Enforcement is key to an affordable second-dwelling ‘ADU’ policy in Lexington
The ADU ordinance before Lexington’s Council in committee on Tuesday proposes to allow a second complete and independent dwelling—apartment or backyard house — on any or every house-lot in the city, in roughly the space currently permitted to a house or garage. That’s regardless of lot size or residential zone, location in the city, and a whole lot else.
Can we expect the ADU ordinance to bring a gentle, widely scattered increase in housing opportunity, especially targeted to meet the needs of seniors, people with disabilities, extended families, and those of moderate income? Surely not. Without real, effective enforcement in place, the ADU ordinance —as proposed—threatens to worsen the situation for the older neighborhoods already bearing the brunt of overcrowding, degradation and commercialization in rental redevelopment.
Rental licensing and regular inspection must come first. Growth of high-yield student and tourist rentals is rampant. Many of the former and most of the latter operate in violation of current zoning or building standards: how many people and cars accommodated, how frequent the change of tenants, how sound the fire safety.
With UK monthly dorm rents running roughly $1000 per person, a cottage that offers to house four at half that rate comes out higher than the family mortgage. Transient, tourist rentals may bring still more. Let’s be clear: it’s not LOW rents that are ravaging our neighborhoods and displacing long-time residents. Ill-regulated student rental has driven costs so high near the University that families with children, with seniors, can’t afford to live there any more.
Limit ADU occupancy to two? That’s TWO MORE, ADDED TO FOUR, the current limit for unrelated occupants on our crammed lots downtown and near the University. Require a resident owner on lots with an ADU? The restriction ought to be of some help. But does the city mean to enforce the rule, ignore it, or repeal it at the earliest opportunity? Let experience be our teacher. (Just a month ago Lexington’s Council was reassured of the trifling increase in dwellings that ADUs brought to Santa Cruz since 2017—the very day that model city voted to abolish the owner residency requirement so as not to inhibit growth.)
Citizens have been crying out for balanced and effective enforcement, for rental licensing and inspection, for decades. Lately city Zoning Enforcement has become very selective indeed, with its Manager position abolished and its Officers reduced from four to two. Last Tuesday a senior Planning Division staff member told a community meeting that they get multiple calls weekly reporting illegal ADUs. “What are your thoughts on enforcement?” I asked. Enforcement? Our enforcement is complaint-driven, I was told: The callers are not making complaints. They want to know how to get one for themselves.
In such a climate, the finer texture of the zoning regulations under consideration is immaterial. It’s all flexibility, all fiction. We are denied the protection of the law.
When will our planning and zoning set the burden of increasing housing squarely on our underutilized retail and high-vacancy office land, where it first belongs? Where is the mandate to build multi-family housing there to balance the burdens, to increase the utility and yield of that land for our community?
If the Council in committee advances the ADU ordinance Tuesday night after a lengthy ordeal of listening—or perhaps a mere handful of comments received from a tribe of hardy souls in cloth muzzles—final vote on adoption could come as early as month’s end. This ordinance is not ready for adoption.
Lexington, we can do better than this.
Amy Clark takes an active part in Lexington civic affairs, including growth and development concerns affecting neighborhoods throughout the urban county.