes. They give property owners options to bring in additional income by renting them out or to provide space for family members like grandparents. They can take the form of converted garages or be new structures.
Denver has embraced ADUs as a strategy to add more housing options — and ostensibly cheaper housing — in more residential neighborhoods where apartment buildings may not be allowed. Councilmembers, led by Amanda Sandoval, over the last handful of years have rezoned at least 10 Denver neighborhoods to make ADUs an allowed use on all residential lots in those areas.
But in a wide swath of the city, building an ADU has remained a special request that required going through a time-consuming and costly rezoning process and earning final approval from the City Council at a public hearing. That is until the council voted unanimously to allow them citywide on Monday night.
Councilman Darrell Watson, who was one of the three co-sponsors of the package of legislation, noted that in a city facing a severe affordable housing shortage, it’s easy to get lost in the big picture of needing to build tens of thousands of residential units over the next decade to meet demand.
“It’s often easy to overlook the small steps we can take (like) empowering our neighbors to be a part of gentle density,” Watson said. “Accessory dwelling units will not … solve our housing crisis, but it’s an important first step.”
The council’s action was cheered on by several speakers during a public hearing before the final vote.
Chris Miller, a Denverite who recently built an ADU on his property, is a member of the grassroots housing advocacy organization YIMBY Denver which has been pushing city officials to do away with single-family neighborhoods altogether in favor of allowing more density to house more people.
He encouraged the council to go further.
“I ask please act swiftly with urgency to legalize more types and more shapes of homes across more of the city,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the culmination of a multi-year process that involved creating design standards for ADUs that can fit into the fabric of all of the city’s neighborhoods.
The legislature passed a law this spring mandating that more cities in the state allow ADUs in residential areas. That law included specific provisions such as preventing homeowners associations from opposing ADUs and doing away with residency requirements for a property owner to have an ADU on a lot they own. While Denver’s work predated that bill and Denver is largely in compliance with it, there is still one point of conflict between the city’s approach and that new law.
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The state law mandates that cities cannot restrict construction by mandating ADUs be set back from property lines by more than 5 feet. In the design standards the council approved last year, some suburban neighborhoods require homeowners to abide by 10-foot setbacks for ADUs so the structures do not encroach on their neighbor’s backyards.
Monday’s vote did not change those standards. Councilman Paul Kashmann, whose district includes many suburban neighborhoods where there are no alleys buffering properties from the homes behind them, said he wants the city to defend those standards in court if necessary.
“I welcome all the lawsuits that would come from that rather than 24-foot (tall) buildings being built 5 feet from someone’s property line,” he said. “God bless our friends at the state. But that’s a bit of abuse.”
Councilman Chris Hinds, another co-sponsor of the ADU legislation, said city officials are already working with state-level representatives on potential legislation next year that might protect Denver’s design rules.