09/27/2023

Zoning for Infill Housing: Addressing Barriers to Development

The communities of the Northeast Ohio First Suburbs Consortium are historic, walkable, and affordable places to live; however, largely as a result of recent demolition work, these communities also have more than 5,000 vacant single-family lots scattered in existing neighborhoods. This provides a tremendous opportunity for infill housing in these neighborhoods, but outdated zoning regulations can be an impediment to building on these lots. More than 40% of single-family lots do not meet local code requirements for minimum lot size, and more than 45% of these lots do not meet local code requirements for minimum lot width. Over the course of two years, the First Suburbs Consortium, the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, the Cuyahoga County Land Bank, and local communities including the City of Euclid have partnered to address these zoning challenges.

In this session, learn about the zoning issues identified by this partnership and the free tools produced to help address them. These include a checklist for how to assess your code, a strategy guide for how to approach local code updates, a tool that helps communities test zoning changes, a guidebook on approaching design guidelines, and approaches to incentivizing infill. You will also hear from the County Land Bank as they build new homes on vacant lots they own and from the City of Euclid as they update their zoning to specifically address this issue. Together, this unique partnership is addressing issues with local zoning to get more infill housing built, and you can use these tools to address the issue in your community as well.

Speakers
Patrick Hewitt
Jennifer Kuzma
Patrick Grogan-Myers
Jennifer Vazquez-Norman