[Speaker 1] (0:05 - 14:31)
I hope I don't take 30 minutes to talk, because I want to hear your feedback and questions, because the accessory dwelling units bylaw that the planning board is working on, we want your feedback, and we want your opinions. So first I'm going to talk about what are ADUs. And then we're going to talk about the work the planning board has done so far.

And then we'll get some Q&A, and we'll talk what the next steps are for this whole process. So what is an accessory dwelling unit, or an ADU, like I'm going to call it for short this whole time? It's a secondary smaller space within, in Swampscott, within a single family home.

It doesn't have to be within a single family home. It could be detached from that home. But currently in Swampscott, the law is that it has to be within the single family home.

So it's literally an accessory unit. It has the same address, the same utilities. It's not a two family home.

That's why it's called an accessory. This is a little example photo of a detached version. It looks like a garage.

And oftentimes, an accessory dwelling unit is a converted garage or outbuilding, like we have so many of in town. Other times, you might see them as a basement apartment, for example. Or a first floor apartment, or an attic apartment.

It's sort of carved out of the extra space in a larger home, which we have a lot of larger historic homes in town as well. And there's a good pamphlet that Heidi printed out that's on the desk out there from the AARP called the ABCs of ADUs. And there's some really good examples of what these things are and different forms they can take.

And that's outside for you guys to take with you at the end of this. So that's a really good resource. And the AARP also has a video.

I believe there's a link to it in this PDF. And you can log in, see that video, and it'll do a better job than me at explaining what these things are. So why are we looking at ADUs?

Well, Swampscot has a demographic where there's, Bob, I believe you told me it's 25% currently that are over 55. Or is it 65? And that's expected to increase to, I think, a third in the next 10 years by the next census.

So as people live longer, maybe they're looking for different housing options, right? Maybe your 2,000 square foot home is too large for you for what you need, right? You don't need three bedrooms.

You need one bedroom, two bedrooms. And so there's a diversity of housing options that's needed that may not be available to you, right? Right now we have a lot of larger single family homes.

We have some multifamily units. The Michon is a good example of a multifamily building in town. But there's this thing that planners like to bat around called the missing middle of housing, right?

Sometimes that's a two family home or a three family home. And sometimes it's an accessory apartment unit. So increasingly people are also asking for not only different types of housing, but different housing situations.

So historically we had multigenerational families, right? We had grandparents living with parents, living with children, right? That trend has been for a long time now towards the nuclear family and a smaller nuclear family and a lot of people living alone, right?

And there's a number of reasons for that. But people are asking or looking for maybe something different than that. They don't want to live alone necessarily.

They might want to live with their adult children or they may want to live with their parents. And so an ADU is an option to carve out a space within your home or property for that sort of multigenerational approach, right? The other reason is that affordability wise, you can have a rental income from your own property with an ADU, right?

The restrictions on ADUs typically are the owner has to live on the property, right? And they can live in the accessory unit or they can live in their main house, right? But then they can rent out, if they so choose, this accessory unit and gain income from their property.

A lot of folks might be what you call house rich and sort of have a baseline income, right? And so the ADU provides a good way to have a boost in the income potentially from the property that you already own legally. So and I think I maybe just did this slide.

Let's see, what other things did I not touch on? Space for caregivers potentially, the opportunity to age in place, right? So if you're looking to put an ADU in your home or on your property, it allows you to stay in town.

You've lived here for a number of years. You've grown up here. Your family's grown up here.

And now you want to stay. But maybe it's hard to maintain that home. So having an ADU in your property, you know, Miami gives you that extra income.

It also allows you to stay in the home that you so love or have grown up with. I talked a little bit about affordability. And there's this concept of a naturally affordable housing.

That's the, what have we got, fifth bullet point down there? So ADUs can be actually affordable, right? There's like the state classification of affordability.

You make so much money. And therefore, you are qualified for affordable housing, right? You might get a voucher or something.

That's not necessarily what an ADU is, although you can, the town can craft the language in the zoning code to restrict or allow for that to be the level, right? Salem, for example, I believe their ADU bylaw says it has to be 60% to 70% income level cap of the median, right? Swampscots bylaw doesn't say anything like that right now.

But it has the opportunity to if we want it to. And an ADU is a way to create a naturally affordable housing option because it's smaller, because it's not a single family home you're renting out, right? So the cost to live in it would be less than a 2,000 square foot house.

