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PLN25-0155 - Zoning Ordinance Amendment Regarding Universal Design Ordinance Updates - Citywide. A proposed amendment to the Alameda Municipal Code to revise sections relating to the Universal Design Ordinance in Alameda Municipal Code Sections 30-18 Universal Residential Design to update references regarding the Community Development/Planning Department/Director and Commission on Persons with Disabilities, to authorize the Building Official to make determinations regarding undue financial hardship waivers, to authorize the Planning Director to preapprove universal design feature checklists for units purchased prior to completion, and to provide certain types of construction an exemption to certain accessibility requirements. The proposal is categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act pursuant to Section 15061(b)(3), the common sense exemption where it can be seen with certainty that the proposed zoning text amendment has no possibility of having a significant effect on the environment because they relate to universal residential design standards, and a permit would be required for a project to apply these standards, at which time project specific impacts would be considered.
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To: Honorable President and Members of the Planning Board
From: Steven Buckley, Planning Services Manager and Secretary to the Board
Allen Tai, Director of Planning, Building and Transportation
SUMMARY
The Alameda Municipal Code (AMC) provides for universal residential design standards applied to all new residential development to provide housing that meets the City’s diverse housing needs. This is necessary to serve the people of the City of Alameda with mobility issues or who may develop mobility issues with age, as well as enhancing the full life cycle use of housing, without regard to the functional limitations or disabilities of a home’s occupants. These standards apply to all new residential construction, so the zoning code also provides exemptions for specific types of residential construction that preclude certain aspects of universal design, as well as providing a process for the Planning Board to grant waivers to provisions of the section if certain findings can be made.
Staff has assembled a group of related provisions and proposed edits as shown in the attachments to this report. The proposed amendments are intended to update all references to the Community Development Department and Director to instead reference the Planning Department and Director, to authorize the Building Official to make a determination on waiver applicability rather than the Planning Board for financial hardship due to site specific conditions, to authorize the Planning Director, rather than the Planning Board, to preapprove universal design feature checklists for units purchased prior to completion of construction, and to provide an exemption for certain types of townhome construction which currently require a waiver to meet certain accessibility requirements.
BACKGROUND
General History. The City’s existing zoning code includes a section regarding universal residential design. Originally adopted in November of 2017, this section has continued in the same form since adoption. The ordinance at the time of adoption was found to be substantially similar to the State’s model universal design local ordinance adopted by the Department of Housing and Community Development.
Principles of Universal Residential Design. The original Universal Residential Design Ordinance supports general welfare and housing needs for individuals with mobility difficulties or other functional limitations by ensuring that new housing are required to provide special accommodations to allow independent living. For example, these accommodations include a requirement for accessible exterior access to an accessible entry to meet visitability standards for all new residential dwellings, while also defining what exactly constitutes an accessible exterior access and accessible entry.
There are two types of these accommodations that apply to residential developments; visitability accommodations which apply to all new units within the development, and universal design accommodations, which only apply to 30% of new units within developments that contain at least 5 new units. These accommodations are required of all development that needs a land use entitlement as part of the approval that is submitted after the effective date of the original ordinance. The ordinance also requires any such entitlement to include conditions of approval that ensure compliance with the regulations of the universal residential design ordinance.
To this end, the Universal Residential Design Ordinance provides specific features that must be incorporated into new residential development to ensure that at least some housing units are both universally designed to accommodate and to be visitable by all individuals regardless of ability. The ordinance also provides a process by which a development may receive a waiver from the Planning Board to waive any of the universal residential design provisions if specific findings can be made, as well as enforcement procedures, and a requirement to report to the Planning Board and Commission on Disability annually on implementation of the ordinance.
ANALYSIS
Housing, Economic and Historic Analysis. The City’s 2040 General Plan Land Use Element Policy LU-24 calls for annual review of the City’s Universal Residential Design Ordinance and emphasizes the importance of using current best practices to ensure that implementation is successful in meeting the diverse range of needs of Alamedans without undue constraints on housing development. In addition, the City’s 2023 Housing Element Update included Program 21, a commitment to annual review, and amend as necessary, the Municipal Code to ensure consistency with State Housing Government Code requirements and remove or lessen constraints on new housing development.
