[withdrawn and now re-submitted] early 2018 zoning code changes that will
remove all occupancy levels from the zoning code and make the building
code's health and safety levels, \which rely on square footage and what
constitutes a legal sleeping room, the defender against "too many adults
living here." A major corollary will be to eliminate the concept, and
word, of "family" from Minneapolis housing codes.
Incredibly, the Planning Department staff report asserts that there are NO
negative effects to this massive change. Any structure in any zone
(including industrial zones) that has rooms that can legally be bedrooms
can have as many unrelated single adults living there as there are
bedrooms, No consideration is to be made for a core stability factor--the
"family" [person or related persons] who form the center of a non-transient
household, that holds the unrelated single adults together as a functioning
unit of some sort--i.e., not a rooming house.
In other words, in the interest of something boldly presented, and
undefined, as "fair housing," any number of people will be automatically
permitted to occupy a structure. Unlike self-defined communities with rules
and some stability that were approved several years ago, these groups of
unrelated people do not have to know each other or have long-term leases.
They will make many of our larger older homes what we have regarded as
"overoccupied" rental properties. Such a thing as "overoccupancy" will no
longer exist in Minneapolis.
No matter the attendant negatives that the city planners refuse to
recognize, especially for residential neighborhoods. They actually say, "no
negatives."
I don't wish my personal experience on anyone in Minneapolis: I live ten
feet from a largish 1906-built house that recently was sold to an investor
and became a rental property. It had four bedrooms, rec room in the
basement, huge kitchen, living and dining rooms, front porch, two
fireplaces, two and a half baths and what had been a servant's room on the
third floor; it had been a family home for 100 years-plus. Now, after
landlord "remodelling," it has three more bedrooms and houses seven or
eight young adults, none of whom had ever met each other before each rented
a bedroom in it plus rights to fridge space in one of the three
refrigerators. It now has four and a half bathrooms. The renters cannot
even coordinate among themselves who's going to take the garbage and
recycling bins back from the front curb each week, and apparently they
never use the living room; each spends all his-her time in their separate
bedroom. Two of which are in the basement, with egress windows cut in.
They have [currently] six cars among them. Three park in the backyard,
three on the street. None of the three in back knows how to back their car
up to get out the driveway. Luckily, they don't know each other well enough
to be a "partying" group!
City licensing people have permitted this officially illegal
"overoccupancy" because they know that Lisa Bender's zoning code changes to
permit crowds-of-strangers-living-together have been in the works for two
years-plus, so, why not let it happen now?
Connie Sullivan
Como, where overoccupancy runs rampant