So that's why we're calling it naturally affordable. This bylaw would have a opportunity to take illegal apartments, which we all do know exist, and allow them to be legal, and then monitored and enforcement done on them should there be violations. Code violations, safety violations, Airbnb violations, right?

Those are things that we don't want in our town. We want to take things that may already exist now and make them legal, and then make that under the watch of the building department essentially, which is a good thing. And then the last point is an interesting point.

It talks about town character, which is so often subjective. Everyone has a different view about what the character is of the town that they know and love. And an ADU, by being created in an existing building or in an existing outbuilding, doesn't necessarily change the character of the town in any way, right?

The house that is next to you that has a detached garage that's converted to an ADU, the only difference would be there may be one additional car in the driveway at the end of the day, right? You will have two or three new neighbors potentially, but the house next door looks the same. So the character isn't altered drastically.

OK, so work to date. Swampscot, I alluded to, does have what we call an accessory apartments bylaw currently in our zoning code. It allows for a, and I'll talk about this, a unit within an existing single family home to be created.

We call it the accessory apartments portion of the zoning code. So based on what other communities are doing, based on the needs I talked about of our community, which are similar to other communities, we're looking to update that bylaw, make it, modernize it a little bit. You know, it's about, I think it's 10 to 15 years old at this point, so there's been a lot of thinking done on ADUs in that time and some good thinking by people smarter than me that are paid to do it.

And so we were looking to update that and kind of maybe expand the definition a little bit so that these things actually get used. And I'll talk about that. So we've actually looked at what other communities have done.

Marblehead is currently drafting a bylaw. This presentation is actually Marblehead's that I changed to Swampscot a couple of times, so don't tell them. We're actually holding another meeting on January 30th, which I think is a Monday.

And we're going to have a few folks there, a builder of ADUs in the state of Massachusetts, a fellow from the AARP, which is really great, who put together this presentation. And we're hoping to get a couple more people and gather feedback and questions at that meeting as well. I think it'll be both.

I think it'll be hybrid. So OK, so we have a bylaw now, right? How many ADUs are created from that?

To be honest, not very many. Three in the last three years. It's really not a lot, and the need for housing is greater than that, I think.

And so can we tweak the bylaw to allow slightly more, right? It's not going to be a ton. You can see that Peabody, which is a much bigger city than we are, only had 10 in the last three years.

Ipswich had seven. And the Pioneer Institute, which is a think tank out of Boston, found that there's only an average of two and a half built per year out of the 37 communities in the Boston metro area that allow ADUs. And a lot of them have bylaws that are similar or even more restrictive than Swampscots at the moment.

So a lot of those communities are working, and the state is actually spearheading an effort to try and streamline all of this. So here's what our current bylaw looks like, right? This is what's allowed right now.

One ADU per property within your house. Not detached. Can't be larger than 800 square feet.

Can't have more than two bedrooms or three occupants. Either the ADU or the home has to be occupied by the owner, unless there's a reason for an absence. You're going on a six-month vacation or you live somewhere else for six months out of the year.

But for the most part, it has to be owner-occupied, right? Parking is up to the special permit process. The whole ADU process is actually by special permit.

It's not by right, so you have to come before the zoning board if you want to create one of these things. And importantly, they cannot be separated and sold independently of each other. So they're sold together.

So if you sell your house, the next owner owns both the ADU and the primary unit. So you can kind of see how it really doesn't function as a two-family, right? It functions as a together package deal.

And that's really why they're unique and they fill a unique niche and need, I think. So potential updates. Last year, I'd say, maybe the year before, but of course the pandemic has sort of sidelined it.

We looked at making a few updates to this bylaw. We kind of hit a stopping point and decided we need public feedback. I think that's the important thing here to see what the people of the town want before we take this to town meeting, right?

So could we update it to allow them in detached existing structures? Could we update the size? Is 800 square feet the right size, for example?

Is a two-bedroom apartment really 800 square feet or is it more like 900 square feet, right? How do we ensure the rules are followed? This is a sticky wicket, right?

Because, you know, who really enforces this bylaw? Zoning will grant the special permits, but after that, the theory is the building department, right? Because what you really don't want is the last point.

You don't want Airbnbs just sprouting up throughout town. Hold on a second. We were recording, so...

Sorry.

[Speaker 8] (14:33 - 14:47)
Do you consider building the house where you're sitting rent only to not...

