How Beacon Could Create More Housing
And it wouldn't require massive developments or high-rise apartments.
Benyamin Applebaum tells the unique story of Palisades Park, New Jersey, a NYC-area town that has enjoyed a small renaissance over the past few years.
The town’s 1939 zoning laws, due to a legal quirk, allow two homes to be built on single-family lots. Over the past few decades, this has led to many duplexes being built, replacing older single-family homes and leading to what planners call ‘light-touch density’.
Edward Pinto, a co-director of the housing center at the American Enterprise Institute said to Appelbaum,
You don’t need a renewal plan. You don’t need subsidies. All you need is the right to build duplexes.
Appelbaum relates the well-known sequence of failures by the Hochul administration to relax zoning in NY state to allow greater density as a remedy to the ongoing housing crisis. He also points to other locales where zoning has been relaxed to allow more than one house on a single-family lot, like California, Montana, Maine, Washington, and the cities of Minneapolis, Charlotte, and elsewhere.
Beacon has a relatively new zoning law that allows for Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs. These can take the form of an accessory apartment built into or onto the primary residence or can be freestanding, like a converted garage or a backyard small house. However, very few have been developed to date, perhaps because any property owner wanting to build one must take the plan before the planning board for approval instead of considering an ADU development as just needing to meet defined standards through the building department.
I spoke to one neighbor who visited the building department to discuss converting part of a carriage house to an ADU. They were provided the forms for a one-to-five apartment house development and hefty escrow fees associated with such a project. At present, it does not seem like there is a well-defined process to develop an ADU. Try searching at the city’s website for ‘building an ADU"‘ or even ‘accessory development unit’. The only hits I got were notes from the City Council discussions of the ADU zoning law.
If Beacon wants more light-touch density and to create a housing market where our children, elders, and essential workers can afford to live, it would be great if the city would make the ADU process easier. Meanwhile, adding a provision to our zoning laws to permit a second home on a single-family lot — such as duplexes — would also allow the city to grow more housing without developing high-rise apartment buildings or slow-to-develop major housing developments that take years to come together.
If you have thoughts, please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
I think that ADU structures are a very good idea , especially refurbishing original carriage houses on ones property . I do not agree with any additional new buildings or apartment complexes . The absolute first and foremost that is essential to Beacon is updating the infrastructure ! Especially sewage and electric .