Neighborhood Evolution

Enabling “Neighborhood Evolution” would require every residential neighborhood in the city to incrementally “step up” to the next level of development.

• For detached single-family districts (roughly RL in BTV), this would mean blanket legalization of up to 4-plexes, and the introduction of neighborhood-scale commercial use: think corner stores, hair salons, and perhaps a bakery.
• For existing multi-family districts (roughly RM in BTV), this would mean the introduction of small apartment buildings (6-12 units), and additional mixed uses like small restaurants, shops, dental offices, and child care.
• For districts that have many buildings with more than 4 units already (roughly RH in BTV), this would mean a step up into a more proper urban form, including elimination of front and side setbacks and fully permissive commercial use, as exemplified by College Street on the blocks where it intersects with Church.

Corridor Development

Mid-sized corridor development should be pretty self explanatory. Along our major transit corridors, we should be legalizing fully mixed-use mid-size development. Think 4-story 12-unit condos and 5-over-1 apartment blocks with ground floor retail and office space, along with high quality transit stops and protected bike infrastructure. These corridors—North Ave, Colchester Ave, and Pine St—would connect the major live/work and “Downtown” centers within Burlington as well as its neighbors of South Burlington and Winooski.

Downtown Projects

Finally, we have large-scale projects, which—while always possible Downtown—have largely been streamlined in recent years by the Form Based Code (FBC). There are also the large projects outside of the Downtown like Cambrian Rise and SEID which, to be honest, should be generally subject to the public and planning scrutiny they currently face. At the present, there’s a handful of sites downtown that would be great candidates for high density infill, and we’re already seeing some of those projects come to fruition since the adoption of our FBC: City West and The Nest have both completed in the past few years, adding about 50 units each to underutilized downtown lots. In short, our Downtown is already in a good position to grow incrementally, and has already been doing so for a little while.

Equity Implications

At the end of this article I will tackle specific opposition arguments, but I want to quickly frame the equity implications of some of the big picture suggestions being floated about the code. There is a general aversion to increased density in neighborhoods, and a desire to see it reduced and pushed to downtown areas instead. This would essentially create even more of a two-tiered housing system than we already have, with low-density suburban neighborhoods and very high-density urban ones. This poses two major problems:

1. Large buildings necessarily consolidate wealth among fewer owners further increasing the monopoly, power, and leverage of landlords in Burlington.
2. These downtown-style buildings (like CityPlace) are almost guaranteed to be rentals due to the way those projects are funded, which would further increase the gap between renters and homeowners in Burlington.

I outlined our housing needs at the top of this document. If we don’t meet those needs, our problems don’t get better. And so watering down the amount of progress on Neighborhood Evolution in the Neighborhood Code today only accomplishes one of three things:

1. It means we are just kicking the can down the road and will have to add back that density later (and as soon as possible).
2. It means we are closing the door to more density and neighborhoods, putting all growth pressure on corridors and downtown, leading to the equity issues just mentioned.
3. It means we decide we don’t want to solve the housing crisis, and that we would prefer to watch city services crumble and see neighbors fall into homelessness and drug use than see our neighborhoods change even incrementally.

It is my opinion that option 1 is the only valid option, and suggests that weakening this now is just a waste of time.

If we care about increasing opportunities for home ownership in Burlington, it is going to come from the types of neighborhood infill buildings proposed in the Neighborhood Code.

If we acknowledge that we will realistically always have some landlords and care about decreasing the leverage of landlord monopolies, it is going to happen by allowing an influx of diverse owner-occupant landlords of the types of neighborhood infill buildings proposed in the Neighborhood Code.

We will certainly not see 100% ownership opportunities from the development that comes out of the code, but we will see a healthy mix of ownership opportunities and small-scale landlords that make a huge impact on the diversity of our housing stock. When enabled at a large scale throughout the whole city, this can have a transformational impact to our housing market, especially when it comes to diversifying property wealth among residents.

