The General Assembly has passed a bill to protect homeowners from the kind of mass destruction of single-family zoning which was attempted in Atlanta last year. The provision, contained in HB 1405, was originated by two former Buckhead state representatives– Beth Beskin (2015-2019) and myself (1993-2003)– and sponsored (originally as HB 1406) by Fulton County Reps. Chuck Martin and Jan Jones.
Homeowners owe a great debt of thanks especially to Martin, who shepherded the bill all the way.
For technical legal reasons, the state cannot outright prohibit local governments from eliminating single-family zoning. But this bill does the next-best thing: it erects several very important procedural barriers to make sure that no local government can again try to do this without extensive public notification and involvement.
Last year then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, then-Planning Commissioner Tim Keane, and City Councilman Amir Farokhi made two runs at mass Atlanta zoning changes. Farokhi’s proposal was a bald-faced rezoning of over 2,000 residential parcels from single-family to multi-family all over the city. Bottoms’ and Keane’s proposal was more subtle and more dangerous: to give, to anyone who owns a parcel which is zoned single-family residential, blanket permission to ignore the zoning provisions for lot size, number of residences, parking, set-back lines, and so on – in short, to “end single family-zoning,” as the city’s proposed housing plan explicitly said.
The two proposals ignited a storm of opposition from homeowners all over the city. Leaders of 19 NPU’s, from Buckhead to Midtown to Southwest Atlanta, led by Gloria Cheatham of NPU-A, joined in meetings, phone calls, and letters, asking the city not to rezone en masse. Making sure the public was aware of what was being proposed was considerably more than half the battle. That burden fell on the neighborhoods. The proponents would have been perfectly happy to rush the changes through without adequate citizen debate, as has happened in some other places in the country. Eventually, Farokhi’s proposal was defeated and Bottoms backed off. Now she is gone and so is Keane, and the new Dickens administration seems uninclined to pursue these initiatives– at least for now. All Atlanta homeowners should hope that the new mayor doesn’t change his mind.
At the height of the battle last year, I called Beskin to discuss this idea and had to get the state to help the neighborhoods. Together we approached Martin, then got language drafted which became HB 1406 and discussed it with a number of people at the Capitol. Martin became the lead sponsor and (with help from other supportive legislators, of course) got it passed, as a part of HB 1405, a revision to the Zoning Procedures Act.
The provision guarantees neighborhoods the right to notification and the opportunity for input if a local government tries to take actions which will, in their effect, “authorize multi-family uses of property [which is zoned single-family residential], or… grant blanket permission….for property owners to deviate from the existing zoning requirements of single-family residential zoning”, including actions that “provide for abolition of…single-family residential zoning.” It covers “zoning decisions” (a legal term of art) initiated by the government, not individual rezonings requested by the property owner and dealing with that parcel only. They still have to go (in Atlanta) through the normal NPU process.
The bill requires that the government:
– Post notice on each affected premise; or, if there are more than 500 parcels affected, every 500 feet in the affected area;
– Pass the proposal at two regular meetings of the governing authority, not just one;
– Hold at least two public hearings before taking up the proposal, at least one of them in the evening, so that citizens can more easily attend;
– Advertise the hearings in the local newspaper, and not in the legal ad section.
It is, as Martin says, a “transparency” bill to make the government a “good neighbor.” Frankly, my own hope is that the hurdles it creates will convince Atlanta to back off permanently from again trying to force mass high-density development into neighborhoods that don’t want it. At a minimum, it will ensure that the city can’t try to do it in the dark again.
This kind of predatory land-use decision-making is one of the main reasons why many Buckhead citizens want to get away from the Atlanta city government. Whether or not that happens, this bill provides real protection against a real underlying problem for homeowners in all of Atlanta– and all over the state.
Atlanta businessman Bob Irvin served 15 years in the state House of Representatives,10 of them as House minority leader.
