Gainesville Undoes Zoning Reforms, Restores Single-Family Zoning
Gainesville Reverses Zoning Reforms, Reinstates Single-Family Zoning
Summary :
Gainesville, Florida was the first city in Florida to eliminate the single-family zoning designation, but has now become the first city in the United States to reinstate it. Last year, the city passed ordinances that converted single-family zoning into neighborhood residential zoning to allow for more housing options such as duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes. However, new commissioners expressed their disapproval and overturned the changes. Homeowners were concerned that developers would change their community, but the commissioners who supported the reversal did not offer any new solutions for the housing crisis.
Description :
Gainesville will become the first city in the US to reverse zoning changes that aimed to make housing more affordable by offering a broader range of housing options in residential neighborhoods.
The Gainesville City Commission passed ordinances reversing zoning changes made last October that eliminated single-family-only zoning in the city. The new zoning was hoped to offer more affordable housing alternatives. According to Nicholas Rubino, writing for WUFT, new commissioners expressed their disapproval of such broad zoning changes.
Commissioner Ed Book admitted to the city’s housing shortage, but he also acknowledged that “those gaps and those deficiencies are not going to be solved by the ordinances that were attempted to be put in place in 2022.” The commissioners that supported the reversal did not provide any new solutions for the housing crisis.
The October ordinances replaced single-family zoning with a new designation called “neighborhood residential zoning,” which loosened zoning restrictions to allow for apartment buildings. Cities like Seattle have made similar changes, but the impact of the new terminology remains unclear.
As an article in the Gainesville Sun points out, “The changes allowed developers the opportunity to build duplexes, triplexes and, in rarer occasions, quadplexes anywhere citywide based on an available lot size, similar to how housing is currently allowed in southeast Gainesville.” Gainesville, the first city in Florida to eliminate the single-family zoning designation, “will now be the first in the country to reinstate it − both coming within a six-month span.”
sources:
1- melk360.com ,Gainesville Reverses Zoning Reforms, Reinstates Single-Family Zoning ,2023-04-21 13:00:00
2- https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/04/122742-gainesville-reverses-zoning-reforms-reinstates-single-family-zoning?rand=493