[Speaker 1] (14:50 - 17:56)
That's a good question, and I don't think the rent or the mechanism for that would be covered in the bylaw. You could kind of set it up how you wanted if you had one, right? So you could even live in it rent-free, and, like, your children could live in the main house.

You could live in the accessory portion of that house. But if you wanted to collect an income, you could rent and collect rent from a non-related person. That's another restriction some communities have, actually, is I want to say it's Hamilton.

Their bylaw says it has to be a related person that lives with you, right? And ours doesn't say that. Ours says you can rent it out to whoever you want.

Does that kind of get at what you were asking? Yeah? Okay.

So I was talking about enforcement. So that's something we have to mull over, right? And, you know, when it is under the building inspector's purview, if there is a complaint about the property from a neighbor, right, they will go and inspect that, and they can find out, oh, in fact, this is an Airbnb or a short-term rental.

It's not supposed to be. They'll fine you, and, you know, that's the enforcement mechanism, right? The last thing is do we want to limit this in any way to be strictly affordable by definition, right?

Like I said, Salem has, like, an income cap on these things. Or do we want to encourage more of these by saying it's just a different housing type and it will be affordable by its very nature, more affordable than your current home? So next steps for this whole process, like I said, there's another forum on the 30th, and you're all welcome to attend that or attend that via Zoom.

I don't have the location, but I imagine it will be at the high school, right, B129 maybe? Yeah. And then we're going to be doing more sessions, I hope, throughout the spring, and there's town meeting in May, right?

So the planning board meets monthly, I think it's the second Monday of every month, and we'll be talking about updates to this bylaw all through between now and April and early May, right? Usually we squeak in there about 24 hours before town meeting to get our final zoning updates in there, but, you know, all those meetings are public, and you're welcome to attend and provide feedback at those. And that's what we really want at the end of the day is we want to hear your questions or concerns so that we can take the current bylaw and edit it to make it more beneficial for the community, I think.

So I don't really have anything else, and I've got, oh, I talked for longer than I thought. I've got about ten minutes, I think, before the food comes out. So I'll open it up to questions.

I've been on the planning board since.

[Speaker 4] (17:58 - 18:21)
Oh, okay. What is the difference between what you are doing on the planning board and the zoning board? Because they're two separate boards.

Who has the final word related to what passes? I think it's the zoning board. Is that correct?

[Speaker 1] (18:21 - 18:57)
So I've been on the planning board since 2019. And the planning board, it's our responsibility in general to craft updates to the zoning code, right? So for this process to update the zoning code, that's on us.

But then when the ADUs come to be approved, right, say you apply to have an accessory dwelling unit, that goes before the zoning board typically. So they have the authority there to approve these things individually. Does that make sense?

[Speaker 4] (18:58 - 19:01)
Does the zoning board have their own rules and regulations and you have yours?

[Speaker 1] (19:02 - 19:23)
No, we both follow the zoning bylaw for the town. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And oftentimes for special permits, it depends, right?

But things will come before the planning board and we review them, but we're not what's called the permit granting authority, right? That's the zoning board for a lot of things. But we all follow the same rules.

[Speaker 7] (19:26 - 19:41)
If a person wanted to build an accessory building on their property not attached, is there a restriction on the amount of land they need to have side setbacks back from the house and things like that?

[Speaker 1] (19:43 - 19:49)
You're saying for an attached version? Like if you wanted to build an addition onto your home or within the house or detached?

[Speaker 7] (19:49 - 19:51)
Not within, a separate building.

[Speaker 1] (19:51 - 20:10)
Oh, a separate building. Yeah, so I would say that the zoning code would still govern, right? So the zoning code has in it rules for setbacks, side yard, front yard, back yard.

And so the accessory building would fall under those setbacks still.

[Speaker 7] (20:10 - 20:13)
So you'd need a significant probably.

[Speaker 1] (20:13 - 20:42)
You would probably need a larger property. I think that's why we're toying with two things, right? Do we only say that accessory dwelling units can be within existing detached structures, right?

So like your existing garage that's detached. Or will we allow new detached structures as well, right? So that is something we're toying with and, frankly, something we'd like to hear back about.

But the new detached structure would still have to follow the setback rules and everything.

