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Indiana House Enrolled Act 1001 requires a unit not later than Jan. 1, 2027, to review its unified development ordinance in a public hearing with the purpose of increasing housing development.
The city of Warsaw Planning Department held their public hearing Monday night, drawing about a half dozen people to the Warsaw Plan Commission meeting, which lasted a little more than an hour.
Assistant City Planner Leah Parker said they intended to cover nine topics related to the city’s zoning regulations.
“These topics may contain sub-categories, or discussion points, which will be displayed on the screen here,” she said.
The nine topics covered included:
• Provide for higher density development of duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in areas designated for single-family homes.
• Construct other housing types including accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and modular housing.
• Adapting/reuse of commercial buildings for residential use, such as allowing multi-family development in retail, office and light manufacturing zones.
• Increasing the allowable floor area ratio in multi-family housing areas.
• Waiving or eliminating regulations for the (several) categories.
• Reviewing impact fee zones with advisory committee improvements.
• Streamlining or shortening the permitting processes and timelines.
• Using property tax abatements to enable higher density and mixed income communities.
• Donating vacant land for affordable housing development.
There were four discussion points to cover the nine points.
The first was, “What obstacles (e.g. ordinances) make the (topics) difficult to execute?”
Discussion point two was, “Should the city consider making adjustments to make the following easier?” The “following” included waiving or eliminating regulations such as requirements for garage size and placement; steeper roof pitch; minimum lot size and square footage; greater setbacks; off-street parking; design standards that restrict or prohibit the use of code compliant products; or property height limitations.
Councilwoman Diane Quance said, “I think one thing ... the lot size itself, I think we need to begin to look at the fact that people don’t seem to want as much yard anymore, and so looking at how much of a property a dwelling can cover. And, sometimes, the boundaries (setbacks) between homes in certain areas ... that’s not realistic where higher-density housing or other housing, even like duplexes, might be able to be built, that’s not realistic if we have to strictly adhere to that.”
She said the idea people want large lots with lots of lawn and gardens to take care of isn’t probably the desire of people buying homes now.
Daniel Schlatter, Inglenook LLC, who serves on the Coalition for Housing in Kosciusko County, said in his role on the coalition he spoke to a lot of builders in the area and got their feedback on what some of the challenges are for building affordable housing.
“The number one issue that came up was the price of lots and land. And the second was the cost of utilities and infrastructure. It really wasn’t an issue of the cost of the housing build, it was more even getting to start,” he said. “Most of these new subdivision lots, a lot of the development costs, size of the lots, drives it up to a $70-$80,000 lot, which you can’t build affordable housing at that point.”
He encouraged the city to look at the lot size requirements, but from a safety standpoint he said it was important to maintain setbacks related to fire safety and road setbacks. “But the lot size is really independent of the setbacks.”
Discussion point three asked, “Has the city achieve the following goals adequately? If not, where and how can we improve?” The goals included adaptive reuse of commercial buildings for residential use such as allowing multi-family development in retail, office and light manufacturing zones; donating vacant land for affordable housing development; streamline or shorten the permitting processes, timelines, including through one stop and parallel process permitting by 15 days.
Kosciusko County Community Foundation CEO Stephanie Overbey said, “I do want to make sure that this group is aware that, at Kosciusko County, MACOG (Michiana Area Council of Governments) has received a $625,000 grant from the Community Foundation to help establish a land bank that will serve all of Kosciusko County, including the city of Warsaw, and that is a platform where the city could donate property, in particular if there are reasons that are unattractive to a developer. Perhaps there are liens on the property, or it’s a way for, at the county level, for those to come off the tax sale.”
The grant and agreement with MACOG was just signed in the last few days. She said it’s an opportunity for the city to help donate properties that might be under city control, or if the city has liens on a property, to disregard those liens to clean that slate so the land bank will have an opportunity to redevelop undesirable, neglected, abandoned properties and get them back into productive housing use.
“So I’m not an expert on land banks by any means, but I just want to make sure the group is aware that there is a new way for those undesirable properties to be brought back into (good) housing use,” Overbey said.
The fourth discussion point was, “Should the city establish impact fee zones?” Currently, the city of Warsaw does not have any impact fee zones.
Under open discussion, attorney Rick Helm had three things to say to the Plan Commission because they have the authority to recommend changes to the city council in ordinances, procedures, etc.
He said he’s been a zoning attorney since 1975 and the one thing he’s seen repeatedly - not with the Warsaw Plan Commission but with the Board of Zoning Appeals - is “unnecessary hardship versus practical difficulties. If you want to make things easier, and smoother and more flexible for your citizens, please recommend to the city council that they amend that because the statute permits either of those standards. And I see minutes from the BZA always saying, ‘Gee, we could help you but the standard doesn’t permit us to help you with that because you don’t fit.’” He asked the Plan Commission to strongly suggest to the city council they change that.
“An unnecessary hardship is still much higher than a practical difficulty, but I can tell you from doing it for many years that a practical difficulty is not a sluffing off type standard, it is still a standard. And it would be much, much better in your concept of making things easier to build to include that in the standards for the Board of Zoning Appeals to approve variances,” Helm said.
Quance questioned if it was a state statute regarding unnecessary hardship and practical difficulty. Helm said the state statute gives the city the option of either one of those standards. City attorney Scott Reust said he’d have to research that further, but thought the city was under the statute that only allowed them to consider unnecessary hardship.
The second thing Helm brought up was under the subdivision control ordinance. “Your ordinance still refers to preliminary and final approval of plats. Those are completely out of date, they are not found in state law. State law now talks about primary approval and secondary approval, which is what they actually are. Primary approval is the actual final decision that you make. Secondary approval is when the developer brings in all the drawings and shows you that the completed drawings are now in conformity with what was approved. The terms preliminary and final have been misused,” he stated.
His final point was to compliment the current planning staff as “extremely helpful and for the most part efficient.”