The requirement for Universal Residential Design can, in some circumstances, be considered a constraint on new housing development, as it imposes certain requirements for accessibility on developers of projects proposed residential units, which aren’t always feasible to satisfy. For example, in the case of townhome developments (multi-story multi-unit residential ownership or rental housing with side-by-side entryways and shared walls), where the ground floor is almost always at least partially dedicated to parking, visitability requirements are often very difficult to satisfy with common floor plans, meaning developers have oftentimes needed to request a waiver from the Planning Board. This results in an extended timeline to accommodate the required noticing and appeal periods, as well as increased risk and costs to the developer, which in tandem constitutes an undue burden on some building types. Staff has proposed a partial exemption for development that means specific standards which would relieve this burden by narrowly exempting these development types from only those requirements that are infeasible due to the type of building.
Floor Area Criterion. Often, townhouse style development will contain first story parking, which limits the floor area needed to include the rooms required by the visitability standards on the first floor. Where townhouses are developed without first story parking, they will often front directly onto the street, such that the unit entrance is above the grade of the public right-of-way due to the flood hazard present in many parts of the City, necessitating stairs to the unit entry, which conflicts with visitabiltiy requirements. The first proposed exemption is intended to address the issue of visitability requirements applied to townhomes and similar types of construction by amending subsection 30-18.3 Scope, Application, and Exemptions to provide a partial exemption to aspects of the visitabiltiy requirements, only for units that meet a specific criterion. The exemption would be partial insofar as it would only apply to those visitability requirements that are precluded by the building type such as the accessible entrance and would not apply to other visitability requirements such as blocking within the walls to support grab bars.
The recommended criterion for exemption is units which have no more than 150 square foot area of habitable space on the first story. The 150 square foot threshold is recommended based on a review of floor plans for previously approved townhomes in Alameda, as well as estimations of the area required to meet the visitability regulations. State Law allows local jurisdictions to adopt ordinances permitting efficiency units that are a minimum of 150 square feet, this represents the minimum unit size allowable under State Law. By establishing the 150 square foot maximum area for exemption eligibility, townhouse style buildings that don’t have limitations to their accessibility will still be required to meet visitability accommodations. These changes will lessen constraints on new housing development by relieving most projects that propose townhomes, or other unit types that meet the specified criterion of the visitability requirements, which had previously required an additional Planning Board meeting to provide a waiver for.
Site Area Criterion. Likewise, most townhome developments are only able to meet the 30% universally designed units standard if the development is large enough to diversify building types or leverage a density bonus. Therefore, in conjunction with the floor area criterion, in order to address the inability of smaller townhouse developments to meet 30% universally designed units, projects which meet the above floor area criterion could be further exempt from the requirement for 30% of units to be universally designed. The recommended criterion for exemption to the 30% universally design standard would be developments that contain fewer than 10 units. By establishing the 9-unit maximum for exemption eligibility, larger developers that can diversify building types or utilize a density bonus will still be required to meet universal design accommodations, however smaller developments between 5 and 9 units will no longer need the additional Planning Board meeting to provide a waiver.
Decision-Making Authority for Pre-Approval. The next proposed change modifies the decision-making authority for preapproval of the universal design features checklist or brochure provided to prospective buyers of units in a residential development that includes an on-site sales office in which an individual may purchase a unit prior to completion of construction. Specifically, subsection 30-18.4 New Construction Requirements is proposed to be amended to change the decisionmaker from “Planning Board” to “Planning Director”.
Decision-Making Authority for Financial Hardship Waiver. The third proposed change modifies the decision-making authority for a specific type of waiver by amending subsection 30-18.5 Waivers to remove the Planning Board finding that the requested waiver is necessary to avoid undue financial hardship caused by on-site conditions, and to create a new section to authorize the Building Official to make a determination regarding whether a waiver is necessary to avoid undue financial hardship caused by on-site conditions. This determination will be made by the Building Official because of their familiarity with applying the Building Code standard for financial hardship, which is defined as the cost of compliance exceeding 20% of project costs without compliance. Also notable, the amendment would avoid conflicting decisions by necessitating that the Planning Board grant the waiver once the Building Official has made a determination and removing the finding regarding financial hardship from the possible Planning Board findings, so as to avoid having both entities consider the request independently. This change would also include the addition of an appeal process for the Building Official’s determination, consistent with the existing procedures for Building Official determination appeal. The current updates to this section reflect the Planning Board’s extensive discussion on this issue.
