Laws to trigger new housing before council

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New ordinances meant to spark more housing is on Wednesday night’s agenda for the City Council Committee on Ordinances.

One draft ordinance would create a “transit-oriented development” zoning district around the new Church Street MBTA station to encourage dense, walkable, mixed-use development — particularly around Kings Highway. New housing there would need fewer parking spaces than elsewhere in the city. 

Other proposed ordinances aim to streamline the permitting process for smaller housing developments and update the list of allowed uses in the city’s zoning code. 

They’re part of a larger package of reforms that city planners will continue rolling out over the next few months, eliminating restrictive regulations that planners say discourage housing development.

“It’s to allow for things the community wants,” said Jennifer Carloni, the city’s planning director.

Mayor Jon Mitchell promised the reforms over a year ago in the Building New Bedford plan, which was launched to address the city’s severe housing crisis. 

Another ordinance, coming back to the Ordinances Committee later this month, would allow “in-law” apartments or “granny flats” — an extra apartment on a single-family lot, officially known as accessory dwelling units. A state law passed this year already allows them by right, but city planners want to allow for bigger units and ban using them as short-term rentals. 

Transit-oriented zoning

City planners are proposing a new zoning “overlay” district around Church Street Station, one of the city’s two new MBTA commuter rail stations. The long-delayed South Coast Rail project is scheduled to start carrying commuter rail passengers between here and Boston in May 2025.

But New Bedford has already officially joined the MBTA, and the city is facing a deadline of Dec. 31 to implement new zoning in accordance with the state’s MBTA Communities Act.

That’s where the Kings Highway Transit Oriented Development zoning district comes in. This new zoning overlay would allow for a dense mix of housing and businesses, prioritizing walkable, “transit-oriented” neighborhoods over car-centric development. 

City planners hope to hit two birds with one stone. One goal of the new district is to facilitate new development around Church Street Station and Kings Highway — the district would allow walkable neighborhoods to sprout where vacant shopping plazas, vast parking lots, and run-down mills now sit.

“You have these properties that really are underutilized and are seas of parking, right now — empty parking that is ripe for development,” Carloni said.

The other goal of the zoning is to bring the city into compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, which requires member communities to set up multifamily zoning districts. The city risks losing state grant funding if the new zoning isn’t passed by the end of the year. 

The new district would only require one off-street parking space per unit of new housing, less than the two spaces currently required across the city. Last year, city planners drafted rules for transit districts that would’ve only required 0.75 spaces per unit, or three parking spots for every four apartments. But city councilors told The Light at the time that the plan wasn’t realistic, so planners adjusted the minimum.

The one-space minimum brings the city in line with peer communities like Fall River, Brockton, and Salem, Carloni said. She added that bringing down parking minimums is a critical way to stimulate new development, because the expense of building parking lots or getting a reduction from the Zoning Board can be costly for developers.

City planners have also been drafting a transit-oriented zoning district near downtown’s New Bedford Station, but that won’t be ready for at least another month, Carloni said. The original plan is being split into two sub-districts, one for the industrial area east of Route 18 and another for the Purchase Street neighborhood on the highway’s west side.

Because those areas are so different, planners are working on different parking minimums and building heights that will “feel right” for each of the two neighborhoods, Carloni said. Residents in the Purchase Street neighborhood pushed back on a large housing development with limited parking that was proposed last year in anticipation of the new zoning district.

In the meantime, planners are bringing the Kings Highway district to the council to avoid running past the MBTA Communities deadline. That district alone will be sufficient to comply with the state law, she said.

‘In-law apartments,’ allowed by new state law, will get city rules

Earlier this month, councilors reviewed a new ordinance that would expand the allowed usage of accessory dwelling units, or ADUs; you might know them as “granny flats” or “in-law apartments.”

An ADU is an extra apartment on a single-family lot. They often come in the form of converted garages, basements, and attics, or standalone backyard cottages. City planners estimate that 12,638 single-family properties in the city would be eligible to add an extra unit under the new ordinance without needing a special permit.

This item isn’t on Wednesday’s agenda, but it’s expected to come before the committee again in late October for amendments before being referred to the full council.

