The Independence City Council issued final approval of restrictions on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in the city Monday night with a 5-1 vote.
Council Member Carol Franzen was the only member to cast a no vote, she said, because she was “against these things altogether.”
ADUs are small housing structures, such as guesthouses, built in addition to the main residential structure.
The Independence City Council resolved in August to begin the process of reforming its regulations on accessory dwellings after it received its first-ever request from a property owner to build one since the city rewrote its zoning ordinance in 2020.
The city sent a draft ordinance to the Kenton County Planning Commission for approval thereafter. The planning commission approved it in September.
The new regulations restrict the number of zones in which residents, besides the applicant mentioned above, can build ADUs. The new regulations allow the construction of ADUs in the city’s residential rural estate, or R-RE, zones. They disallow ADUs in the city’s residential compact subdivision, or R-CPS, zones, residential conventional subdivision, or R-CVS, zones and residential mixed, or R-M, zones.
Units are now allowed as conditional uses in the city’s residential large lot subdivision, or R-LLS, zones. Additionally, any newly constructed ADUs must conform to the city’s design standards, which already apply to primary, single-family housing units.
Documents submitted to the county for last month’s planning commission meeting lay out other restrictions and allowances, as well:
- ADUs’ square footage must be included in the square footage limitations for each zone but are exempt from lot area unit limits and density standards
- Only one ADU may be established per single-family or two-family lot
- No ADUs on lots smaller than 5,000 square feet
- ADUs can be attached or detached from the primary housing structure
- ADU setbacks have to conform to setback limits for other accessory structures (e.g. utility sheds and the like) regulated by the city
- The maximum size of an ADU must be 75% of the living area of the primary structure or 800 square feet, whichever is less
- ADUs can’t be taller than the lot’s primary structure
- A lot’s owner must occupy either the lot’s primary structure or the ADU
- Property owners can rent out their ADUs as short-term rentals (also known as AirBnBs) but only in zones where such rentals are already permitted
There was little discussion of the matter beyond Franzen’s comments.
