Just blow it all up? Bill would kill most zoning across KY for more housing. | Opinion

Kentucky has some big and complicated problems, and housing is near the top.

There’s not enough of it in cities or rural areas, especially not affordable or accessibly priced housing. Tornadoes, floods, supply and cost have made it even worse. One study just showed that Lexington is one of the 10 most difficult cities for young people to buy homes.

Overall, Kentucky is short 89,000 units of affordable housing statewide, according to the Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky.

So, one legislator has grabbed onto an idea that is slowly taking hold in some other states: Just blow up all the rules and start over.

That is to say, let’s get rid of the planning and zoning rules that make housing too expensive and exclusionary. House Bill 102 would get rid of rules that prevent people from putting tiny houses and accessory dwelling units in their back yards, erase parking minimums, allow duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes in single-family home neighborhoods, and limit fees and hearings required on new construction.

And that’s just a start.

“I can’t change interest rates; I can’t change cost of labor or lower costs of input,” said sponsor Rep. Steve Doan, R-Erlanger. “The one thing I can do is present a comprehensive plan to alter zoning. You’d see housing supply increases and housing costs will decrease as a result.

“It is a bold, sweeping omnibus bill. It’s also a conversation starter,” he said. “We don’t need more studies. We need action to address this big problem.”

NIMBY v. YIMBY

House Bill 102 is interesting for many things, but most of all how it represents the political horseshoe that we sometimes see these days. Doan is a conservative Republican, part of the Northern Kentucky “Liberty wing” of the party, who, in this case, has gone so far to the right that he meets ... the far left wing on housing issues.

“For all the ways in which I disagree with Republicans in this state, we support HB 102 because all across the state it would support the variety of options that Kentuckians deserve,” said Evan Kerr, a spokesman for YIMBY Louisville.

“We are 100 percent behind this bill, and we hope it happens,”

YIMBY stands for Yes In My Backyard as opposed to the more common Not In My Backyard, the more commonly known NIMBY coalition, which Lexington sees in action in planning disputes all the time.

Kerr’s group is part of the national YIMBY Action, which started in San Francisco, one of the least housing accessible cities in the nation. One of the philosophies behind it is that zoning and planning have been used in exclusionary ways to keep people of color and poor people out, a more modern version of redlining.

Doan is a real estate lawyer who served on the board of a homeless shelter. He talked to the libertarian think tank Institute for Justice in drafting the bill.

“We’re trying to fill the gap for missing middle infrastructure and houses,” he said. “These affluent communities don’t want folks coming in there. They see the working-class folks as a negative in their areas.”

The bill faces some powerful opposition — namely every local government entity that likes local control.

“There’s nothing more intimately local than land use,” said J.D. Chaney, executive director of the Kentucky League of Cities. “The decisions about the character of a community is best left in the hands of locals instead of a big government overreach that attempts to create one-size fits all mandates like in HB 102.”

Already moving

The bill arrives as Lexington and Louisville are moving toward it. Both cities have loosened regulations on Accessory Dwelling Units (known in the industry as ADUs), for example, and Lexington has scrapped minimum parking requirements that hamstrung a lot of infill development. The bill would not override historic neighborhood protections.

Lexington is also proposing a big overhaul of its zoning regulations to promote more infill and affordable housing.

“It’s interesting in that the bill takes in the direction that planning in general is going in trying to break down these barriers that have separated residential land use,” said Jim Duncan, Lexington’s director of planning.

His concerns about the bill center around Lexington’s rules of agricultural property outside the urban service boundary — no lot size smaller than 40 acres. The bill would eliminate minimum lot size. He’s also concerned about tiny homes and mobile homes because Lexington still requires a foundation for housing because of safety.

“There are ways to fix this,” Duncan said.

Doan said he’s open to possible changes.

“If somebody presents me with a change that will help the working class folk of this state, I’m willing to listen,” he said.

Compromise is always possible, or at the very least, ideas are floated that could catch on another time.

“It’s 90 percent great,” said Blake Hall, founder of Build a Better Lex, which works on making Lexington a more walkable, affordable city. Hall said he would like to see more flexibility for Lexington and Louisville on issues like agricultural land.

He also points out that the bill would create supply, therefore lower prices down the road, but something more is probably needed more quickly. Something more like the $200 million affordable housing advocates asked for but didn’t get in the GOP state budget.

“Just because we abolished parking requirements didn’t mean there was a massive build-out on all the surface parking lots in Lexington,” he said.

There other pressures from other sides as well. House Bill 5 would criminalize homelessness, and they have trying to block source of income discrimination bans that would help move more low-income people into housing.

“With the dozens of bills touching homelessness and housing that have been filed so far this session, this is the only one so far that seeks to address housing supply constraints,” said Adrienne Bush, executive director of the Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky.

“We do support most of the provisions. From our perspective, missing middle housing should be addressed by relaxing local zoning instead of direct subsidy, and that’s what this bill is trying to do. We want to see more gentle density, and that would be appropriate in both rural and urban communities.”

Doan’s bill is probably too radical to get through the first time, and it might be the kind of big effort that often takes two or three rounds to get right. In the meantime, it may help keep push cities in the right direction on more housing for everyone.