In The News
Bridgeport (West Virginia) hosts public meeting on updates to comprehensive plan
The Exponent Telegraph - Sept 30, 2024 - Damian Phillips
BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. (WV News) — Bridgeport held a public meeting Monday to let residents voice their thoughts about the future of their city by commenting on the next update to Bridgeport’s comprehensive plan.
The meeting was held Monday evening at The Bridge Sports Complex, and a second one will be held from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. Tuesday at the same location.
“The comprehensive plan looks more at the bigger picture of the city: The airport, jobs, housing, the FBI, the mall and stuff like that,” said Mayor Andy Lang.
The meetings are being held to give residents an opportunity to speak with department heads, council members, Comprehensive Plan Committee members and the consultants hired to help draft the plan.
Per state code, all municipalities are required to update their comprehensive plans every 10 years. But Bridgeport updates its plan every five years, Lang said.
Rather than public hearings, the meetings are informal, informational sessions where residents can mingle with those involved in drafting the plan, said Council member Jon Griffith.
Anyone unable to make it to a meeting is encouraged to make their voice heard by filling out a survey on the future of the city at SurveyMonkey.com/r/BridgeportPlan.
While it’s not necessary to meet with residents when creating a comprehensive plan, Griffith said, “we feel it’s appropriate to get their opinions.”
“That means more to us than anything,” Lang said. “The dynamics of what the majority of citizens want to see in all these different aspects — fire, police, schools, child care. It’s really good to hear from them because you’d be surprised where a lot of good ideas come from.”
But Griffith said residents should be realistic about their expectations.
Installing a monorail or putting 90% of public funding towards middle school wrestling are “obviously unreasonable requests,” he said.
However, workable ideas about strengthening the city’s focus on specific programs will be considered seriously, Griffith said.
For example, residents may think the city should focus on housing or increasing access to transportation via more bus routes or more bike lanes, he said.
“Child care is always an issue,” Lang said, “as is how our relationship is with schools and affordable housing. One last thing that is near and dear to this citizen right here is keeping the old neighborhoods up.”
In addition to being used as a development tool for the city, Bridgeport’s comprehensive plan has been utilized by private developers.
“(WVU Medicine United Hospital Center) used it a lot when they did all their additions out there, and Charles Pointe has used it. We have our annual strategic planning meeting every year, and a lot of times we’ll reference the comprehensive plan in things we’re going to do going forward,” Lang said.
The mayor said retirees looking to downsize from a multistory house are a demographic that has “come alive” since he became mayor in 2017.
This need has been met in part by the construction of patio homes in White Oaks, but if more are needed, Lang encouraged the public to let it be known.
Following the two meetings, the comprehensive plan will not be ready immediately. The plan will be drafted, followed by more public meetings, and will then be put into the public record sometime next year, said Andrea Kerr, the city’s director of community development and head of the Comprehensive Plan Committee.
The entire process is expected to take between 15 and 16 months, she said.
West Virginia Watch - The YIMBY push for multifamily housing hits a ‘nope’ from homeowners
Sept 19, 2024 - Robbie Sequeira
When Minneapolis, then Oregon, then other local and state governments began stripping away exclusive single-family-home zoning over the past five years to allow the construction of multifamily housing, many development advocates predicted the start of a pro-YIMBY revolution.
But the “yes-in-my-backyard” movement has stumbled even before it’s really gotten started.
In court challenges around the country, opponents have cited spikes in traffic, strains to infrastructure, displacement of low-income residents, hits on property values and changes to neighborhood character. Multifamily zoning advocates, however, counter that opponents are resisting changes that will yield broader societal benefits.
The debates are challenging elected leaders, planning specialists, homebuilders and advocates, pitting long-established homeowners against a system desperate to get a handle on the nation’s growing crisis of housing affordability and homelessness.
“People want to maintain their neighborhood character, but it should be about ensuring quality of life for everyone,” said Natali Fani-Gonzalez, a Democratic member of the Montgomery County Council in Maryland who has endorsed changes to zoning laws. “You’re part of a community … you don’t own it. We need to evolve with society.”
‘I dread the possibility’
The most recent ruling arrived this month, when the Montana Supreme Court issued a decision paving the way for a pair of state laws to take effect over the objections of homeowners.
