Representatives of community development organizations, the local real estate agents’ association and Unify Akron — a group tasked with offering suggestions for the future of housing in the city — all agree: Members of Akron City Council should stop limiting new home construction by the size of the property a house would be built on.
Despite the support expressed for the proposal, council members decided Monday to hold their vote for at least a week, and possibly longer.
“This is a big step forward, potentially, for the city,” Council Member Donnie Kammer said Monday in asking council to delay a decision. “I want to take a week or two to digest this.”
The city has requirements now that in order to build a single-family home, the size of the lot it will be built on must be at least 4,000 square feet. For a duplex, it’s 7,000 square feet.
But those requirements mean that there are whole blocks in the city where homes could not be built now because the lots they’re on are smaller than that, Planning Director Kyle Julien told members of City Council at two public hearings Monday.
He asked council members to eliminate the requirement so thousands of empty lots that once had houses will again be buildable.
Current lot-size restrictions keep houses from being built, add red tape
Council Member Bruce Bolden expressed concern that if council members approved the change, they would lose a measure of control over where homes were built. Neighbors might be upset, he said.
But Julien implored them to see the adoption of the change itself as a means of control. Doing so would help eliminate months of additional red tape for developers and allow the city to encourage builders to construct more houses, bringing more new residents to Akron.
“Let’s bring density back to the city,” Julien said.
Kevin Smith, one of the Unify Akron participants, said he thought it was a step that should be taken immediately.
“I am elated at the initiative,” he said. “There is nothing about this that doesn’t make complete and total sense.”
Plan would let Akron keep existing development patterns
Zac Kohl, the executive director of The Well Community Development Corp., said his Middlebury home was built on 3,300 square feet. If anything happened to it, under the current rules, he wouldn’t be able to rebuild.
The Well owns dozens of lots in Middlebury and has plans to build at least eight houses in the near future, Kohl said, in addition to those it has already constructed. But six of the lots the organization owns are unbuildable because they’re smaller than current city requirements.
“We would like to build on those,” Kohl said. “Our neighbors want us to build on those lots.”
Changing the size requirement isn’t a fix-all, Kohl said, but it would help eliminate inefficiencies in construction.
Akron, in 1924, had nearly 40,000 more residents in a more concentrated area, Council Member Tina Boyes said. She said by making the rule change — which she called a “great idea” — the city could increase the number of people living in Akron and make better use of roads, sidewalks, sewer lines and other infrastructure that already exist.
At Progressive Alliance CDC, William Blake said the move is one of the most immediate, low-risk steps Akron can take to improve housing affordability. The city has also started a downpayment assistance program and proposed other changes that would make it easier to, for example, build in-law suites or carriage houses in backyards, keep apartments on top of stores and grandfather in other housing options in structures that were built before current zoning rules were in place.
Toka Watson, another member of Unify Akron, said the city needed to remove unnecessary barriers to help make housing more available while continuing to look at additional options — like others the group put forward.
“The need for more attainable housing is clear,” said Jamie McMillen, the vice president of advocacy at the Akron Cleveland Association of Realtors, in supporting Julien’s proposal.
McMillen said there is a significant gap between what homes are available and what local residents can afford, but smaller homes on less land could help make more options available. Changing this rule alone wouldn’t solve housing affordability issues, she said, but it could be a “huge cost-saving measure.”
Plus, Julien said, it could help speed up the creation of tiny home communities and make it easier to rebuild neighborhoods while not compromising existing development patterns.
“I have lots I’d like to sell,” Julien said. “I want council to recognize the wisdom in this move.”
