How Small Zoning Code Updates Can Achieve Big Results

AARP Livable Communities connects local leaders and nonprofits with livability experts who can help public officials and residents advance their community's goals and implement positive change. The following examples are the result of examining and making incremental, targeted updates to local zoning codes. 

Establishing Complete Streets 

Courtesy images

The intersection of Main Street and 2nd Street in downtown Evansville, Indiana, and the cover of the November 9, 2021, issue of the Evansville Courier & Press. (Click on the image to read the ordinance text.)

Complete Streets are streets designed in a way that they are safe for all users, including drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.

Complete Streets policies instruct a community to consider the needs of all users when creating or renovating a roadway, and then determine if and how those needs can be met.

AARP Indiana was an integral partner in the city of Evansville, Indiana’s first Complete Streets ordinance, which passed in October 2021. Early in the process, the team was involved in community engagement efforts that gathered public input and built bipartisan support around the policy.

Later, AARP Indiana and the Congress for the New Urbanism helped review the draft ordinance and made recommendations (that were accepted) to set a timeline for the sidewalk width improvements and add the Complete Streets-related updates to the city’s zoning and subdivision code. 

Advancing Missing Middle Housing 

Photos by Kelly Stoddard Poor, AARP Vermont

Examples of Missing Middle Housing in Burlington, Vermont. The presence of multiple front doors on a house is a clue that the home is a multiunit dwelling.

Upon completion of the code audit conducted by the Congress for the New Urbanism, AARP Vermont has been working with the city of Burlington, Vermont, to enable Missing Middle Housing by, among other measures, distinguishing middle housing types (duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, etc.) from large multifamily housing (such as large apartment building); allowing middle housing types in residential zoning districts; and simplifying the development review process.

To help the community understand the housing type, AARP Vermont partnered with Opticos Design, (Missing Middle Housing experts and co-author with AARP of Discovering and Developing Missing Middle Housing) through the AARP Livable Communities Technical Advisors Program.

AARP Vermont and Opticos Design led walking tours so people could see how well Missing Middle Housing fits into single-family neighborhoods. In addition, Opticos demonstrated how existing residential lots can efficiently host a house-sized structure that contains more than one dwelling.

Legalizing ADUs

A code audit by AARP partner WGI, Inc., identified that accessory dwelling units, which are secondary homes or apartments that are created by homeowners on their single-family residential property, were not a defined use in the city’s zoning code.

To promote housing affordability, variety and aging in place, AARP Missouri helped advocate for legalizing ADUs in Kansas City, Missouri, which amended its zoning code in September 2022 to allow ADUs. Consistent with AARP Missouri’s recommendations, the standards do not require additional parking spaces, which many studies have found aren’t needed and limit the ability of property owners to create ADUs. 

_{Scroll down for more about ADUs.}

Supporting Group Housing

After conducting a code audit, the Congress for the New Urbanism recommended that group living facilities be allowed in more parts of Denver, Colorado, and that the code be updated to increase from two to five the number of unrelated people who can live in the same home. The changes enhance the ability to build shared housing for older adults. When opposition arose about the changes, community education and outreach work by AARP Colorado presented information and answered questions about group housing. The updated code remains in place.  

_{Samantha Kanach is a consultant for AARP Livable Communities. Trained as urban planner, she works with the AARP Livable Communities Technical Advisors and Rural Lab programs to support AARP state offices and communities they serve.} 

_{Page published May 2023}

Free AARP Publications About Housing and Zoning

• Enabling Better Places: A Handbook for Improved Neighborhoods
  
• Discovering and Developing Missing Middle Housing
• Re-Legalizing Middle Housing: A Model Act and Guide to Statewide Legislation
• The ABCs of ADUs
• Accessory Dwelling Units Model State Act and Local Ordinance
• Accessory Dwelling Units: A Step by Step Guide to Design and Development