According to The Seattle Times, the Queen Anne Community Council is again seeking to block Seattle legislation that would ease restrictions on backyard cottages and mother-in-law apartments, also known as accessory dwelling units or ADUs. The group recently filed an appeal that is expected to stop the legislation from being enacted for at least several months. An earlier challenge sidelined the effort for two years. The proposed law would allow a cottage and an apartment on the same lot and would amend the parking laws by not requiring off street parking for the ADUs.
Cottages would be allowed on smaller lots and up to 12 unrelated people would be allowed to live on a lot with a cottage and a mother-in-law, up from eight unrelated people. The city also would move aggressively to limit the size of new single-family houses on properties with or without accessory units.
When the Queen Anne Community Council challenged that determination in 2016 and won, Seattle was ordered to conduct a more thorough review by completing an environmental impact statement. The Queen Anne group’s new appeal says the city’s environmental impact statement was inadequate and says the changes would hurt Seattle. It says the statement failed to properly address impacts such as the destruction of older homes, the displacement of populations, stresses on public utilities and the availability of on-street parking.
“The proposed legislation contains provisions that will eliminate single-family zoning in Queen Anne and within every neighborhood throughout the city,” the appeal says. “This unprecedented and wholesale land-use change will negatively impact over 135,000 single-family properties and over 350,000 residents that choose to live in single-family homes.”
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