Raleigh needs backyard cottages in all its neighborhoods

At Perkins+Will over the past decades, we have engaged with many cities and communities across North America and our work often lies at the convergence of architecture, urban planning and land use policy. In many cases we find clear and pervasive patterns of past zoning and land-use regulations that have negatively impacted under-served and low-income communities and contributed to the growing housing affordability crisis in our cities.

In this light we find the latest developments by Raleigh’s City Council regarding the proposed regulations for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to be deeply troubling. According to recent reports, the Raleigh City Council will soon be considering a proposal drafted by the Growth and Natural Resources committee that would allow ADUs to once again be built in Raleigh, but only within overlay districts created for that specific purpose.

In simple terms, this policy change would require a homeowner wishing to build one of these modest structures on their property to first go through the process of creating a new zoning overlay district in their neighborhood — a lengthy and onerous undertaking for any homeowner to contemplate. This is an extremely high threshold of compliance and would place an unreasonable burden on homeowners. We do not know of any other city in the United States with such an overlay requirement for ADUs and this approach has been widely discredited by planning professionals.

If the City Council adopts this policy, the likely result will be to effectively continue the current ban on ADUs that has been in effect in Raleigh since the 1970s. An even more objectionable outcome is that neighborhoods would be allowed to pick and choose whether they will be more inclusive or not. It would continue to severely restrict the ability of homeowners to decide if they wish to provide rental opportunities to students, retirees, single parents, service workers, relatives or anybody else who may desire to live in the neighborhood but cannot afford to buy a home there.

Sadly, this zoning policy harkens back to the era when discriminatory planning and zoning was purposefully and effectively used as a means to segregate neighborhoods by race, class and income. While discrimination is not the intent of the drafters of this policy, it is the likely outcome of this zoning change that is of great concern. Housing equity and housing affordability are citywide issues and the Raleigh City Council must adopt citywide policies on these matters rather than delegating this responsibility to individual neighborhoods.

We urge Raleigh’s mayor and City Council members to reject this draft and send it back to committee or defer the decision on ADUs to a future date when perhaps there will be a City Council with a clearer historical perspective on matters of zoning and housing equity and how they reflect on Raleigh and its future.