My Recommendations

The base code as approved by the joint committee is a well researched, equitable proposal. All of the amendments proposed, in my eyes, are reactionary and misinformed. For these reasons I support passing the base code with only the addition of amendment 6.

However, if any of the more substantial amendments are required to get it to pass, even the ones I am deeply opposed to, any possible version with the posted amendments is preferable to this going back to committee. As I will shortly explain, nearly the entire opposition is based on mischaracterized interpretations of the code and straight misinformation, and so I believe that the effort to sink this back to committee is intended only to significantly delay, weaken, or kill this code. Pass this on Monday, and let future legislation add to it.

If this thoughtful, forward thinking, urgently necessary, and reasonable step in the right direction is allowed to be derailed by an opposition that is rooted almost entirely in misinformation, we will have failed an important test of our city’s functioning, and may have lost a critical opportunity to shift the tide on the housing crisis. If this goes back to committee, there is no guarantee when—or if—it returns to the council.

Amendment Critique

For completeness sake, I want to comment on each amendment.

“The changes are extreme!”

The fundamental misunderstanding about the Neighborhood Code is that its primary critics are comparing the new ordinance language to the old ordinance language. The standards in the old ordinance were introduced after nearly the entire city was built out, and defined a set of rules that were more restrictive than the existing built out city, making many lots “nonconforming”. So when compared to the “under-zoned” ordinance on the books today, the new Neighborhood Code looks like a larger change. But when compared to the built environment as it stands in the city today, it is a much more incremental change as outlined above.

To simplify: we have taken 10 steps backwards on zoning over the past 50 years, and we’re choosing today to take 11 steps forward. Yes, 11 steps is a lot to take all at once, but we cannot afford to spend 50 more years undoing the 50 years of damage that has been done. Neighborhood Code rights those wrongs, and then takes 1 step forward. We have many more steps to take. We need to take an objective look at where things stand and where they need to be, and then make our decisions from there. That is what Neighborhood Code does.

“This will allow 100 units per acre!”

This argument, I believe, is supposed to have an implied “(which is bad)” tacked onto the end. I believe that this comes from the fact that many people have no visual image in their head of what “units per acre density” looks like, and that 100 sounds like “too much”. But too much compared to what? It sounds like a big number compared to a number like “7”, but not compared to a number like “1000”. As always, let’s look at data and a concrete example:

This building is 110 units per acre on St Paul Street, in an RM district today. It blends in easily within its surroundings, and is not even the tallest building on this corner. At 13 units and over 2,000sqft footprint, this would also be beyond what would be allowed in even the most intense build-outs under the Neighborhood Code in RL and RM. In fact, this building exemplifies the point of why the planning department chose to regulate building size and not unit density: by allowing two smaller structures, you would get more variety, light, and green space for the same number units.

I live in this neighborhood, and it is a nice neighborhood to live in. I don’t think this building is “extreme density”, but I also don’t think one person’s opinion of how many neighbors is too many is a valid way to dictate housing policy, so don’t listen to me. Look at the data.

“This will allow 8-10 units on every lot!”

This is where the inherent spatial complexity of zoning—and the fact that most of the vocal opponents did not attend any of the joint committee meetings—becomes an issue. Essentially, the complexity comes from the fact that zoning standards, when designed poorly, can have rules that contradict or over-enforce an outcome. In the existing ordinance, the size of buildings is governed implicitly, by specifying the minimum size of a lot, and the maximum percentage of the lot the building can cover. So, if the minimum lot size is 6,000 sqft and you can cover 35% of it (RL today), you have 2,100 sqft of buildable surface, including the driveway. However, for an 8,000 sqft lot, 35% is 2,800 sqft of buildable surface. Both of these numbers are quite large for the allowed single family home, especially if it has two floors. And so in effect, you often end up in a situation where the lot coverage is not met because it permits a single building that would be too large; the explicit lot size/lot coverage standards conflict with the implicit size of the type of building allowed to be built there.