The Affordable Homes Act, which Gov. Maura Healey signed into law in August, allows ADUs by right, statewide. New Bedford’s planners said they were working on the city’s own ordinance before the state law changed.

Before the Affordable Homes Act, New Bedford only allowed these units with an onerous special permit that had to be renewed every two years. Now, planners are bringing a draft ordinance to the council that would go even further than the state law. The ordinance would allow units up to 1,200 square feet with a special permit, more than the 900 square feet that the state now allows by right.

A building permit would still be required. And there are design standards to lower the visibility of ADUs from the street. City planners said they didn’t want ADUs to make a single-family home look like a multifamily.

City planners are proposing that one off-street parking space be required for each ADU, though the Board of Appeals could grant a waiver if there isn’t a “suitable location” for it, or if “such waiver is otherwise in the public interest.”

The city ordinance bans the owners of ADUs from using them as short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs. Carloni said the city is including this provision because the ordinance is intended to create housing, not vacation rentals.

The original draft ordinance did this by banning lease terms under 32 days, but after receiving feedback from the council, planners are revising the language to make sure the ban doesn’t accidentally include at-will tenancies. The new language will define short-term rentals by the term of the tenancy, not the lease. City planners are also adding amendments to allow the council to establish fines for violations of the ban.

Streamlining the permitting process

Right now, development projects big and small have to go before the Planning Board for a site review. That means the owner of a two-family building trying to convert an attic into a third unit has to go through the same approval process as a developer who wants to build a new, 10-unit apartment building. City planners are proposing a change. 

The ordinance before the council would create a three-tiered process.

First, there are properties allowed by right, which means they don’t have to go before the Planning Board. Single-family and two-family homes are already in that category, but the proposed ordinance would also include three-family buildings.

The second tier is a new process for residential buildings with four to six apartments, new commercial and industrial buildings under 5,000 square feet, and ground signs. Instead of going to the Planning Board, these small projects could get approval from the administrative planning staff, who already review projects before they go to the board.

These administrative reviews would be as enforceable as a decision by the board. Staffers would make sure projects comply with all current regulations and don’t have major impacts on neighbors. But the reviews could happen on a faster rolling basis, rather than at monthly board meetings.

The third tier is the existing Planning Board process, for projects too large to fall into the first two tiers.

Building permits would still be required for any construction project. And projects would still have to comply with the existing zoning. The proposed ordinance doesn’t touch parking minimums and doesn’t allow a developer to plop a triple-decker on a lot zoned for a single-family home without approval from the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Only the process at the Planning Board would change. The board’s legally mandated site plan reviews for large projects are designed to mitigate the impacts of development on the surrounding neighborhood. But the reviews don’t make sense for smaller projects, Carloni said.

“There’s not much that the Planning Board can do,” she said. “And it’s just, quite frankly, a waste of everybody’s time — I shouldn’t say that, but it is.”

The current process stifles housing production, Carloni said. Every project has to hire a design professional to present their plans, plus they have to wait for the board’s monthly meetings. The extra time and costs add up, and there’s still a risk that the board could vote against the project, Carloni said.

City planners hope that making the process faster, less expensive, and more predictable will attract professional developers and make it easier for smaller property owners to add new units, easing the city’s housing crisis.

Modernizing the list of uses

City planners are proposing updates to the list of allowed uses in the city’s zoning table.

Some property uses, like townhomes, breweries, self-storage facilities, and biotechnology manufacturing, aren’t currently defined in the city’s zoning. The proposed ordinance would add these modern uses and clarify the list’s definitions.

The lack of these modern categories has created issues for some properties, Carloni explained. The city currently zones self-storage facilities like big-box stores. But a building full of storage lockers doesn’t need as much parking as a Walmart would, she said, so the zoning law needs a new category to fit this new use.

Councilor Ryan Pereira, who chairs the Ordinances Committee, did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the next few months, planners intend to roll out more reforms that undo restrictive zoning rules the city passed decades ago, requiring large lots and abundant parking on every new project. City planners hope to make it possible to build more of the triple-deckers and dense, mixed-use neighborhoods that already define much of the city’s character.

“Our existing zoning code is outdated,” Carloni said. “It doesn’t actually match what you see out there today.”

Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org

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