The Lawrence City Commission on Tuesday will consider a major change to the new land development code that could hinder the code’s intended goal of helping people find and afford housing, weeks before it’s set to go into effect.
And community members who have been following the land development code process may not have been aware the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission had recommended the change last month because it wasn’t an item on their meeting agenda.
Planning commissioners debated and eventually recommended lowering the number of unrelated people who can live in a house together in Lawrence’s least dense neighborhoods.
The current code allows three or four unrelated people to live together, depending on the area’s zoning. The new code, which city commissioners approved in November and is set to go into effect in April, was supposed to raise that number to five.
But the city commission asked the planning commission to discuss lowering some neighborhoods back down to a limit of three because of complaints from residents.
The agenda for the planning commission meeting included only one item regarding the development code, a text amendment the agenda said would “streamline language and regulations to improve clarity, and correct inconsistencies and errors.” These edits were small clarifications to the code.
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Lawrence resident Samuel Carter had been involved with the two-year development code process, so he showed up to give a quick comment on this item. He left soon after the commission approved the edits and met up with a friend downtown.
But he didn’t know that wasn’t the end of the planning commission’s discussions on the code.
Commission members quickly shifted to occupancy limits. They briefly debated whether to discuss other changes to the code as well due to feedback from the public, but Jeff Crick, Lawrence’s director of planning and development, said they could not expand discussion without direction from the city commission because it would be unfair to community members who wanted to speak on the topics.
Carter said he had no idea the planning commission was going to discuss substantive changes to the code because it was not readily apparent in the public notice for the meeting.
“When you don’t notify the public about what is happening, you open yourself to only get one-sided perspectives on things,” Carter said. “And that’s exactly what happened for the planning commission meeting.”
The agenda didn’t entirely omit mention of this discussion. On the sixth page of details about the planned edits to the development code, it mentioned the city commission’s request for the planning commission to review occupancy limits, but didn’t specify whether any action would be taken or what that action would be. It also states that the text amendment the planning commission was voting on “does not propose changes to the Occupancy Standards.”
Carter said he felt any discussion about substantial changes to the code needed to include robust public engagement because of how long the process had been to develop the new code.
“The City of Lawrence and community spent two years working on reforming its zoning policy, and a cornerstone of that was to increase the occupancy limits,” he said.
Crick said the code is in a state of limbo — after passage but before implementation — which leaves it open to be tinkered with at the direction of the city commission. After the code is implemented April 1, there will be a more formal amendment process to make changes.
“I can see how that, you know, that blurb that we had (in the agenda) may not have conveyed it, but it was a direction we got at a public meeting,” Crick said.
Crick encouraged people to utilize public comment when the city commission takes up the revision Tuesday, March 18, since the planning commission only recommends changes. The city commission agenda for Tuesday explicitly lists the occupancy limit change as one of the items for action by the city commission.
Planning Commission Chair Prasanth Duvvur was the only member who voted to keep the occupancy limit at five. He said he understood concerns but wanted to remain faithful to the original goals of the code.
“What we’re trying to do is increase the number of people that live in homes,” Duvvur said. “That was the purpose of increasing occupancy.”
Carter said he believes the city should remove occupancy limits on non-related people altogether. The City of Lawrence already has occupancy limits based on square footage for safety purposes, and Carter said limiting people based on relation can unnecessarily restrict living arrangements.
The first map shows Lawrence’s least dense neighborhoods, where the Lawrence City Commission is considering keeping at an occupancy limit of three unrelated people instead of raising the limit to five, as planned in the new land development code. The second, less colorful map shows the districts that are more dense — ones where the commission is still planning to raise occupancy limits to five unrelated people.
Crick said the new code aimed to respect people’s diverse living options by widening language to include relations by blood, marriage or other committed partnerships. He recognized that these types of occupancy limits aren’t standard everywhere, but said they are more common in college towns.
Lawrence’s status as a college town was one of the main factors that drove proponents of lower occupancy limits, who spoke at the planning commission meeting and advocated throughout the development code process.
They argue higher occupancy limits allow rental property investors to swoop into historic neighborhoods, buy up homes and flip them into student “party” houses.
Candice Davis has lived in the Oread neighborhood east of campus for more than 25 years. She said the battle to preserve the neighborhood has long been fought via density and occupancy regulations.
The neighborhood developed in the 19th century, and as the KU grew, students and faculty increasingly moved into the neighborhood. In 1926, Lawrence implemented its first zoning ordinance to regulate student housing, allowing for mixed-use residential and commercial development in the neighborhood. By the mid-20th century, it was classified as high-density residential land, and many large homes were converted into apartments.
Davis said she sees the impact of these changes in the neighborhood. She feels that many of the students who move to the neighborhood due to its proximity to campus don’t respect the character of the neighborhood as much as long-term residents. And when out-of-town investors buy the property, they don’t care as much about preserving the historic area of Lawrence.
“If you don’t have people living in the neighborhood, you don’t care about the garbage thrown around, the party houses, the lack of, I guess, a peaceful environment,” she said.
Davis said she wants the code to focus on making all types of housing desirable, but worries a flat-rate occupancy limit of five was too high for some less-dense neighborhoods. The planning commission change shifting the limit back down to three was welcome news, she said, although it wont help the Oread neighborhood because it is classified as a more-dense neighborhood.
“It was just like a punch in the gut,” she said. “Keep in mind, when it goes up, these densities, it’s nearly impossible to get it down.”
Crick said he couldn’t speak as to why the change was recommended now, but said he understands that community members were worried the occupancy limits would be hard to reverse if the city decided the new code had set occupancy limits too high.
Crick added that part of the process for the new code has always been a trial period to see how it’s working and allow for updates later.
“This is a living document,” he said. “It’s got to keep changing and meet that community’s expectations. And if it’s not doing that, we need to go get that fixed.”
Lawrence city commissioners are set to begin their regular meeting at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday, March 18 at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. See the full meeting agenda at this link.
The commission accepts written public comment emailed to ccagendas@lawrenceks.org until noon the day of meetings. The commission also hears live public comment during meetings, both in person and virtually. Register to join the Zoom meeting at this link.
Meetings are open to the public, livestreamed on the city’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/@lawrenceksvideo and broadcast on Midco channel 25.
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
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August Rudisell/Lawrence TimesLawrence City Commission to consider altering occupancy limits weeks before development code set to take effect
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