[Speaker 7] (20:43 - 20:44)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (20:44 - 20:44)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (20:48 - 21:49)
I noticed that on your pictures many of the ADA's buildings are two-story. So you can have the garage underneath and the two bedrooms above. That's what it looks like.

And you're talking about the demographics of 65, 75 who are going to be driving. How do you expect these buildings with the two-bedroom limit to go in when people are in the 80s and 90s? Because those demographics, with the exception of COVID that killed many, have been increasing.

And at that point, many of the people will not be able to go upstairs where the bedrooms probably are. Are they then allowed to, if they're not driving, not have the garage anymore, have two bedrooms downstairs, and then you've got two upstairs, so now you're above your zoning law.

[Speaker 1] (21:50 - 21:50)
Right.

[Speaker 5] (21:50 - 21:51)
How will you handle that?

[Speaker 1] (21:51 - 23:37)
So that's a good question, right. And accessibility and mobility are very important for these things, too, right. So check out this pamphlet at the front when you get a chance, and I can give you my copy.

Yeah. This is just but one example. This is another cute little example of a 240-square-foot ADU in St. Petersburg, Florida, right, single-story unit. One of the updates that we were toying with, actually, because detached structures aren't currently in the bylaw, right, so when we were going to put them in there last summer before we kind of tabled this discussion, we thought we should limit this to being a story or a story and a half, right, because do we want two-story structures popping up, and does that really serve the need, like you said, someone who's older isn't going to be or wanting to or can climb stairs, right, to the second floor of our garage? So that's one limit that we could put on it and say that they can only be one story.

So this little guy here, right, he's a story and a half, technically, by zoning code. That's what you call this thing. So is that allowed or is it not allowed?

You wouldn't be able to put an accessory dwelling unit within an accessory dwelling unit, to your point, about having two bedrooms and two more bedrooms later. So you could only put one ADU on a property. You couldn't just keep dividing your house up and create a sort of rooming house scenario.

Does that make sense? There's one back there, sorry. Hi.

[Speaker 3] (23:38 - 25:01)
Hi. I have just a bit of history on R Street, Rockland Street, that goes up from Hadley, from Reddington. My understanding is that there was a shortage after World War II or between the wars, an acute housing shortage.

And many of the – on R Street, many of our houses were converted. Little apartments were put in here and there. Rooms were rented out.

My house had Stan Boddelevich living there, the famous football coach from Swampscott. So there's a precedent, historic precedent, that I think the town needs to – all over town, in these very large houses, this probably has been happening more than we realize. So it's not reinventing the – it's this precedent here.

So it's sort of making it more codified so that it's – everybody's clear on what the guidelines are. And I personally am in favor of doing it. I think it's a way of keeping huge structures from having – and changing the character of the town.

But meeting the needs of older people aging out and younger families that want to have their families there. Thanks.

[Speaker 1] (25:02 - 25:07)
Thank you. And you make a great point. It's not reinventing the wheel.

It's making the wheel legal.

[Speaker 11] (25:09 - 25:17)
Mike, how do you handle this in the historic district where there are so many detached garages but can't do anything to your house?

[Speaker 1] (25:18 - 25:50)
That's a good point. We'd have to look at that because I think we would want to encourage something like that there, right? But be historically sensitive about it.

There's a lot of detached structures in the historic district. It makes a lot of sense that they could be ADUs, in my opinion. But at the same time, you want to maintain the historic character, right?

So I don't have a good answer, unfortunately, at the time. But we'll definitely have to look into that.

[Speaker 2] (25:58 - 26:43)
Hi. There is also a halfway measure that people could take. If you're comfortable having someone else use your kitchen and living in your house, you can have a border, meaning they rent your attic room or part of your house.

They use your kitchen. I did this for many years, put my kids through college. So it's not a tenant.

There's no separate kitchen. There's no separate heat. There's no separate anything.

It's almost like having a friend live in your house, and, you know, you may end up watching TV together. But they do share your kitchen, so you do have to get along. But that's also a way to bring in income and expand the housing stock.

[Speaker 1] (26:44 - 27:21)
That's a great point. And one of the other ways that other towns restrict ADUs is by the kitchen, actually, right? So, like, the thing that makes it a separate dwelling unit is the cooking equipment.

I read one bylaw that said as soon as the renter moves out of the ADU, you have to remove the cooking equipment, and it's no longer considered an ADU. And that was the way they restricted these things, which is interesting, and I don't think what we want to do.

