Effort: Accessory Dwelling Unit
Role: Stakeholder (by invitation)
All – First off, thank you all again for your input and leadership.
I’ve been mulling this over and wish to share a bit of follow-up on what sits alongside ADUs on the soft-sided boundary between zoning ordinances and building codes. For all its relative simplicity, homebuilding has become an inordinately confusing and convoluted process, especially when you consider that we’re actively in a housing crisis. With this, I simply intend to imply that zooming-in on ground-level details shows a blurrily bubbling boundary between zoning and building departments. I suggest we’re witnessing a rapidly expanding seam between two ever-shifting plates that continually pushes up new ground and thus new territories for housing-related entities to identify, cultivate, and develop.
To those who live just outside the border between the administrative functions, it’s often hard to see where/how/why the boundaries shift and crossover between the inherent rights of property owners and the formal permit/approval process. Even during code development and rulemaking, this nexus of disciplines remains a point of confusion for many (a codekeeper is typically in the room or on-call) and it has interjected itself here in terms of limiting project scope.
I greatly appreciate the clarity of focus for this group effort, I hope you can appreciate my perspective from Interested Party’s point of view.
_____
In terms of the research effort, if more stringent HOAs analogously sit on one tectonic plate, on the other are those experiencing perpetual homelessness.
Sifting through the soil we can identify those sleeping on the street, plus those considered to be car- and van-dwellers, and suggest they are rightfully out-of-scope for this effort. However, right next to this form of fringe living are full-time RVers, liveaboard boaters, and extended stay lodgers, which sit right beside this newly formed category of Accessory Dwelling Units in the building code.
In a way, ADUs were only recently pointed to, plucked out, and unstuck from the soup of an ever-morphing magma of housing options.
And so it seems that our greatest shared objective is to define new products that help expand housing and thus bring formality to heretofore unapproved types of residential structures. And yet, while Granny Flats, Outlaw Shacks, and Barndominiums now have a streamlined path to legitimacy in Virginia, other forms of “living units” remain unaccounted for.
While you’ve got to limit every effort, it remains my hope that we at least recognize, account for, and establish that — if not now — at some point soon that next lower level of transient housing strata will be addressed.
_____
We all know that a measurable percentage of the populace use motels, boats, and RVs as their homes. If this effort is to remain more holistically focused on zoning (i.e. not promoting new building codes), then I believe RVs have a home as residential ADUs, even though they most likely won’t (or can’t as a vehicular structure) truly meet the uniform statewide building code.
In my opinion, an objective evaluation of land use has plenty of precedent for properly sited RVs to be used as fully permissible ADUs. There are places in Virginia that allow full-time RVing on residential property as addressed by land use ordinance. As with building codes, these ordinances include requirements for RVs that ensure they still meet the overarching responsibility to uphold interests in health, safety, and welfare among other administrative concerns.
For details on land use related aspects of RVs and Tiny Homes as ADUs, please review ordinances for L.A. County (PMRVs as ADUs) and Lyons, Colorado (THOWs as ADUs). There are other areas that have long embraced the use of RVs as bona fide dwelling units through land use, and — like it or not — a trip to Florida shows that RV infrastructure can support long-term full-time residency in recreational vehicles.
_____
In closing, if the purpose is to expand housing solutions, I submit that a worthy goal, and metric worth measuring for this effort, is a conversion of those who are unintentionally living in temporary dwelling units (motels, boats, RVs) into more permanent forms of housing including newly approved ADUs. Further, if changes in residency type are reported, we may even be able to show positive progress in housing the homeless and less privileged. To me, that’s what we’re all really here to solve.
At a minimum, I believe it’s worthy to note that RVs and tiny homes are not-so-quietly bubbling up beside ADUs where two sides of the same seam share ever-evolving housing domains. Of course, all these are merely my thoughts and opinions, and I remain happy to do my part where I may best be of service.
That’s enough advocacy for now. Wishing you all the best.
Live Large — Go Tiny!
Thom Stanton