In 2023, Montana lawmakers were lauded for a bipartisan effort dubbed the “Montana Miracle,” a collection of measures that overrode local zoning ordinances to encourage more multifamily homes and accessory dwelling units, or ADUs — smaller secondary cottages or in-law apartments within or on a lot of a single-family home. The laws, championed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, were supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
But in December, a consortium of single-family homeowners from across the state called Montanans Against Irresponsible Densification, or MAID, filed a complaint. The group argued that the state had unconstitutionally taken away homeowners’ property rights and would wrest local control from cities and counties. The lawsuit warned, in part, that the laws meant new construction could begin down the block without notice.
“I dread the possibility of waking up one morning and finding that one of my neighbors has sold her property to a developer who is then erecting a multi-unit building or a duplex, or an accessory dwelling unit right next to our nice and carefully maintained single-family dwelling,” wrote Glenn Monahan, a Bozeman resident and managing partner of MAID, in an affidavit filed with the initial lawsuit and quoted in the court’s ruling.
“If such development aimed at increasing density in my neighborhood happens, I believe it will seriously and adversely affect the economic value of my property,” Monahan wrote. “More important than economic value is the moral, aesthetic neighborhood values that my wife and I share with the neighbors …”
Representatives for MAID did not return calls for comment.
Wealthier and whiter
Berkeley, California, first established a residential zone exclusively for single-family homes in 1916 — just as racist covenants banning home sales to non-whites were gaining steam nationally and other workarounds to preserve neighborhood segregation were being tested.
Today, around 75% of residential land in the United States is zoned exclusively for single-family homes. These neighborhoods are typically wealthier and whiter, according to a 2023 research report by the Urban Institute.
Minneapolis is credited as the first major U.S. city to enact substantial changes to increase density when it abolished single-family-only zoning citywide in 2019, allowing up to three dwelling units on any residential lot.
“People want to maintain their neighborhood character, but it should be about ensuring quality of life for everyone.”
– Natali Fani-Gonzalez, a Democratic member of the Montgomery County Council in Maryland
That same year, the Oregon legislature passed a law with two so-called upzoning provisions: allowing duplexes in single-family zoning areas of cities with at least 10,000 residents, and allowing townhouses, triplexes and fourplexes in cities of at least 25,000 residents.
Upzoning encompasses a range of policy tools — such as building more “missing middle” housing in the range between single-family homes and apartment buildings, focusing on transit-oriented development, lifting parking requirements, and increasing floor-to-area ratios. But researchers and planners told Stateline that it can take years for these policy changes to address current housing needs or undo the harms of restrictive zoning.
“The largest challenge is that zoning reform takes a really long time to implement. From the start of reform to actually seeing effects, it takes about 10 years,” said Stephen Menendian, assistant director and director of research at the University of California, Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute.
“Even the Minneapolis reforms, which happened at warp speed, will take another four years to fully assess the effects,” Menendian said. “It’s been less a revolution and more of a slow shift.”
UC Berkeley’s Zoning Reform Tracker, last updated in November, provides an overview of municipal zoning reform efforts across the U.S., documenting 148 initiatives in 101 municipalities over a span of 17 years.
Other local governments have passed ordinances taking aim at single-family-only zoning in various ways, including Austin, Texas; the city of Alexandria and Arlington County in Virginia; Sacramento, California; and Portland, Oregon. Many have been challenged in court.
In Minneapolis, the 2040 plan, as the city’s long-term planning blueprint is known, was held up after its passage in 2019 by years of environmental lawsuits and back-and-forth rulings, delaying implementation.
Finally, state lawmakers in May passed a bill exempting comprehensive housing plans from environmental review, a measure aimed squarely at preserving the 2040 plan.
Even then, a county judge issued an injunction, forcing the city to halt parts of the plan and revise it.
Talking it out
Diana Drogaris, outreach coordinator for the National Zoning Atlas, a research organization that works to demystify zoning laws across the U.S., thinks city leaders are improving their communication with residents during public hearings and input sessions. However, she notes that leaders must balance transparency with managing valid fears of zoning changes.
“A zoning change is going to have an effect on the public. It will affect the store they go to, their commutes, what type of resources are available,” Drogaris said. “And I think community leaders are getting better at having these conversations.
