NORTHAMPTON — Two units are better than one for those wishing to build housing in Northampton after the City Council approved a zoning change Thursday night that would allow larger two-family homes to be constructed by right without a Planning Board site plan review.
The ordinance, which was approved last week by the Council’s Committee on Legislative Matters, removes the 2,000-square-foot size cap that often triggers site plan review for those developing two-family homes.
While those in support of the ordinance touted that it would make more dense housing production more convenient, those opposed argued that removal of site plan review from the development process leaves abutters in the dark.
Ward 3 City Councilor Laurie Loisel, expressing her support for the ordinance, explained that public hearing portions of site plan reviews tend to, in her opinion, give members of the public the false impression that they have authority to deny the project. Loisel added that she sees the zone change as an equity issue, explaining that single-family home ownership, which often comes at a high cost, is becoming less attainable for the majority of the population.
“We have a housing crisis in our country and we have it here in Northampton. I, and many of us here, campaigned on … working for more housing and that’s what this is about,” Loisel said. “The main reason I support this, in addition to wanting more housing, is that it’s an equity issue; we are so mono-focused in this county on single-family homes, anybody can build a single-family home, it can be as ugly as the day is long and nobody gets to say that they don’t like it, there’s not a public hearing. I think two-family homes are beautiful and I would like to see more of them in Northampton.”
After a brief period of discussion, the council voted 9-2 to approve the ordinance, with At-Large Councilor Meg Robbins and Ward 6 Councilor Christopher Stratton voting against the measure.
Council Vice President Deborah Klemer echoed Loisel’s remarks about the housing equity that two-family homes provide, adding that the financial and legal requirements involved in creating a two-family home stand in the way of developers building them.
“The reason this came up is because there’s a lot of hoops to jump through and its expensive to go through the Planning Board and get all the permits to build two-family houses,” Klemer said. “With one-family houses, you don’t have to go through all that and you can build the McMansions — I don’t know why this different. People will not build two-family homes because of all the delays, the added expense, all the delays and possibly getting denied after putting all this money into building the home.”
Robbins, discussing the ordinance, explained that while she was in support of efforts to maximize housing stock in the city, she did not believe that all 2,000 square-foot duplexes belong in every neighborhood. She also believes that abutters should be given notice through the site plan review process.
The councilor cited letters she received from members of the public that outlined projects where there have been conflicts between developers and neighbors, some of which, she said, led to an “extremely disturbing aftermath.”
“I completely applaud the conversion of large houses to affordable, same footprint, two- or four-family homes, where the infrastructure, topology and location support them. I don’t, however, see how the removing the absolutely democratic right of abutters to be notified of applicants’ plans and denying public hearings to offer insight and concern or support in front of our citizen-appointed Planning Board … benefits anyone,” Robbins said. “What will the recourse be if the abutting owners if this limited site plan review duplex property leads to an unplanned consequence after we change the ordinance?”
Stratton also spoke against the ordinance for similar reasons, noting that until very recently, he has always lived in two-family or multi-family homes, but takes issue with the fact that it will be harder to weed out possible negative impacts of two-family construction.
“While developers sometimes have livability wisdom that the Planning Department lacks, we can’t let them have full rein either,” Stratton said. “If we remove site plan review, and its abutter notification, then the only way to discover what permits have been granted in one’s neighborhood will be to make a habit of periodically pulling the Laserfiche folder for each abutting property for new entries.”