The Neighborhood Code takes a different approach: it does not regulate lot size, it only directly regulates lot coverage and building footprint. This is where we finally get to the crux of the “8-10 units on every lot” issue. Just like the old standards created an implicit building footprint based on the lot size/coverage, the new standards create an implicit lot size requirement based on building footprint and lot coverage. If the maximum building footprints in RL are 1,800 sqft and 1,100 sqft for a total of 2,900 sqft, and you are limited to 45% lot coverage, you’d need a 6,500 sqft lot–most likely over 7,000 sqft once you account for the driveway. You could build smaller buildings, but then the restrictions of unit layout on building size would start to reduce the number of units you could fit. Many of these projects will need to play out in a “renovate the main structure and/or build a second back-lot building” fashion, and so finances and existing site layout will further restrict how many lots are able to take advantage of the upper end of what’s allowed. The way that the neighborhood code was designed—by defining the building footprint and height limit—means that any buildings that do get constructed will have to maintain the general form of “detached homes”, and so there should not be genuine pushback against the character of these buildings. It also lets property owners more fully use the lot coverage they are allowed, and that number scales more dynamically to smaller lot sizes which are common in Burlington.

And so, especially for many of the smaller lots in the city, it will be very difficult to actually get the maximum build-out to work dimensionally. Good luck getting a single quadplex built under this code on a 3,500 sqft lot in the ONE, let alone two. Lot size still has a direct impact on how many units will be possible to build.

“This will allow 30-40 people to move in next door!”

I believe this claim has been reached by saying “8 or 10 units, each one a 4BR, equals 32-40 people”, which I believe betrays the fact that some people are trying to intentionally spread any kind of misinformation they can to sway public opinion and sink this.

In RM, where there is a 10 unit cap, the primary building can have a footprint of 1,800 square feet at 3 stories, for a total of 5,400 livable square feet across 6 units. This would be 900 square feet for each unit (subtracting some for staircase access to units on the second and third floors), which is 6 2BRs at the maximum. The secondary building can have a 900sqft footprint at 3 stories, for a total of 2,700 livable square feet across 4 units, which is 675 square feet for each unit (including staircase access), leaving room for 4 1BR at the maximum.

And so, if someone decided to completely raze an existing lot and build to the absolute maximum allowed by the new code in RM, you’d end up with 6 2BR units and 4 1BR units, which would realistically be a mix of solo and couple occupants, for a total occupancy around 15-16 people total, most likely coming and going from several different entrances around each building. Maybe one or two couples in 2BR units would have a baby or young child that could bump that total to 18. Two of the units would have to meet IZ requirements. This is the “worst case” scenario—if “more neighbors” is your criteria for a decrease in project quality, that is. I happen to think this would be a fantastic addition to any neighborhood.

"Lot coverage will increase by over 70%!"

Again, these numbers are reached by comparing to the previous code, and not the realities on the ground. I believe this number comes from neighborhoods that are going from RL 35% coverage to RM 60% coverage for an increase of 25%, or a "71% increase from 35%". The key truth being stretched here is that the primary reason a neighborhood was a candidate for being changed from RL to RM is because its real lot coverage was already quite high, often 50% or more. So in reality, the allowed increase is closer to a 50% -> 60% change, or a "20% increase".

However, this also doesn't take into consideration the fact that due to the building footprint limits, both RL and RM have lot size thresholds where functional lot size begins to decrease. Any RL lot larger than 6,500 sqft will see its maximum lot size of 45% shrink due to footprint restrictions, and likewise for RM lots over 4,500 sqft. For example, an RL lot that is 8,000 sqft will be functionally limited to 36% lot coverage by building footprint, and an RM lot that is 6,000 sqft would be functionally limited to 45% lot coverage. More concretely, 43% of lots in the ONE East neighborhood are larger than 6,500 square feet, meaning 43% of lots will have an effective lot coverage limit of 40% or less.

