photo by: Rochelle Valverde/Journal-World

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured on Jan. 31, 2023.

Lawrence leaders on Tuesday approved a change to the city’s code that will make it easier to add housing density — a revision in the standards for developing detached dwelling units.

The Lawrence City Commission voted unanimously at its meeting on Tuesday to approve a text amendment to the city’s Land Development Code that makes it so all the city’s zoning district types are subject to the same standards for these units, which are structures not attached to other dwellings on the same parcel of land.

Now, two permanently affordable detached dwelling units can be developed on lots with less than 6,000 square feet of area in four of the city’s residential zoning districts, as long as they also have the approval of a special use permit.

Planner Mary Miller, in her presentation to commissioners Tuesday evening, noted that planning staff tried to make “as minimal changes as possible” since the city is currently in the process of rewriting its Land Development Code. The City Commission asked planning staff to look at the change after a recent meeting in which Tenants to Homeowners voiced concern that the existing regulations had the unintended consequence of making it more difficult than necessary to develop two affordable detached dwelling units on the same lot.

“I do think this is an important change as we move forward, as we wait to get to the new code,” Commissioner Brad Finkeldei said. “Certainly, as Mary said there at the end, we initiated the text amendment so we could move forward with some of our affordable housing challenges, and we didn’t quite open up as many lots as we thought. Tenants to Homeowners ended up with some lots that they thought they could build on and they can’t for various reasons because of this, and we’ll fix that.”

Commissioner Amber Sellers added that the change opens up availability for Tenants to Homeowners and other developers interested in adding more permanent affordable housing to have some “nimbleness” to accomplish that.

Previously, a permit was only required for two permanently affordable detached dwelling units on the same lot in one specific residential zoning district type, RS5. Miller said that’s because at the time the existing regulations were approved, this particular type of district was thought of as a “small lot” district, where it made sense to have a special requirement.

“One of the changes we wanted to make was to take away putting the requirement for a (special use permit) on a specific zoning district and putting it on the size of the lot instead,” Miller told the commissioners.

The change standardizes the requirements so the permit process and square footage requirements are the same for all of the residential zoning district types.

Before it was updated, the code didn’t allow for this development on a “nonconforming” lot, which is a tract of land that complied with all applicable dimensional standards like area, width and depth for the zoning district it was located in at the time it was created but doesn’t comply with the minimum standards for the zoning districts of today.