[Speaker 4] (27:23 - 27:59)
I heard about this housing in Worcester, and it was a combination of veterans housing and state housing and the town city housing. And what they did is they took a Victorian house, and they broke it up into different apartments. And is that something that is possible?

It got the veterans funding to do it, and all the veterans were disabled.

[Speaker 1] (27:59 - 27:59)
Right.

[Speaker 4] (28:00 - 28:09)
And they were able to create this big house that was like a mansion house, and they created places for those people to live.

[Speaker 1] (28:10 - 28:10)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (28:10 - 28:12)
So I wanted to ask you about that.

[Speaker 1] (28:12 - 28:39)
That sounds like a lovely idea. The ADU bylaw, as we talk about it here, only allows one additional apartment. So you're talking four, six apartments maybe.

Six. Six, yeah. So that wouldn't be allowed under this, but there's other parts of the zoning code that can allow that potentially, right?

But it wouldn't be under this effort. Yeah. Anyone else?

[Speaker 10] (28:41 - 28:46)
I just had a question. You mentioned that the ADU has to have a kitchen. Does it also have to have a separate entrance?

[Speaker 1] (28:47 - 28:50)
I believe it does, yeah. Thank you for clarifying that.

[Speaker 9] (28:57 - 29:06)
Are there codes that make the difference between an illegal apartment and an ADU? Is it just someone checking on it?

[Speaker 1] (29:06 - 29:40)
A lot of times, yes. The building code, right, and then the zoning codes in town. I was just reading about a fire in Lynn that occurred in an illegal basement apartment, right?

And a lot of these things, they're not legal because they're not permitted. And they're not legal because that basement apartment example didn't have two means of egress. It didn't have two ways to get out of it.

So luckily no one was in that apartment at the time, but it could have been bad news, right? So, yeah, a lot of it is the code that regulates it.

[Speaker 9] (29:40 - 29:44)
Another question. Does it affect your taxes on the home?

[Speaker 1] (29:44 - 29:50)
How would it affect your taxes? That's a good point. Yeah, please.

[Speaker 2] (29:51 - 31:11)
Yeah, I think what you do is when you do your taxes, you file also a Schedule C, which is basically what is used for a small business, and you list your revenues from the housing and then your expenses. Let's say it's one quarter of your total housing square footage. Then 25% of your mortgage interest taxes, heating bill, water bill are now expenses.

Let's say you brought in $10,000 a year, and that 25% of all your bills comes to $3,000 a year. $10,000 revenue minus $3,000 expenses is $7,000 profit. You pay taxes like any small business on the profit, not the gross revenues.

So it does, there's taxes. Sometimes it offsets other income that you have, so you actually end up paying even less. If you had to have your house painted, and it was a quarter of your house property that you also had painted, 25% of the cost of painting your house is now a business expense.

Again, deducted from your gross revenues. So it's very much like Schedule C small business tax structure. Okay?

[Speaker 1] (31:15 - 31:18)
No, that's a smart way to do it.

[Speaker 10] (31:18 - 31:24)
There might be other factors too, Margaret. There might be depreciation and cost basis adjustments too. Yeah, that's good.

[Speaker 6] (31:25 - 31:53)
I think Salem actually has another option too, that if you make your accessory dwelling unit for a lower income, then you actually get deduction off your real estate taxes. That's right, yeah. Yeah, which is something that I don't know if Swampscott's looking at.

The other question is, is Swampscott Affordable Housing Trust looking at trying to help make monies available to create affordable housing? So all kinds of good stuff.

[Speaker 1] (31:53 - 32:00)
That's a great point. And, you know, Swampscott Affordable Housing Trust isn't looped into this yet, and I need to loop them in. So thank you.

[Speaker 6] (32:01 - 32:02)
We'll invite them to the next one.

[Speaker 1] (32:02 - 32:04)
I think so, yeah. They should come to the 30th.

[Speaker 6] (32:06 - 32:26)
I want to say really quick thank you so much, Mike. He is going to be here through lunch, and so we can continue to ask questions. And if we want to come back in a formal setting to ask more questions and have it taped, we can certainly do that as well.

But I did promise Theo that we would be serving lunch, and I'm sure everybody is ready. So thank you.

[Speaker 1] (32:27 - 32:27)
Thanks, everyone.

[Speaker 6] (32:29 - 32:30)
Fabulous. Thank you.