This means that in the math that reached "70% increase", both the starting point for real lot coverage is higher, and the actual possibility of built out lots is lower, meaning you might conceivably see neighborhoods that go from a "real" lot coverage of 51% with a new maximum capacity of something like 58%, which is a 7% absolute increase in lot coverage, and a 14% relative increase in lot coverage. The only way to get to "scary" numbers like 70% is to cherry pick extreme abstract starting and end points that are not plausible, and to use relative percentages.

“This is a developer handout!”

One of the most common refrains is that making room for any new housing development at all will be a handout for developers. There are two incorrect assumptions that back this statement.

The first is that “developers are evil”, which comes from a widely uncontested idea that the role of a developer is to take advantage of existing neighborhoods and extract their value for maximum personal profit. But, while there are developers who behave this way, a developer is fundamentally just someone who connects opportunities to needs for property development. Someone who sees the need for a mother-in-law suite for an aging parent in their backyard and takes out a loan to build it is a developer. A couple whose children have moved out and are looking to downsize, building a duplex in the backyard, splitting the lot, and selling the main house—they’re developers too. The Champlain Housing Trust, who sees a need in the community for perpetually affordable homes, and who buys, renovates, or builds housing for low income people are also developers. The point is that all of these types of developers are people looking to improve their neighborhood and their city by seeing opportunities to improve property and meeting needs in their community.

The second incorrect assumption is that it is possible for us to meet our acute housing need without developers. To reiterate: if you are building housing, you’re a developer. All of the neighborhoods that we live in and love were built by many different people acting in the role of “developer” over the years, and those neighborhoods’ continued maintenance, evolution, and growth will require many more people to take on that role in the future. It is not wrong to acknowledge that it is possible for that role to act against collective best interest, but it is wrong to try to prevent that role from being filled at all. There are certainly doctors and other medical professionals that abuse their role for profit, but we don’t try to make practicing medicine illegal or shut down hospitals; we put other systems in place to ensure ethical behavior of those who take that role.

And so, instead of trying to restrict opportunities for development, we should be trying to foster a new generation of small scale developers, who build small projects in their own neighborhood, where they have social connections and “skin in the game”. We need more small groups of folks working together to build projects they think are right for their neighborhood, or even just right for their street. And that diversity of input is what creates, maintains, and evolves a neighborhood’s “character” over time. The people make the neighborhood anyway, not the buildings.

“Any new housing won’t be affordable!”

The first thing to know is that anyone who is claiming that our Inclusionary Zoning ordinance won’t apply to these buildings is misinformed. To directly quote Burlington's Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance Sec. 9.1.5: “This ordinance provision shall apply to any development of five or more residential units in a single structure. Multiple developments or projects by the same applicant or responsible party within any consecutive twelve (12) month period that in the aggregate equal or exceed the above criteria shall be subject to these regulations.” In other words, if you convert a single family home into a triplex while also building a three unit secondary structure in the back yard, you will have created five new units and will be required to provide one unit that meets our affordability definitions. If you managed to build a full 10 new units, then two of them would be subject to inclusionary zoning.

Furthermore, RM, RH, and RC all allow for buildings that can contain more than 4 units in a single building, meaning there will be single structures that trigger IZ on their own. And it goes without saying that our public benefit developers will also be able to take advantage of these new codes; CHT is already in the design process of a new development on Saint Paul Street.

If the issue is with wanting inclusionary zoning to kick in at fewer units built, then that is an issue to be rectified with the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance, not the Neighborhood Code.

The other major issue with this argument is that it implies that increasing the supply of housing does not decrease the price of housing. It is fair (and important!) to question the reliance on only market forces to provide an essential good like housing, but it is fundamentally a bad faith argument to claim that supply and demand don’t impact pricing—they do. And again, Burlington does not solely rely on market forces to provide housing, with CHT, BHA, and our Inclusionary Zoning policies. The best way to get more affordable housing into our system is to build more housing in general, and the Neighborhood Code allows private developers to contribute IZ units in neighborhoods, and also allows public developers to build to the same new zoning standards. Remember: public developers are developers too.

“This will be bad for parking!”

