News

Housing study recommendations encourage the city to ‘be creative’

By Patrick Adrian
[email protected]
CLAREMONT — The Claremont Planning Board sat down with regional planners and City Planning and Development Director Nancy Merrill to discuss an array of recommendations in a housing study Thursday night. The study was funded by the city last year to better align Claremont’s zoning regulations with its goals to grow the community and expand the diversity of housing options while improving and maintaining the city’s housing stock and historic character.

In 2018, Claremont contracted the Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Planning Commission to complete the housing study to produce recommendations to align the city’s ordinances and regulations with the housing goals outlined in the city’s 2017 master plan. The city funded the study through a $25,000 grant provided by Plan NH.

Merrill said the purpose of the meeting was to answer questions about the current draft of the study and make any potential revisions. Steve Schneider and Olivia Uyizeye, of the Regional Planning Commission, and Mike Kiess, workforce housing coordinator for Vital Communities, also attended.

“The city’s [goal] was how to make its land use regulations more housing friendly and approachable for the community,” Schneider told the planning board.

The study makes recommendations across a range of categories: lot sizes, parking, water and sewage access, property maintenance codes and housing types.

One recommendation to expand the service zone requirement to use municipal water and sewage — currently from properties within 200 feet to 300 feet of a main line — resonated strongly with planning board members.

Schneider said that the biggest advantage for getting more homes on municipal water and sewer lines is that it immediately increases the value of a property.

For a residence on a septic system, the city would typically wait until the septic system fails to implement to switch to municipal, according to Merrill.

Expanding the buffer would only increase coverage to under 100 occupied parcels, whose dwellings use well or septic. But the change would also expand service to vacant parcels from 318 to 344. When factoring new housing types on those properties, that change could have a much wider impact.

For instance, one recommendation from the study is to make regulations more flexible for creating accessible dwelling units (ADUs). ADUs are a multi-resident housing type in which the owner lives on the property, such as if a homeowner were to build a separate dwelling unit in the basement or a top a garage. At a planning board meeting on Aug. 28, Schneider told the planning board that currently the city’s ordinances are too narrow and inflexible toward ADUs, such as a requirement that the owner must occupy the main or larger dwelling unit. Schneider also said that sometimes the owner does not require the larger living space and would rather, for example, rent the house to a family and take the smaller unit for oneself.

Another housing type that garnered interest were cottage courts. A cottage court is when two or more independent, similar sized residential units occupy a property, sharing a driveway and perhaps some utilities. A cottage court exists on a single property, without requiring a subdivision.

Merrill said that a cottage court might be a creative and attractive option to meet the needs of the region’s growing population of seniors, as well as other segments of the population. She also noted that Claremont does not have much available land space to build new neighborhoods. Cottage courts could be built in existing neighborhoods in empty or razed lots.

Schneider said that the study’s expectation is not that Claremont adopts every recommendation, but engage the community in thinking more creatively and flexibly about its housing needs.

“What we’re trying to do here is [to] encourage the city to be creative,” Schneider said. “There are lots of good examples nationally of things that have been successful, so don’t be afraid to take a deeper look into some of them, and if they make sense for Claremont, start [to] put together regulations and see if they work.”

Avatar photo

As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.