“The public doesn’t need to know every nook and cranny of these outdated codes,” she said, “but enough to understand how that one zoning change is going to change how that land is being used in their community.”
Menendian argues that misconceptions on both sides — among housing advocates and concerned community members — fuel much of the anger. “There’s a lot of misnomers about zoning reform,” he said.
Homeowner groups also are expected to challenge a recent series of upzoning changes in Austin, approved at the end of 2023 and this spring. In 2022, a group of citizens successfully sued the city over a handful of ordinances designed to streamline housing development.
When a lawsuit is filed, work toward new housing developments may stop. California enacted a law in 2021 allowing property owners to split their lots and build two new homes in certain cities. In April, a Los Angeles judge ruled the law unconstitutional. In June, the state filed its notice of appeal.
Meanwhile, in Northern Virginia just outside the District of Columbia, the city of Alexandria and Arlington County, which also passed zoning changes last year, are facing their own legal challenges. The full impact of Alexandria’s zoning overhaul — even if it clears its legal challenges — may not do much to affect housing outcomes. According to the city manager’s estimates, allowing up to four units in zones that are currently limited to single-family dwellings would only create a net new 178 units over 10 years.
‘Absolutely … some sort of backlash’
This fall, both Montgomery County, Maryland, and Berkeley, California, will be considering upzoning proposals, following a summer filled with contentious public hearings.
Fani-Gonzalez, the Montgomery County councilmember, said that modernizing the county’s zoning, in conjunction with other policies such as rent stabilization, will help keep residents in their homes while creating new housing to accommodate the growth associated with being just outside Washington, D.C.
“We need more housing, but we cannot get stuck with building cookie-cutter houses that only certain folks can actually afford,” said Fani-Gonzalez.
In California, the city of Berkeley’s proposal to end exclusionary zoning in its neighborhoods is part of a broader effort to undo its racist legacy. The Berkeley City Council took its first steps in examining that legacy by denouncing the racist history of single-family zoning in 2021, a largely ceremonial move that gained steam when the city council asked the city for a report on missing-middle housing.
The city’s latest upzoning plan was scaled back this summer after a five-hour public hearing.
Lori Droste, a Berkeley councilmember from 2014 to 2022, told Stateline that she had been advocating for major upzoning changes since 2016 but struggled to get the votes. What changed, she said, was linking the need for zoning changes to the national consciousness raised by 2020 protests around systemic racism and racial injustice.
“Zoning reform is going to take time. It’s probably going to take 20 years before anyone notices real changes. But if we don’t start now, the housing crisis will only get worse,” she said.
When asked by Stateline if she expects any legal action if the upzoning proposal is successful, Droste responded, “I imagine there will be. I’m not in the city attorney’s office, but absolutely there’s going to be some sort of backlash.”
A decade ago, West Virginia unveiled a plan to end homelessness in the state. A new study shows the numbers are climbing
Times West Virginian - July 18, 2024 - La Shawn Pagán
CHARLESTON — The number of West Virginians experiencing homelessness continues to increase. But state officials seem no closer to implementing new efforts to more comprehensively address the problem.
Over 1,400 people were reportedly homeless last year, a 3% increase from 2022 and a 24% increase since 2021.
The increase was outlined in a new report from the state Department of Human Services to the Legislature.
The report, mandated by lawmakers, proposes no new initiatives but does repeatedly outline the need for additional funding to help West Virginia’s unsheltered population.
A decade ago, the state published a 54-page plan to end homelessness in West Virginia by 2020. The plan included housing placement and providing resources to those already experiencing homelessness. But officials didn’t focus on the plan, and it was largely forgotten as the problem got worse.
Then last year, lawmakers passed SB239, a bill that required a new report on the issue.
One of the goals was to find out how many homeless people have moved to West Virginia from another state. The report said that many of those interviewed said they were either native to West Virginia or had lived in the state for years.
The report also found that many homeless West Virginians were working. Among those were nurses, construction workers and mechanics.
The report also noted that the problem may be worse than shown by the frequently cited “point in time” count. A different count, based on numbers enrolled for various service programs, showed that the over 3,600 West Virginians were all experiencing homelessness annually from 2018 to 2023. Even that figure could be under-reporting the total, because multiple enrollments in different years are counted differently.