This one will be a tough pill to swallow. Burlington desperately needs more housing, but the density that will result from more housing will break our “One Person, One Car” model of transportation. This is, largely a good thing: car-dependence is a huge drain on the average resident’s finances, is our state’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and utilizes an unnecessarily large amount of our city’s limited land. We live in one of the most walkable cities in the region (the country?), have rapidly improving bike infrastructure (help us advocate!) and three season bike share, an affordable and locally operated car share, and an actually great bus system for such a small city (which could also use more advocacy to improve!). Many people could sell their car and save a lot of money today without a real reduction in their mobility, if they had a nudge to do so. If we are going to take on the housing crisis, building off street parking for every new unit will significantly impact the cost of said housing and also overwhelm our street network. We don’t have the room for more housing, more parking, and more lanes of traffic. But again, the good news is that we already have a robust set of functional alternative transportation options, and the best way to incentivize people to choose to use them is to build negative pressure on car ownership.

Another short-term option that has been tossed around with little traction so far is to revamp our on-street parking permitting system. In many cities, as land becomes more scarce and density gets higher, on-street parking becomes more strict. Burlington should consider placing more streets under permit-parking only restrictions, raise the price of those permits, put a cap on the number of permits per household, and provide income based subsidies to make sure there is equitable access to limited parking. All of this can (and should) be done separately from the Neighborhood Code. Finally, an extreme measure that would really force parking to be well considered would be to require “proof of parking” for each registered vehicle of residents moving into housing, for both buyers and renters. This would ensure that every car added to each neighborhood is accounted for.

Either way, we cannot maintain a parking system that manages demand by “providing so much free supply of parking that nobody has to worry about where to park”. It is an immense waste of valuable land, both public and private.

“This will cause stormwater problems!”

Stormwater concern has become one of the primary “smart” objections to the Neighborhood Code, since it increases the allowed lot coverage over the existing ordinance. However, if we recall from earlier, the dramatic increases being waved around (“lot coverage increased by over 70%!”) are compared to the old ordinance, not the lot coverage on the ground. In many neighborhoods, the new lot coverages are similar to the current averages, and some neighborhoods may end up with lot coverage limits still below their average depending on what amendments pass. In essence, this means that the overall lot coverage changes will be marginal under the new code.

Second is the fact that water management concerns have a separate enforcement and permitting process from zoning regulations. To build in Burlington you must get a permit, and stormwater review is part of that process. Burlington’s water management policies are some of the strongest in the state, going beyond even Act 250’s stringent requirements.

As climate change intensifies rainfall in the region over the coming decades, we will continue to need more proactive enhancements to our water management infrastructure, even without new residents. Those necessary investments will be easier to make with a larger tax base that comes from growth in our residential neighborhoods.

Finally, I usually don’t like to call out other community members, but I want to mention Professor Bierman who has been using his credentials as a geologist to raise the alarm about stormwater runoff. The professor may study natural geology, but a city is not a natural environment. No matter how many trees we have, Burlington is fundamentally an engineered environment, and cannot be subject to strictly natural expectations for ecological cycles. When I asked “at what percentage of impermeable surfaces would problems begin for Burlington?”, Professor Bierman said that the natural environment in this region would see issues starting at 10%-20% coverage, which is fundamentally incompatible with an urban human settlement. I respect the work he has done in his field, but I don’t believe that his expertise extends to urban water management policy.

The entire conversation around stormwater so far also has not considered the long-term regional impacts of Burlington’s housing policy. Historically speaking, Burlington’s lack of housing growth has pushed a tremendous amount of sprawl to the suburbs, where lot coverage per-person is astronomically higher due to larger homes, driveways, parking lots, roads and highways, and strip-mall development. How has saving a few lawns in Burlington over the past 50 years impacted the region’s overall ability to regulate stormwater? How many natural environments and wildlife habitats have been destroyed as a result? Do we care about the environment as a whole, or only the trees we see from our kitchen window?

