Policy Council Policy Committee to order.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Bowie.

Council President Naker.

Councilmember Joost here.

Councilmember Coleman.

Here.

Councilmember Kim.

Councilmember Yang.

Councilmember Johnson.

Here.

Seeing four present, three absent.

And Councilmember Yang is or Kim is excused.

Alright, we have two items on our agenda this morning.

First one is our definition of rooming house presentation.

Welcome up Katie Dadless from Planning and Economic Development to tell us more.

Can I hand these to you?

Thanks.

Morning, Council members.

Katie Dadley is city planner in the Department of Planning and Economic Development.

So I'm here to talk about the rooming house definition.

And it's something I think that has arisen in the past few months because of some recent and some proposed housing developments.

And these developments likely are stemming from some of the amendments to our zoning code related to the one to four one to six housing study a few years ago.

I don't have like a big presentation for you today.

What I have is the handout that's being passed around right now.

What it includes is the zoning code definition of rooming house, as well as some related definitions that are kind of tucked within the rooming house definition itself, and then the housing code definition of rooming house as well, just so that we're covering all of our bases there.

So I think I'm gonna just review that definition and we can kind of have a conversation from there and see what kind of questions council members might have.

So in looking at the definition, there's two parts to the definition.

And the first part says a residential structure that provides single room occupancy housing as defined in Code of Federal Regulations, and then to more than six adults.

And if you want to know what the definition of that is, it's on the very next page, a unit that contains no sanitary facilities or food preparation facilities, or contains either but not both types of facilities.

So that's what uh SRO definition is.

The second part of the rooming house definition is basically a building housing more than six adults that has any of the following characteristics, and then there are six characteristics listed A through F in the definition, and it's there I think where we can spend a little bit of time and see that maybe in some ways the definition is could maybe use some updating.

And so the first criteria, and I should say maybe from the outset that a rooming house is a land use that is permitted in multifamily residential zoning districts, so RM zoning districts, it's not a use that's permitted in RH districts.

So um so it if a if a if a a building has any of the following characteristics, it would be considered a rooming house.

Um the first is rental arrangements are by the rooming unit rather than dwelling unit.

The second that rooming unit doors are equipped with outer locks or chains which require different keys to gain entrance.

The next kitchen facilities may be provided for joint or common use by the occupants of no more than one rooming unit.

The next rooming units are equipped with telephones having exclusive phone numbers.

The next rooming units are equipped with individual intercom security devices, and finally, each rooming unit has a separate assigned mailbox or mailbox compartment for receipt of mail, different from one mailbox for uh an entire dwelling unit as opposed to one for an individual person.

Um, and then finally, the definition also does include um standards and conditions for the use, and um in that case um there's a minimum lot area requirement for a rooming house.

You can see that it's 5,000 square feet, and then plus 1,000 square feet.

So it's 5,000 square feet for um six for six adults, and then 1,000 square feet for each additional adult.

So it that's the way that rooming houses are regulated.

Um, and so that's the definition.

As I noted on the next page, so there's single room occupancy definition.

I pointed out.

Because the rooming house definition uses the term rooming unit, dwelling unit, and guest room.

I've included those on the next page as well, just in case you want or need to reference those.

And then also on that second page, there's a definition of shareable housing.

It's a definition we have in our zoning code, but it's a and it says a residential structure designed for collaborative living in which individuals share common facilities and amenities.

But I would point out that that land use is only permitted in the Ford districts, and so it's not really necessarily relevant to the conversation today about the rooming house definition itself, but maybe it can lead us to thoughts that as part of updating a rooming house definition that either we update the existing definition that we have and some of the characteristics or think about maybe an additional or new definition.

So let's see.

And second of all, um, I'm struggling to understand shareable housing versus versus rooming house.

Um I think I understand the difference between rooming house and apartment building.

Apartment building seems like the difference is that those are all dwelling units because those units have kitchens, have living rooms, whereas a rooming unit is just essentially a bedroom.

But I guess I'm trying to understand how we're defining each of maybe each of those three things and then what's the overall problem we're trying to solve.

Sure.

So thank you, um, council member.

So I think what we're hearing is that there are some developments that are happening in the city, um, and I think they're largely enabled by some of the recent changes that we've had in the zoning code.

Um, the one to four unit zoning study and the one to six unit zoning study that resulted in some significant changes to um our zoning code as it relates to primarily H districts.