The report said that West Virginia ranks lower in terms of the rate of homelessness than neighboring states. But, it also said that West Virginia’s public school students rank higher than the national average in homelessness.
Many of these students were reported to live in shelters or in transitional housing or temporary housing, such as motels or hotels, or doubled-up with family members, according to the assessment. Some reported not having a home at all.
While the report broke down key numbers, meanings and suggested some ideas to help one of the state’s most vulnerable communities, it did not propose a concrete plan to address homelessness.
Department of Human Services spokesperson Whitney Wetzel said in an email that, “it will take some time for state and community leaders to read and understand the report before making policy recommendations based on this study.”
The report does suggest improving access to resources, such as financial support, for those at risk of homelessness.
“Access to benefits prior to becoming homeless may help some individuals stay in housing,” the report said. “West Virginia could explore how to support this as one potential avenue to increase housing stability.”
The study also found that mental health, addiction, chronic illnesses, domestic violence, abusive childhoods or traumatic events often lead to homelessness.
“Individuals described traumatic life events that upended their lives as the precursors to homelessness,” the report said. “Physical health conditions – chronic and acute – were often identified as the catalyst that resulted in homelessness.”
Mon Forest Towns initiative partners awarded $150K to support land use planning
MountaineerENews - July 9, 2024
Partners supporting the Mon Forest Towns initiative have been awarded $150,000 to support land use planning in the Mon Forest.
The program is a collaboration among the WVU College of Law Land Use and Sustainable Development Law Clinic, Downstream Strategies and the Mon Forest Town Partnership, with the support of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.
The Monongahela National Forest, in the north central highlands of West Virginia, comprises roughly a million acres of National Forest System land. The numerous rural communities that are surrounded by the MNF have long had their livelihoods tied to the coal and timber industries and wood products. Over the last few decades, these industries have waned, and these communities are working together to find a new path forward.
The Mon Forest Towns Partnership was formed nearly a decade ago. Its mission is to cultivate relationships across lands and forest gateway communities that enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors, while sustaining the very attributes that attract 1.3 million visitors to their communities annually.
Part of this funding will support development of individualized comprehensive plans for Cowen, Durbin, Franklin and potentially Pendleton County, Petersburg and Richwood. Of these, only Richwood has a comprehensive plan and that plan needs to be updated.
These communities were specifically chosen as partners to develop and pilot an “Implementable Comprehensive Plan Guidebook” due to existing relationships with the Law Clinic and the Mon Forest Towns. The Guidebook will provide a detailed, step-by-step guide for communities that are interested in developing a comprehensive plan.
A checklist will be developed, and the community will know exactly what they need to do before, during and after comprehensive plan creation.
The Land Use Law Clinic aims to provide an “implementable” comprehensive plan that focuses on developing clear, concise recommendations consistent with the community’s vision, and achievable in both the short-term and long-term.
The comprehensive planning process analyzes the community holistically, including a review of infrastructure, tourism, housing, education, public services, historic preservation, economic development, recreation and transportation. These inputs help identify potential issues and concerns and provide recommendations to address them.
“Developing a Comprehensive Plan is a critical step in developing a strong, sustainable recreation economy, as it creates the perfect opportunity for engaging and aligning community members around a shared vision for the future. It also sets towns up for success when pursuing federal funding for community projects. We are so grateful to the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation for providing the funding to make this project a reality. It will benefit our Mon Forest Towns and rural communities across America for the foreseeable future,” Joshua Nease, executive director of Mon Forest Towns, said.
The WVU Land Use Law Clinic is one of the state’s leading providers of land use, planning, legal and land conservation services in the state. The Clinic has provided over a decade of high-level services to communities across the state and has worked in almost all 55 counties. The mission of the Land Use Law Clinic is to “provide legal and planning services to conserve land and water, support local land use planning, and offer educational opportunities for law students and citizens of West Virginia.”
Downstream Strategies is an environmental and economic development consulting firm based in Morgantown that offers specialized community and land use planning services. Downstream is considered the go-to source for objective, data-based analyses, plans and actions that strengthen economies, sustain healthy environments, and build resilient communities.
The firm offers services that combine sound interdisciplinary skills with a core belief in the importance of protecting the environment and linking economic development with natural resource stewardship.