BERKELEY — Berkeley’s newly adopted accessory dwelling unit ordinance aims to balance state demands for more residential development with fire safety concerns in the hills.
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Required to amend the ordinance to be in line with state law, the Berkeley City Council took up the issue during its meeting Tuesday.
The Planning Commission had proposed the council adopt an ordinance that would allow accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, to be up to 1,200 square feet and 25 feet tall regardless of whether the unit is attached or detached. Lot line setbacks would be capped at 4 feet and rooftop decks would be permitted as open space with an additional 9 feet of height allowed for access and safety railings.
Councilmember Brent Blackaby had alternatively proposed stricter size guidelines in the Hillside Overlay Zone, an eastern swath of land at high risk of wildfires based on assessments by Cal Fire.
Blackaby’s proposal called for limiting ADUs in the hills to 850 feet if it’s a studio or one-bedroom or 1,000 square feet if it has two bedrooms or more. Permitted heights would vary. An existing structure converted into an ADU could remain at its existing height and attached units could be either 25 feet tall or the height of the existing building, whichever is lower.
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New detached ADUs on a lot with a new or existing single family or multifamily home could be up to 16 feet tall, or up to 18 feet tall on a lot with a new or existing multi-family, multi-story building. An additional 2 feet would be permitted if the lot was within half a mile of a major transit stop or high quality transit corridor.
Rooftop decks would not be permitted on new accessory units in the hills, under Blackaby’s proposal.
His proposal was meant to be in response to a city report published July 15 detailing evacuation times during tsunami and fire emergencies. It found that evacuation times in the hills could range between 45 minutes and more than 4 hours depending on time of day, day of the week, season of the year and location.
The report, conducted by KLD Associates on behalf of the city, recommended Berkeley adopt more restrictive ADU requirements for the hills because developing the maximum number of accessory units allowed would increase evacuation times by up to 102%.
Maximum ADU development would be reached if every home added two units and a junior accessory dwelling unit, which must be built within the footprint of the existing home. If that happened, the area would go from about 9,000 homes to more than 27,000.
“The results are sobering,” Blackaby said. “This is the bare minimum.”
Councilmember Shoshana O’Keefe agreed with Blackaby, having co-sponsored the proposal with Mayor Adena Ishii. O’Keefe said she’s a “maximalist when it comes to preventing density in the fire zone” and argued for complying with state law but not allowing more density than required, including issues like roof decks.
“Even the marginal things matter to me. I really want to take every opportunity to minimize the more fire fuel and certainly more density in the hills,” O’Keefe said.
Aiming to strike a compromise, Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani proposed the ordinance limit all detached AUDs proposed in the hillside overlay area to 20 feet and size to no more than 1,200 square feet. Kesarwani also proposed allowing rooftop decks.
Her driving argument for being more generous on the unit sizes was concern for seniors who plan to age in their additional unit or those with wheelchairs who might need larger spaces to navigate through it.
“I’m personally not willing to deny a couple the living space they need to age in place,” Kesarwani said.
A majority of the council ultimately sided with Kesarwani’s proposal with only Blackaby and O’Keefe abstaining from the vote and all others in favor.
Additional state-required changes to the ordinance include the removal of off-street parking requirements in the hillside and clarification that one conversion ADU, one new construction unit and one junior ADU, which are required to be built within the footprint of an existing home, can be all built on a single lot.