The Burlington City Council tweaked the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance on Monday night in an attempt to make the affordable housing requirements easier for developers to meet.
Passed unanimously by the council, the updated ordinance gives more flexibility in how affordable units are counted. Previously, builders had to achieve a certain bedroom mix based on the market-rate units. Now, developers can also count affordable units by floor area, as well as have different ways to achieve minimum bedroom sizes.
City Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, said that it’s “usually very difficult to find flexibility without doing a weakening of sorts and I think that this doesn’t do that. I think it both maintains the strength of our current inclusionary zoning while also providing flexibility.”
In 1990, Burlington was among the first cities in the United States to adopt “locally initiated” zoning ordinance on affordable housing. For new buildings larger than five units as well as to convert buildings with more than 10 units, it requires that either 15% or 25% of units are affordable, depending on the price of the market-rate units.
Prior to Monday’s approved changes, that ordinance required that affordable units have the same bedroom mix as market-rate units. For example, if a new building creates only one-bedroom units, then the required percentage of affordable units should also be one bedroom. It also tied the size of affordable units to being a minimum of 90% of the size of market-rate units.
But that has meant some developers have found it challenging to achieve the correct mix.
Amy Demetrowitz, chief operating officer of Champlain Housing Trust, spoke in support of the changes during public comment. She pointed to the Cambrian Rise project as an example of the difficulty in achieving the correct bedroom mix.
Demetrowitz said developer Eric Farrell built a large number of one bedroom and studio apartments, hoping to cater to single adults. But Champlain Housing Trust, partnering with Farrell on the project’s affordable units, saw Cambrian Rise as a good opportunity to build family-oriented units.
“Complying with the strict matching requirements in the IZ ordinance was tricky,” Demetrowitz said, adding that the only reason they could achieve the correct bedroom mix was that units built by Cathedral Square for senior housing were counted toward the total.
One in-progress project that some said this ordinance update would benefit is CityPlace. Demetrowitz said CityPlace Partners plan for a high number of three- and four-bedroom apartments, while the affordable units planned from Champlain Housing Trust are aiming for a higher number of single-bedroom apartments “because this downtown location is not ideal for children,” she told the council.
Mayor Miro Weinberger said the city committed to taking a look at the inclusionary zoning ordinance last fall to help to address a potential hurdle in front of the CityPlace development.
Weinberger said the new version of the ordinance “makes an important change necessary for CHT and CityPlace Partners to move forward with the project that we all very much want to see happen.”