Again, I apologize.

We thought it was better to start late than nothing to cancel the meeting.

Are you ready in the back?

We're going to go ahead and get started with the um meeting of the housing health and education committee.

Again, we are expecting Councilmember McShane momentarily, so we'll go ahead and um do the pledge and um bring people up for the first discussion on um the housing work plan.

Again, we are expecting council member McShane momentarily, so we'll go ahead and um do the pledge and um bring people up for the first discussion on um the housing work plan lab the pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation undergrowing indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all um I'm gonna ask I I believe um Gabrielle So this is part of our conversation on um affordable housing or um as um council member Shackelford likes to call it uh price appropriate housing, single room occupancy is one of the ways of doing this.

I know that we have um people here who would like to comment on not just single room occupancy but maybe other parts of the affordable housing plan.

I'm going to allow that during public comment.

Um so if you want to go ahead, we have sure.

Good morning, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Good morning, Gabriel Collard with the planet.

And and again, if Councilmember McShane was not well versed on all of this, I would hold off, but but he really is well versed on this, so this is more for the public than us.

Um and I would imagine this will probably be the start to to a more robust conversation moving forward.

Um so this will not be the last you've heard of this conversation.

Um so thank you very much.

Um our topic today was to start thinking about concepts for SROs or single room occupancy units.

Um we started with establishing a baseline of what our existing regulations are, uh, then looked at some alternatives from other communities, um, came up with a basic framework of the types of regulatory standards we should evaluate.

Um I think it's important to preface this conversation with um with probably the the feedback that we'll get from from our community in terms of really trying to hone in as much as we can on the specific need.

Um that to a certain extent is going to dictate the regulatory framework that we want to create.

Um the types of opportunities that are out there for this type of dwelling unit, understanding those a little bit more in terms of scale, um, you know, we're talking about large scale facilities, small scale, what are the um the housing options that people are looking for right now to help inform this a little bit more.

I think we will want to as a community also think about the long run, though.

We don't want to just say, okay, well there's a specific opportunity now for this type of arrangement, because in the future there that may evolve.

So we want to be balancing understanding our current needs with looking into the future when we we start to um set our regulatory framework.

All that said, uh broadly looking at our code right now, it's kind of interesting.

We have um our land management code, many of you know was adopted in 2005.

There have been a number of amendments since, uh, but one of the initial concepts in that was a definition of an SRO.

However, there was no regulation.

It was just this definition in there that was not applied anywhere throughout the code.

The definition was taken from Comar um in 2003.

And very broadly, I don't understand, I don't know the context that it was in at that time, but it describes a building of single room dwelling units uh being either newly constructed or converted space.

Um this concept of the types of facilities that they include.

So when we talk about a dwelling unit, we're automatically thinking of a unit with a bathroom, sanitary facilities, and kitchen.

So full full opportunity to live within that space, whether it's an apartment or a single family home.

Um the concept of SROs starts to break that down a little bit and imagine a living arrangement where maybe you are living in one room or maybe two room space that doesn't have the full fit out of a dwelling unit.

That some of the the facilities we need for for everyday living are shared within a building.

Uh the definition we have is kind of wonky because it it talks about having food preparation facilities or sanitary facilities or maybe both.

I just want to point out that if you had both, we would consider you a dwelling unit for all the purposes of our code.

So what what I think we really wanted to find is this living arrangement where you don't have both of those things in one unit, because that's a that's a house, whether it's an apartment house or a um townhouse or multi or a single family house.

Um, this concept is more looking at a living space where sanitary or kitchen facilities are shared amongst the the residents living in that space.

So we need we need to do some work on our definition.

Uh so part of this would be redefining that.

Gabrielle, can you talk about um the the living space in these?

So our definitions actually only talk about I'm gonna uh uh a sleeping area, right?

Um sanitary facilities and kitchen.

So they don't have it doesn't have to have a separate um living area, that can actually be part of the uh um sleeping area.

Correct.

And the the presence of all three, whether it's a bedroom or a one combined space, a big loft kind of apartment, right?

Um that would be a dwelling unit.

If you've got all of those facilities, your your unit and we're gonna treat you like one for purposes of everything.

Impacts, we look at parking, fees, um, all those things, dwelling unit.

So we're we're kind of breaking that apart in the concept of an SRO with having the living space, and in some models, there may be sanitary facilities, you might have a bathroom in your live with your living space.

Um or you could have some sort of um kitchen facility, but not both.

Um that the concept is those would be shared throughout the building that they're located in.

Um so we want to look at at redefining what that is specifically.

Um we do the closest thing we have in our code right now is the concept of a rooming house, um, and what that is is basically a home occupation.

So me as the homeowner could rent rooms in my house to no more than two permanent lodgers, uh, where that's someone who's there for four months or more.

Um but it is a residential accessory use, so I think that's a really limiting factor because you're talking about me as the you know the the homeowner living there and having these rooms that I rent to permanent lodgers.

So I think we want to um consider whether we want to expand that, whether maybe there is a market in our community for that model still, but maybe two residents is too low.

Maybe you have situations where someone has a home and they want to be able to rent out um more than two rooms to permanent residents.