City Councilmember Zac Blanchard told the January BHCA meeting that council members will be discussing changes to the bill, which he supports. As written, the bill would make it easier for investors and residential building owners to acquire and cut up single-family properties into as many as four units without neighborhood or city intervention.
Blanchard, who supports those zoning changes, suggested that a compromise might look more like what BHCA has suggested as an alternative: encouraging resident owners, who wish to do, to divide large properties into only two units as a matter of right, without seeking city approval. He said no further council hearings or votes on the measure have been scheduled. Blanchard’s 11th district includes the southern portion of Bolton Hill. The neighborhood’s other council member, James Torrance, opposes the zoning change.
The council, with Blanchard’s support and Torrance’s opposition, last year passed a package of other zoning changes that the mayor signed into law. One of them, which BHCA opposed, erased a long-standing requirement that landlords with more than four apartments provide off-street parking or obtain a zoning waiver from the city.
Some community associations that opposed the zoning changes are considering a lawsuit to challenge the way the bills were passed with, in their eyes, too little community engagement. BHCA is monitoring those discussions.
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