Last week, City staff announced that they will be presenting their initial recommendations on ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) to City Council on July 31. After that presentation and discussion, City staff will schedule more community meetings to get additional feedback before drafting the ordinance text.
These discussions bring ADUs to the forefront more than five years after the Reno Planning Commission and City Council both voted against allowing them in the city. As Anjeanette Damon reported for the Reno Gazette-Journal, City Council voted in November of 2018 to reject a draft ordinance that would have allowed ADUs (sometimes called “granny flats”) in Reno with a wide range of specific provisions and restrictions. A majority of both the Planning Commission and City Council had objected on a number of fronts, including concern that the move would represent an “intensification of neighborhoods,” and the idea was scrapped.
Since then, ADUs have become a topic of increasing discussion and governmental action across the country. As explained on the City’s “Zoning Code Clean-Up” webpage, staff’s new recommendations follow a public survey on ADUs conducted several months ago and a presentation of those survey results to City Council on March 27. If you’d like to review all the materials from that meeting (and watch the discussion), scroll down to item D.1 on the March 27 online agenda, found here. It was covered in a March 28 article from This is Reno, which noted generally positive views of ADUs from Mayor Schieve and Councilmembers Jenny Brekhus, Devon Reese, and Naomi Duerr, some of whom mentioned issues that they’d feel would need to be addressed, such as parking, size constraints, or neighborhood restrictions.
The pie chart accompanying the results might be a little misleading at first glance, in that they rather counterintuitively used the color red to indicate “yes” and a greenish hue to indicate “no,” so be sure to consult the numbers. The survey found that 67.98% of respondents (1,361 out of 1,988) believed ADUs should be allowed in Reno, while 15.43% (309) said no, and 15.88% (318) said yes but only in certain neighborhoods. Respondents also indicated to what extent they thought any ADU regulations should address issues including parking; whether or not ADUs could be used as short-term rentals; lot sizes; permitted square footage & height; neighborhood compatibility; whether an ADU could be rented to family vs. non-family members, and more.
I’ll provide some resources on other municipalities in a moment, but first let’s take a close look at what City staff is recommending. The full chart on the City’s webpagelists the staff recommendations with brief justifications, but here’s a basic rundown:
- No minimum lot size (but would be subject to existing minimum lot size and overall lot coverage limitations for their zoning district)
- Maximum ADU size and setback requirements to match existing requirements for “accessory structures” (to allow for conversion of existing structures to ADUs)
- One off-street parking space required per ADU (consistent with general parking standards)
- Design requirements to match those of guest quarters (more on that below)
- No discretionary review required
- No neighborhood restrictions
- Height limit for ADUs of 29 feet or no taller than the primary structure, whichever is less (to ensure an ADU does not tower over the home)
- Limit of one ADU per lot
- Allowed in all zoning districts where detached single-family are allowed (the table lists each of those by its zoning code)
Knowing that ADUs are explicitly prohibited in some Reno neighborhoods, I asked Grace Mackedon of City of Reno Development Services last week if those areas would be affected, and she replied “At this time, staff is not recommending overriding anything that is more specific. So any overlays, PUDs, or SPDs that either explicitly allow or prohibit ADUs would not be impacted. However, since council wanted to weigh in before we start our public outreach that is something if council desired, we could look at changing.”
This is an important point, because although a few of those ADU prohibitions are explicitly outlined in City code, dozens of Reno subdivisions, particularly inside the McCarran ring, were established with CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions) that govern what can be built within them, and that may or may not still be in effect (this also came up with respect to the recent discussions of duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes). These are the same documents that have gained renewed attention in recent years for racist restrictions that are clearly now illegal and unenforceable, but other restrictions within them may still be active and applicable if not specifically revoked, and residents themselves often aren’t even familiar with what they say.
Read the rest at The Barber Brief.
The Barber Brief is an independent e-newsletter and blog written by Dr. Alicia Barber on the Substack platform. It is reposted by This Is Reno with her permission.
