(Oh, the deed of gift issue passed unanimously).

Kisela: Staff needs council direction. We have 15-20 “accessory dwelling units” throughout the city, and would like to change the ordinances to require the property owner live in the main house (which would discourage renting the property out to two dozen people) or restricting the “mother in law apartments” to genuine in-laws or the like. At present, owners have to sign statements they won’t separately lease the accessory units out, but they can get around it by signing a general lease or not requiring a lease.
Also believes code-enforcement can crack down a little harder. “We also have lockout units being created in the main structure, which is a clear violation of our code. We need to be more assertive.”
Tom Weidenhamer: Moves to have staff draft an ordinance setting the appropriate restrictions (which I’ll go into in detail for Wednesday’s paper).
Sam: This is a huge problem. Had one near my house, a while back. She regrets that it cuts out a source of affordable housing but “it has not helped as far as degrading our neighborhoods.” Has visited some of the houses–they’re clearly boarding houses because they have big, apartment-buidling size trash cans–and while some look nice, others are a big problem.
Bagby: Fine with the owner-occupied main-house rule. Not comfortable with restricing who can use accessory units: He shared one with another boarder himself when he got out of college. “it’s when you get 20 living in one bedroom that you have a problem.”
Trammell: Agrees on owner occupancy and on relatives-only rule.
Dewey: It looks like there are a lot of rules that have been violated. If we’re passing more rules, will they be violated too?
Kisela: Some of these are hard to deal with when there’s no separate lease, but staff does realize the importance of cracking down on this.
Wood: I do want more options for affordable housing–but after seeing what happens at some of these properties, I agree we need to crack down.
Weidenhamer: “This type of workforce housing is certainly something we didn’t have in mind.”

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