Applicability Appeal. The next proposed change removes the entirety of 30-18.3(d), which allows for the determination of applicability of the universal design standards to be appealed to the Planning Board. The City Attorney’s office suggested that the proper remedy for an applicant who disagrees with the objective standards would be to apply for a waiver from the Planning Board, which serves the same purpose as an appeal, with more clearly defined procedures and findings. This also streamlines the process as discussed by the Planning Board.
Other Edits. Finally, a few additional edits are proposed throughout the ordinance amendment to subsections 30-18.3 Scope, Application, and Exemptions, 30-18.5 Waivers, and 30-18.6 Enforcement and Annual Reporting to change references to the Community Development Department and Community Development Director to instead reference the Planning Department and Planning Director respectively. Likewise, references to the Commission on Disability have been updated to Commission on Persons with Disabilities.
Specific Proposed Amendments. The Zoning Ordinance section that addresses Universal Residential Design is AMC Section 30-18. The following summarizes the proposed amendments, as shown in Exhibit 1.
• Replaces the words “Community Development” with “Planning” in reference to the department responsible for receiving land use entitlement applications. (AMC section 30-18.3(a))
• Adds an exemption to visitability requirements for new units that meet a defined criterion. (AMC section 30-18.3(c)(7))
• Adds an additional exemption to universal design requirements for new units that meet a defined criterion. (AMC section 30-18.3(c)(7))
• Removed a provision that allows the determination regarding the applicability of the universal design standards to be appealed to the Planning Board. (AMC section 30-18.3 (d))
• Replaces the word “Board” with “Director” in reference to the entity responsible for preapproval of the brochure or checklist of optional universal design features for units that are sold prior to completion of construction. Also replaces the word “discretionary” with “building” in reference to the type of permits that are reviewed concurrently with the brochure or checklist. (AMC section 30-18.4(c))
• Removes from the list of Planning Board findings that are sufficient for waiver approval the finding that the waiver is necessary to avoid undue financial hardship. A remaining finding is renumbered to accommodate this revision. (AMC section 30-18.5(a))
• Adds a section that authorizes the Building Official to make a determination that a requested waiver is necessary to avoid an undue financial hardship caused by site specific conditions, and in doing so grants the waiver without Planning Board findings. (AMC section 30-18.5(d))
• Replaces the words “Community Development” with “Planning” in reference to the department responsible for annual reporting to the Planning Board and Commission on Persons with Disabilities. (AMC section 30-18.6)
• Replaces the words “Commission on Disability” with “Commission on Persons with Disabilities” in reference to the body responsible for receiving annual reports and waiver requests. (AMC section 30-18.6)
CEQA Analysis. The proposed amendments are exempt from CEQA pursuant to section 15061(b)(3), the common sense exemption where it can be seen with certainty that the proposed zoning text amendments have no possibility of having a significant effect on the environment because they relate to universal residential design standards, and a permit would be required for a project to apply these standards at which time project specific impacts would be considered. It would otherwise be too speculative to consider citywide impacts of the types of effects of these text amendments.
Prior Review. The Planning Board conducted a duly noticed Study Session to consider and provide feedback on the proposed ordinance amendments on February 24, 2025. The study session identified a number of specific revisions, including direction to clarify the new exemptions (7 & 8), define the objective basis for proposed Building Official waiver, and create an appeal process for waivers, as well as other revisions to clarify thresholds and applicability.
Additionally, the Commission on Persons with Disabilities conducted a study session to consider and provide feedback on the proposed ordinance amendments on March 12th, 2025. The study session identified a number of specific revisions, including direction to update the name of the Commission on Persons with Disabilities wherever it appears in the ordinance and clarify the criteria for the proposed Building Official waiver. In addition, the Commission on Persons with Disabilities requested an additional meeting to review and provide feedback on the proposed amendment prior to introduction before the City Council.
RECOMMENDATION
Conduct a Public Hearing to consider the recommended amendments to the Alameda Municipal Code, Section 30-18 related to universal residential design and adopt the draft Resolution recommending to City Council that it approve the amendments.
Respectfully Submitted,
Steven Buckley, Planning Services Manager
Prepared by,
Tristan Suire, Planner II
Exhibits:
1. Draft Resolution
2. Draft Amendments (Redline)