Opinion: Boulder’s ADU survey needs a redo


I just finished taking the city’s latest online survey about accessory dwelling units. Right off, I found the information in the questions biased toward allowing more ADUs. Then I felt manipulated because I only could see the next question by answering the previous one, but once I got to the end I could see that the cumulative impact of all the proposed changes would be huge.When the city does its analyses of complex issues and asks the citizens to participate, the city staff’s job is to be objective, complete, and support the citizens’ ability to provide informed feedback, not to be advocates. Clearly, proper management and oversight are lacking.
It became apparent that the survey’s underlying motivation was far broader than simply solving a few people’s difficulties with getting through the ADU regulations, probably more easily addressed through a zoning variance process. If all the staff’s proposals were implemented, single-family neighborhoods would become higher-density with lots of duplexes (except those fortunate enough to be protected by covenants or HOAs.) Maybe that’s the real goal. But if these efforts are really about affordable housing (now called “housing variety”), then the primary focus should be where the big benefits are, like having CU provide more on-campus housing for its students, limiting housing demand by restricting office development, and working to remove Colorado’s prohibition on rent control.
Some people do want to build ADUs in or next to their single-family houses. They may have aging relatives to care for, they may want the extra rent money, etc. But let’s be clear — these ADUs will not be affordable housing. For example, an apartment in or behind a house near Chautauqua or Mapleton Hill will rent for a lot more than a market-rate unit on 30th Street. And when the house plus ADU sells, it will be much more expensive than without the ADU.
The opening survey question on parking was a classic. Staff asserted that, “Establishing an accessory unit on a property does not increase the occupancy limits for a property, so the parking demand should not be any greater than that of a single-family dwelling that was adding a roomer.” But most people don’t have roomers. And the very reason for building the ADU was to add more occupants. The survey also pushed for larger ADUs, so the next step would obviously be to relax occupancy limits.
The survey then goes on to argue that the current ADU parking requirement for one off-street space be eliminated in areas that do not have neighborhood parking programs. But a little research shows that there are big parking problems just outside these NPP areas, e.g. on 20th Street just south of Baseline, which is jammed with cars, or in Martin Acres, to which in-commuting CU students and staff drive, park, and then take the bus using their free EcoPasses. And there are 11 more survey questions, many just as bad as this one.
These sorts of internet surveys are inevitably biased. The advocates get all their supporters to take the survey, and then those who question the changes have to get their supporters to do likewise. But the advocates are generally much more focused, so they are disproportionately represented. It’s impossible to fairly adjust for such biases.
Far better would be to honestly focus on one neighborhood at a time, and go door to door or mail surveys to every residence. The results would provide the basis for starting a neighborhood planning process, where the folks who live there actually get to decide what they want.
This problem of biased processes is exacerbated by the Council Agenda Committee’s inadequate review of materials that come to the council. The CAC was created to ensure that the staff work provided to the council and citizens contains complete, accurate, and unbiased information, so that debates are properly informed. But now, both citizens and council spend far too much time trying to correct inadequate staff work. Given this lack of performance, the council should be holding the city manager and city attorney responsible. But politeness seems to have become more important than fixing problems; recent manager/attorney evaluations lacked any negative comments or demands for needed improvements.
Given all of the above, perhaps what makes sense is for the council to ask the newly appointed Housing Advisory Board to take over the ADU outreach process and make it work properly. Based on my recent experience with the elections working group, properly empowered citizens can keep these complex processes on track.


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