In short, the lot coverage changes are not very large in practice, our permitting review process has strong stormwater considerations that can stop outlier problem developments from moving forward, and stormwater pressure will be increasing regardless of how many people live here. If you’re passionate about this issue, we should be discussing ways to strengthen on-site water management facilities, and find ways to decrease the impact of our transportation infrastructure on stormwater runoff, not limit housing. Trolley tracks can run through grassy fields, and move a lot more people per hour than an asphalt road.

“This will push families out of Burlington!”

This is, unfortunately, one of the most insidious mischaracterizations that is being repeated. Families can, and do, live in non-single family home buildings. Families can, and do, live in duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and even small, mid, and high-rise apartment buildings. Families come in all shapes and sizes and have many different needs. Increasingly, younger couples are having fewer children or none at all. This argument that equates that denser housing as incompatible with “families” betrays a very narrow and specific idea of what a family looks like, what their needs are, and how they should live their life. This plays off of the long history of wealthier, whiter people assuming and insisting that their values are what everyone else should live by.

There are many young families in Burlington that would literally jump at the chance to buy a modern, two bedroom condo unit in a backyard triplex or quadplex. Every reasonable home that we don’t build is another family lost to the suburbs, or (as those housing options become more expensive and scarce) to other states.

I believe that there is a second, unspoken part of “this will push families out of my neighborhood”, which is that “this will allow students into my neighborhood”. The anti-student sentiment runs very deep in Burlington, and it crosses political boundaries which makes it very hard to combat. But I think that cognitive psychology plays a negative role in this perception: if 10 households move into a neighborhood and 9 of them are working people, couples, retirees, and families, but 1 of them is a group of students, due to cognitive priming the overwhelming perception will be that “students are overrunning our neighborhood”. I personally believe that students are fully qualified legal adults who are worthy of our respect as residents of our city, and that the animosity towards students is coming from a place without empathy, as if we weren’t all that age once too. If neighborhoods spent as much energy trying to welcome and integrate students into neighborhood life as they did trying to legislate them out of living there, we’d all be living much happier and fulfilling civic lives. And this is all without mentioning how problematic it is that a minority demographic is being scapegoated as the source of our civic dysfunction. Why aren’t folks upset about the number of jobs at the medical center that puts housing pressure on the same neighborhoods as students? Why are there no front porch forum posts calling to “keep nurses out of my neighborhood”? If Burlington was building the amount of housing it needs for all demographics, we would have much more balanced neighborhoods filled with families, singles, retirees, and students alike.

I’ve knocked doors around some of our residential neighborhoods to talk about Neighborhood Code, and I was genuinely surprised at the average age of the person who answered the door. In those conversations, it seems to me that a lot of residents in those neighborhoods have been there for decades, and have a strong emotional attachment to their experience of moving into their neighborhood in the 70s or 80s. They genuinely believe that their experience (single family home, backyard, a small number of neighbors they know well) was a good one, and want to see that experience be made available to the next generation of families. However, that isn’t possible. We’ve run out of space to keep building like that, and the next generation will necessarily have a different experience of integrating into a neighborhood. This is a natural part of urban development, and we should not let the nostalgia for a simpler time blind us to the realities of what we need today. And for as long as we keep not building more diverse types of housing options in our residential neighborhoods, Burlington will continue to lose the families that people claim to want to prioritize.

“This violates Vermont state law 24 V.S.A. § 4441!”

Vermont State Law 24 V.S.A. § 4441 requires that any zoning amendment "conforms with or furthers the goals and policies contained in the municipal plan." Burlington's municipal plan, PlanBTV, calls for sustaining neighborhoods through "small and incremental change that is consistent with the existing development pattern, building scale, and neighborhood character." This is exactly what the Neighborhood Code does, and any suggestion otherwise would be an extremely unrealistic, bad-faith interpretation of the phrase “small and incremental change” that would not hold up in court. Enabling the future development of building typologies that already exist in a neighborhood could arguably not even be considered incremental change at all. This claim feels to me like fear-mongering and veiled threats of litigation to influence the sinking of this policy back to committee.