salimfurth.bsky.social
Mostly on the old site. Housing nerd. Personal views only. It's a free country.
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Abba Eben (not Churchill) is also the origin of the quip "[nation] can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted." He apparently used it freely, swapping in whatever country was relevant.
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That's true. Also easier to hit the local average if there's less diversity in what locals do!
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Agreed:
marketurbanism.com/2025/03/07/d...
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Major cities seem like the right answer here. Locals & tourists both doing lots of walking downtown, attending theater/music together, eating at restaurants, going to the biggest parks, etc.
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I like that
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You need to deal with corner lots. And you might call in statute for an executive department to issue technical guidance & illustrations. It's harder to imagine applying it to rural areas; I'd leave that alone.
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(b) On such a block, a city may instead enforce a dimensional or density constraint equal to the 80th percentile prevailing on that block.
(c) A block constitutes both sides of a section of a public way between intersections with other public ways, not exceeding 500 feet
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I would draft it basically as:
(a) No dimensional, density, or use constraint can be enforced on a block on which more than 20% of existing parcels do not comply with it.
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States need to blanket preempt any zoning law that makes more than 20% of a block nonconforming.
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Right. If Tesla was a diesel-powered pickup truck company, this would be its best year ever.
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At a first glance, the sum of all these formulas is shockingly fair: the correlation between population and funding per capita is -0.005
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This is a great resource, thanks!
The obvious thing to do is sum all the programs - but you didn't. Is there a methodological reason why one shouldn't do that?
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cayimby.org/legislation/...
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There's a whole school of political economy on this, following the Ostroms
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I say "worse", but I just mean "harder to understand". I'm actually 33% convinced that complex, overlapping governance is better than unified governance.
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New York is even worse. But something like this also happens in much of the Midwest.
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Lastly, 2025-H-5797 defines co-living housing and allows it in adaptive reuse projects.
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Likewise, it allows modifications (the easy type of variance) for changes that maintain neighborhood character. #ContextualZoning cc @strongtowns.org
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2025-H-5799 is one of my favorite - contextual zoning. It allows subdivision of lots where the new, smaller lots will abide by local norms (even if the local minimum lot size is higher). This is a muscular version of protecting neighborhoods from downzoning.
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It's not 100% clear to me that this language will apply in the zones mentioned above; if so, it's strong:
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2025-H-5798 is a zoning rather than process bill: it allows lot split townhomes wherever duplexes are allowed. The phrasing is hard for me to follow, but this follows the template of Oregon SB 458 (2021).
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2025-H-5800 is the softest of soft RICZ bills. It purports to "require municipalities to provide for village or mixed-use zoning to allow residential use in some or all areas of their commercial zoning districts", but there's nothing in it that will make it effective.
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2025-H-5795 is a Shekarchi classic. It looks like nothing, but it formalizes administrative zoning certificates so that those are authoritative, not just non-binding guidance. Clever.
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2025-H-5793 could be good fiscal zoning, but it's a half measure. It allows municipalities to exceed their property tax revenue cap if they've added housing, but only if it 10% affordable. More, not less, taxation should be allowed for market-rate housing!
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2025-H-5802 formalizes a process for approving housing developments on state-owned land and exempts those from local regulations
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The bill tweaks - but does not eliminate - an allowed limit on development under the LowMod law to 1% of housing stock. That's a fine average rate of growth, but it eliminates any sizeable project from most towns. The median RI municipality has 7,280 households.
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This is also one of the weirdest bills I've ever read. It modifies § 45-53-3 & 4 immediately, and then has a section modifying § 45-53-3 & 4 again, but effective Jan 1, 2026. What's weird is that not all of the immediate changes carry over!
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It tightens some of the criteria that towns use to refuse Low-Mod projects, including one requiring compatibility in scale. The language is missing an ", and".
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Next bill!
2025-H-5801 tweaks RI's rarely-used builder's remedy, the Low and Moderate Housing Act (similar to Mass 40B & CT 8-30g). It formalizes a new "master plan" approval pathway. I'm curious if this is something builders wanted or if towns were requiring it in unreasonable ways.
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Still on 5794:
Only abutters can protest a "modification" (a minor variance).
Single family homes complying with local IZ cannot be limited to fewer than 3 bedrooms (where was this an issue??)
IZ cannot be applied where state regulations block the required density bonus.
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It revises adaptive reuse provisions from an earlier reform. The IZ threshold is lowered from 20% to 10%, but limited parking requirements are back. Density is unlimited now (instead of 15 u/a), but must fit within an existing structure.
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The bill goes on to eliminate Zoning Boards of Appeals status as the appeals body for minor subdivision & development plan reviews (which are administrative) and Planning Board decisions.
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[This bill is a long one]
Most importantly, it shifts the timing of permits. Instead of requiring state & federal permits at the "preliminary plan" stage, statute would now require them at the "final plan" stage. This probably saves duplicative work.
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2025-H-5794 shifts some subdivision into the "minor" category, easing approvals. It also disallows localities from requiring a pre-application meeting (although they can probably get around this easily). It also makes it clear what an 'incomplete' application is.
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2025-H-5803 follows up on a 2013 reform to standardize electronic permitting. It's not clear to me that this requires localities to adopt the uniform system. It does require state enviro agencies to adopt electronic systems.
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2025-H-5804 lowers the quorum for building code decisions to 10 of 25 seats (presumably, some are empty at any moment). This could cut either way: the typical building code update *increases* costs. It also moves the state bldg commissioner into the fire marshall's office.
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And here's what I wrote about the 2023 package (I didn't write about 2024).
marketurbanism.com/2023/06/26/r...
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Here's the press release & bill summary, although I find some of the summaries too vague to be helpful:
rilegislature.gov/pressrelease...