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davis_square2015-03-14 10:17 pm
olszowka.livejournal.com) wrote in davis_square2015-03-14 10:17 pm
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Zoning change and occupancy limits
Recently, I received a letter in the mail from Neraj Tuli of Zone Smart Somerville (www.zonesmartsomerville.org). The letter was urging me to oppose a provision in the proposed zoning changes which would prohibit occupancy of a house or unit by more than four unrelated adults regardless of the size of the house or unit or other mitigating factors. Does anyone know anything about this? I believe I am opposed to this provision, but would like to learn more.
RE: Plus or minus four people
Based on what you say, there is in fact no current city-wide rule barring more than 4 unrelated adults from living together. There is instead what I would have imagined - zoning rules that limit houses to a number of different limits depending on what they're zoned for. Seems like some houses are limited to no more than 8, some to no more than 12, some to larger numbers, and only a relatively small set of properties have no limits.
If you're living in a house zoned for "3-family" and one unit has 2 unrelated people, another has 4, and another has 6, you're still fine, right? That it, it doesn't matter that one of the units has more than 4 unrelated people as long as the whole house is within its limit, yes?
What if you're in a house zoned for two-family and one unit has a related family of 4 adults (married couple plus the parents of one of them, say) and the other unit has 6 unrelated people, I think that would still be okay, because the largest set of unrelated adults you can make in this house is 7, which is below the limit of 8 or fewer. Am I right about that?
RE: Plus or minus four people
There are two issues here. First is the relative looseness of fit between the intent of a law and the mechanism it uses to accomplish that intent. The intent seems clearly ("For purposes of controlling residential density") to set overall limits based on type (< 8 person houses, < 12 person houses, etc.), but to do that it sets a per-dwelling-unit number as the legal standard to enforce. The mechanism to accomplish that intent is to limit occupancy of a dwelling unit to no more than four unrelated people.
The second issue is the slippage between what is permitted and what you can get away with. The folks in the 6 person unit are actually non-compliant, though it could be that they could get away with it if the neighbors were not bothered by noise, etc. enough to notice and report them (and if review weren't triggered by some other factor related to density, like someone noticing that six people were trying to register cars using the same address). Since 4 per dwelling unit is the letter of the law, the fact that there was a "gap" of two people in another unit to keep the property under the intended cap would not be legally helpful.
So, in your final example, you would not be correct. The intent is indeed to regulate overall density, but the mechanism used is to regulate the per-dwelling-unit occupancy. The 6 unrelated people are non-compliant because they are unrelated. If they were related (a married couple and both pairs of their parents, for example) no limit would apply, but there are still no more than four unrelated people permitted in a single dwelling unit.