Senior housing overlay zone

[SlaveToTheGrind]

New task of creating a SHO zone. I can and will peruse what has been done locally. Worked with a few in the past. What are the highlights of your SHO zone?

 

[bureaucrat#3]

I've seen a few communities add these. Do you have a huge/significant senior housing population? Does the overlay include support uses and do you require projects prove they are senior housing through required deed restrictions or some other mechanism?

 

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I've seen a few communities add these. Do you have a huge/significant senior housing population? Does the overlay include support uses and do you require projects prove they are senior housing through required deed restrictions or some other mechanism?

Not a significant senior population. Senior status will be controlled through age requirement of the owner/renter via the code. Not my preferred path but neither is deed restrictions. Just too time consuming to enforce either.

 

[mendelman]

Don't do an overlay. Overlays are always overly complicated and fraught with hair splitting differentiations and exemptions in relation to the regs of the underlying zoning district.

I'd recommend a simple text amendment to your higher intensity MF, Office and mid-intensity Com zoning districts' use tables to make them Permitted or permitted Special/Conditional Uses targeted for secondary commercial road frontages and transition land between higher and lower intensity zoning districts.

Also, perhaps 'permit' similar to how you permit/regulate houses of worship.

EDIT:

My current employer

Assisted Living Facility

• Conditional Use
  • R-3 (non-downtown adj high density MF zoning district
  • R-4 (high density MF district adj to downtown zoning district)
  • C-3 (most common higher intensity commercial zoning district)
  • C-5 (Downtown high density, mixed use zoning district)
• Permitted use
  • I-1 (Institutional zoning district designed for public facilities, parks, colleges, hospitals, cemeteries, etc)

 

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Don't do an overlay. Overlays are always overly complicated and fraught with hair splitting differentiations and exemptions in relation to the regs of the underlying zoning district.

I'd recommend a simple text amendment to your higher intensity MF, Office and mid-intensity Com zoning districts' use tables to make them Permitted or permitted Special/Conditional Uses targeted for secondary commercial road frontages and transition land between higher and lower intensity zoning districts.

Also, perhaps 'permit' similar to how you permit/regulate houses of worship.

EDIT:

My current employer

Assisted Living Facility

• Conditional Use
  • R-3 (non-downtown adj high density MF zoning district
  • R-4 (high density MF district adj to downtown zoning district)
  • C-3 (most common higher intensity commercial zoning district)
  • C-5 (Downtown high density, mixed use zoning district)
• Permitted use
  • I-1 (Institutional zoning district designed for public facilities, parks, colleges, hospitals, cemeteries, etc)

I like the special use approach. We do have other SU with specified standards. Don't see how this is any different.

 

[mendelman]

To further refine my input...are you only worried about straightup MF housing that is for only Federally defined "Seniors"?

I would offer the position that all MF is the same regardless of the age and/or income of the household.

The land use impacts are going to be effectively the same - building scale/bulk, vehicle trip generation, etc, etc.

Remember - zoning/land use regulation is a bad tool for social engineering.

@SlaveToTheGrind

 

[bureaucrat#3]

To further refine my input...are you only worried about straightup MF housing that is for only Federally defined "Seniors"?

I would offer the position that all MF is the same regardless of the age and/or income of the household.

The land use impacts are going to be effectively the same - building scale/bulk, vehicle trip generation, etc, etc.

Remember - zoning is a bad tool for social engineering.

@SlaveToTheGrind

Having worked in a college town, purpose built student housing is a whole different animal. We currently see a majority of units built as studios and 1-beds with a few 2 bedrooms mixed in. Our neighbor who is a college town still primarily gets 5 and 6 bedroom units where each bedroom is leased individually and has its own bathroom.

Operationally, I can see some instances where an age targeted independent living facility would have different impacts on parking/traffic among others. Senior facilities don't impact schools, have different peak traffic, but could impact medical care more. Our last two senior facilities have included independent living, assisted living, nursing home and memory care as stepped levels of care. We still use "domiciliary" to mean old people housing so we're no one anybody should emulate.

 

[mendelman]

Having worked in a college town, purpose built student housing is a whole different animal. We currently see a majority of units built as studios and 1-beds with a few 2 bedrooms mixed in. Our neighbor who is a college town still primarily gets 5 and 6 bedroom units where each bedroom is leased individually and has its own bathroom.

But is it really, from the perspective of objective external land use impacts?

I lived in the middle of the Ann Arbor student housing ghetto during my grad school years getting my MUP. Other than general trashiness (which is management problem, not a strict land use problem) and tendency toward over parking the private property I don't think it's any objectively demonstrably different than a high density mixed residential area of a given central city.

Account accordingly for parking requirements or even [/devil advocate smilie] prohibiting on-site parking and the major objective land use impact is potentially mitigated.