Agenda Packet 12-12-18 Work Session

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Draft Summary Report: Eugene Housing Tools & Strategies 5 particularly since 2015. From 2008 to 2014, 66 ADUs were permitted, or approximately nine per year. ADUs permitted during this timeframe represented 1.5 percent of total permitted units. However, from 2015 to 2017, only seven ADUs were permitted, representing just 0.3% of housing units permitted in those three years.  Barriers to ADU production in Eugene are multi-faceted, and include: o City and utility fees, including system development charges (SDCs), permit fees, and EWEB fees, which can total more than $16,000 for one ADU. This added development cost discourages homeowners, who typically have to pay out-of-pocket or borrow against their own home equity to develop ADUs, from building them or from engaging in the permitting process required to build them legally. Most SDCs in Eugene are tied to a building’s unit count rather than scaled to its square footage. Therefore, developers of ADUs pay SDCs at a rate similar to those for single-family homes. A homebuilder interviewed for this study estimated that there are potentially 50 to 60 unpermitted ADUs built per year, and stated that SDC, utility, and other city fees are his clients’ primary disincentive from following the City of Eugene’s established ADU permitting process. o Minimum lot size requirements preclude the addition of an ADU on approximately 17 percent of single-family lots throughout Eugene. Single-family lots in most residential areas must be larger than 6,100 square feet to be eligible for an ADU. Approximately 15 percent of single-family lots in most areas are smaller and would be ineligible for ADUs under current regulations. In the Amazon, Fairmount, and South University neighborhoods lots must be at minimum 7,500 square feet.9 In these three neighborhoods, ADUs are currently prohibited on one-half of single-family lots. o The requirement that owners must occupy either the primary or accessory unit precludes owners of approximately one-fourth of single-family homes in Eugene from adding ADUs. Of the 37,400 “1-unit detached” units in Eugene as of 2016, approximately 9,100 were renter-occupied.10 In other words, 24 percent of single- family detached units are not occupied by the property owner, and therefore those property owners would be unable to add ADUs to their lots under current regulations unless they desire to live on-site. Multiple respondents to this study viewed this requirement as arbitrary, and discriminatory against renter households, which make up over half of all households in Eugene. o Site design requirements are highly prescriptive. Property owners and builders interviewed for this study outlined site design requirements that do not allow for variations in topography, or for flexible standards for ADUs incorporated in, or converted from existing buildings. Because many existing homes are incompatible with ADU building requirements, many proposals for attached or converted ADU units are considered ineligible. It was reported that ADUs proposed on sloped lots typically do not move forward because applicants have difficulty meeting the standards. Eugene requires adjustment review for ADU proposals requesting variances from these standards, which opens the project up to public review and delays the project’s timeline, adding to project cost. o The minimum off-street parking requirement for ADUs adds to site development cost and constrains site design possibilities. Current regulations require that single-family homes with ADUs have a minimum of two off-street parking spaces, or one space per 9 Flag lots must be at minimum 12,500 square feet, excluding the “pole” portion of the lot. Flag lots were not considered in the minimum lot size requirement geospatial analysis, due to the complex nature of identifying flag lots in the city’s parcel data. 10 ACS, 5-year estimates, 2012-2016. December 12, 2018, Work Session - Item 2