Unbuilt lot percentages = resiliency and sustainable opportunity. Further, require they be soil. Richmond can't be resilent or sustainable without soil, trees, and solar!
Unbuilt Lot Percentages
Why maintain today’s code regarding unbuilt lot percentages? Because to lessen any percentage of unbuilt lot space directly devastates Richmond’s remaining tree canopy and urban resiliency. Zoning knows residential yards are where 90% of the City’s trees reside. Zoning knows permeable soil and plants are critical to combating concrete’s heat islands, flooding, carbonization, and damaged air quality. Zoning knows unbuilt lot percentages affect solar envelope/shadow modeling to ensure all residents can be net-zero.Richmond's tree canopy and soil have already alarmingly, critically declined; yards are where 90% of our trees reside: we must protect every inch!
Only IF unbuilt lot percentages are MAINTAINED will Richmond not decimate our natural, critical infrastructure!
Tree wells and newly planted trees can’t compare. In year one, 15- 30% of urban trees typically die, and unwatered urban sites lose up to 90% of young trees. How many saplings in tree wells have you seen being watered by residents, Richmond? Only about 50-65% of new trees survive past the critical multi-year establishment phase.
Don't even mention the words "tree fund" to us - for 20 years the world has known that 98% of tree funds don’t work! Yet NOW you want to talk tree funds? C'mon, RVA, do better!
ADUs
Maintaining ADUs to 500sf (and removing the 1/3 of floor area, which residents mistakenly thought meant the footprint, thus remaining in scale, not the total volume!) protects tree canopy, soil, neighbors’ solar opportunities and ensures affordability.
Further, ADUs should be restricted to lots of primary RESIDENCES.
ADUs must conform to existing code’s lot coverage, height limits, and property line setbacks.
Further, ADUs must not overshadow neighbors' solar access to maintain food garden and solar resilience.
The reason ADUs were approved was that council envisioned little granny flats, not entire full-scale homes next to an existing house, sandwiched between neighbors, blocking their solar!
This Fan ADU is less than the size Code Refresh wants to expand to on every lot, by right! Note how it completely fills the yard compared to its neighbor (the ADU belongs to the brick house, second from the end).
In Westwood, Randolph, and across the City neighbors are already horribly impacted by what is allowed before Code Refresh. ADUs must not take solar from existing communities and harm neighbors! Zoning must TIGHTEN, not loosen, ADU requirements!
You see why other localities require the following:
- A lease term for the rental of an ADU of 30 consecutive days or longer; NO SHORT TERM RENTALS!
- Replacement of a primary dwelling's required parking if the construction of the ADU eliminates such parking;
- Dedicated parking for the ADU;
- Limits on floor area, lot coverage, and impervious area of an ADU of no less than (i) 350 square feet on lots less than 2,500 square feet and (ii) 500 square feet on lots 2,500 square feet or greater;
- Compliance with (i) building codes, including the requirements of the Uniform Statewide Building Code (§ 36-97 et seq.), for an accessory dwelling unit if the ADU is attached or for a dwelling unit if the ADU is detached; (ii) water, sewer, septic, emergency access, flood zone, and stormwater requirements; (iii) historic and architectural districts and corridor protection restrictions; and (iv) Air Installations Compatible Use Zone restrictions;
- Owner occupancy of the ADU or the primary dwelling, but not both, only at the time an application is submitted to construct or convert an accessory dwelling unit;
- That the ADU shall be no more than 500 feet from the primary dwelling;
- No ADUs on a residential lot that has more than one dwelling unit; and
- No ADUs sold separately or subdivided from the primary dwelling.
Definition of Family
Before letting Code Refresh expand the definition of family in blanket zoning, how many properties actually rent with more than 3 unrelated people?
The average Richmonders’ household size is 2.14 people - well under the current cap! If most Richmond households are already quite smaller than three unrelated people, the three-person limit isn't the constraint on housing choice that Code Refresh's supporters suggest it is.
Well-documented research shows the negative impacts of crowding. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets the threshold for overcrowding at homes with more than one person per habitable room, excluding functional spaces like the kitchen and any bathrooms. The threshold for severe overcrowding is 1.5 people per room. Once a home crosses this threshold, sanitation and air quality suffer, and fire, pathogen, and violence risks accelerate.
A blanket change is the wrong tool for a very narrow problem. Other Virginia and Virginia-adjacent localities handle this exact situation through a conditional or special-use-permit pathway rather than a blanket rezoning: Williamsburg allows a single-family home to go from three to four unrelated occupants only with administrative approval, a minimum 2,000 square feet of living space, and additional required parking.
Richmond can continue to allow this via the SUP process: case-by-case, with inspection conditions attached for the specific blocks where the demand is real, instead of loosening the standard citywide with Code Refresh.
Critics say that to allow more roommates by filing a Special Use Permit (SUP) would inundate, absolutely clog City Hall! A simple query can answer that: how many SUPs have been filed in the last 5-20 years to expand a home's occupancy?
The properties where the cap possibly "limits" are concentrated in a few pockets: VCU/the Fan, Church Hill/Union Hill/Fulton/Shockoe Bottom, Barton Heights, Brookland Park/Battery/Highland Park, and parts of Southside, where a mix of larger old houses and student/young-professional demand. You know what DOES shove hordes of multiple couples/crowds into rentals? Illegal Airbnbs. Student party houses.
It's a narrow, geographically specific issue, not a citywide housing-supply crisis that justifies rewriting the standard for every neighborhood in Richmond.
Keep the three-unrelated-persons standard as the default and route the small number of properties that need more capacity through an SUP process, not a citywide rewrite.
Don't "fix" code that's not broken.
Keep our unbuilt lot percentages, definition of family, and reduce the girth of ADUs!
Kale, tomatoes, peppers, okra and herbs grow in a small urban garden.
About the author: Copeland Casati is a native of Richmond who has rented and owned while food gardening in the Fan near Floyd & Meadow, Ginter Park adjacent to Azalea & Chamberlayne, Bellevue's Claremont, and West Grace.