The Kenton County Planning Commission approved a set of proposed regulations on accessory dwelling units in Independence this week.
The proposals will now return to the city for final approval.
Accessory dwelling units, or 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 planning commission is the first stop on the road to enacting the reforms. Independence City Administrator Chris Moriconi explained the council’s rationale for the proposals at the meeting.
“We right now we have a permit for a 24′ by 24′ ADU, which is really a mini house…,” Moriconi said. “We’re fearful of dozens of mini houses popping up in people’s backyards.”
Currently, accessory dwelling units are allowed in most residential zones throughout the city on lots containing at least 5,000 square feet of land, with some exceptions.
The new regulations would allow the construction of ADUs in the city’s residential rural estate, or R-RE, zones. They would 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 would be allowed as conditional uses in the city’s residential large lot subdivision, or R-LLS, zones. Additionally, any newly constructed ADUs would need to conform to the city’s design standards, which currently apply to primary, single-family housing units.
Documents submitted to the county for this week’s planning commission meeting include 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) already 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 they are already permitted
Discussion of the issue among the planning commissioners was minimal, but one commissioner, Bromley Rep. Gailen Bridges, asked what would happen if a lot with an ADU built for, say, a family member gets sold to a landlord who wants to rent out both structures.
“Can you rent both of them because one of them has to be empty?” Bridges asked. “Does he have to tear it down?”
“This is still a new area for us in terms of how to regulate these uses,” said Kenton County Planning and Development Services Director of Planning Andy Videkovich. “Ownership, obviously, is one of the harder things to regulate. I don’t really know the answer to your question.”
Edgewood Rep. Paul Darpel thought the properties in such a scenario could be grandfathered in as a previous non-conforming use, but Bridges questioned if that could happen if regulations were in place.
“I think on the front end, when we’re getting permits for these things, we certainly have ways to verify and make sure that is noted in the permit,” Videkovich said, “that as a condition of this, the property owner has to live in one or the other. But, as you said, in the future, if something’s sold in that particular case, it becomes non-conforming or, worst case scenario, it’s not complying with the permit.”
There was little discussion of the issue beyond this, and no members of the public spoke about the issue one way or another.
Now that the planning commission has approved the proposal, the regulations will return to the city in the coming months for final approval.
