Santa Fe property proprietors would be allowed to hire out dwellings at the identical lot on an extended-time period basis while not having to live in certainly one of them below a proposal unanimously encouraged overdue Thursday by using the city Planning Commission.
But fee participants stated other proposed adjustments to the metropolis code intended to alleviate the city’s housing shortage need extra work. They asked for extra observation of permitting on-road parking to satisfy parking necessities for accent dwellings, typically known as casitas or guesthouses, in addition to similarly consideration of the Land Use Department’s potential to put into effect the Land Development Code.
Enforcement and parking are two troubles that we think need to be revisited. There needs to be greater attention placed on the ones because it pertains to how this can roll out and the way — especially in parking — how it’ll affect one of a kind neighborhoods with one of a kind street sizes,” member Pilar Faulkner said after creating a motion to suggest approval by the town governing body.
The vote, which marks a win for Mayor Alan Webber, who has promised to sell the introduction of greater affordable housing in Santa Fe, got here after a nearly two-hour public listening that drew extra than three dozen audio systems on contrary facets of the problem.
The thought to do away with a decades-antique provision that prohibits absentee assets owners from renting out two houses on a single lot becomes the maximum contentious.
Currently, the city code prohibits a assets proprietor from renting a primary living and an accent unit on the identical belongings lengthy-term. The property owner is required to live in one of the devices if the opposite is rented.
Santa Fe has a properly documented and understood inexpensive housing crisis. This antiquated town ordinance is persevering with to lessen the quantity of available and less expensive long-term housing on the market by adding useless restrictions on casita construction and housing,” said Jamie Durfee, who has become the face of the town’s housing shortage after she received an eviction observe for a casita she is renting on a property in the South Capitol location where the principle residence is likewise being rented.
Casitas are inherent to Santa Fe’s subculture, and they represent a unique possibility for young professionals to have a separate accommodation that feels like home,” she told fee individuals. Others, however, expressed worries about absentee landlords and modifications that would tear on the cloth of current neighborhoods.
It will cause the increased density in many neighborhoods, and they’re cautious as to whether or not or now not they can absorb that density,” stated Karen Heldmeyer, a former city councilor who’s the appearing president of the Santa Fe Neighborhood Network, a community advocacy organization.
