The Boston Planning Department met with about 50 residents recently for about 90 minutes and discussed the idea of the Neighborhood Housing zoning initiative.

The plan, which can be found on the Boston Planning website at https://www.bostonplans.org/neighborhood-housing is aimed at loosening up the zoning code to allow for additions, repairs, minor house work and some types of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to be done as-of-right.

Boston Planning Project Manager Will Cohen led the presentation, overseen by Boston Planning Deputy Director of Zoning Kathleen Onufer. Calling it a presentation is using the most general definition of the term, as Cohen was regularly stopped by residents with questions.

Cohen's main argument was this: there are almost no residential structures in West Roxbury that completely conform to zoning. He said they chose six zoning code regulations and went through every residential structure in the neighborhood a total of 10,000 units and found that only about 100 existing buildings do not violate those six regulations front yard, floor area ratio, side yard, rear yard, unit count, and lot size greater than 5,030 square feet.

There were about 100 that didnt violate these six, but there were a bunch of rules we didnt look at, he said. Parking, building height and others that we didnt analyze, so we didnt want to over-promise and say there are some that follow all the rules.

Cohen euphemistically called these mismatches, but they are legally known as zoning code violations.

Cohen said this means that anytime a homeowner wants to put in a deck, build a dormer, enclose a porch, or any time where the building footprint is affected in any way through home repairs or renovations, that triggers a zoning code violation and requires approval from the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA).

Regular readers of The Bulletin may recognize that this is an onerous process and can deplete even the most over-leveraged of developers. Onufer pointed out that the ZBA, despite now putting all requests dealing with small home repairs and issues into the Thursday ZBA Subcommittee meetings, still has more than 1,000 cases a year to review. Both its regular meeting and subcommittee meeting can regularly take over three or four hours, and while items are scheduled, you have to wait for all the cases ahead of you to be decided on. And deliberations have been known to go on, and on, and on, especially if the project is contentious.

And thats even before you get to the room. Onufer said it can take 6-12 months to get a ZBA meeting, as there is a large backlog.

So, to do work on your own property, you have to go through this process and most of the time, the ZBA approves it. Cohen and Onufer said the idea of neighborhood housing zoning is to get rid of that, and its being pushed in Roslindale, Hyde Park and West Roxbury. Cohen said it was kind of piloted in Mattapan, in what he said was a great success.

There is a belief among residents and in some cases it has been justified over the years that if the regulations are loosened to allow more, developers simply ask for more.

Cohen said now that the ZBA has more reasonable regulations in Mattapan, the ZBA has been denying many projects that exceed those increases already approved in the code.

Once we have zoning we can enforce, we enforce it, he said.

However, he did not provide examples.

The biggest issue of contention concerned ADUs. Cohen was adamant that most housing in Boston is not compatible with unattached ADUs basically you cant build an ADU out of a shed in most lots in Boston because both structures are required to have fire engine access and thats just not feasible for most lots (corner lots, Cohen said, have that possibility). So he said more than 90 percent of the current ADU applications to the city within the last two years have been for ADUs inside existing structures, basically renovations/additions that include a new unit.

Ninety percent of the requests for ADUs in the City of Boston, four thousand and change, are for basements, dormers, and occasionally additions and we think thats generally going to be the same, he said.

One resident, who interrupted several times, said he wanted to know exactly how much front, rear, and side yard setback the city will allow for an ADU under the new zoning. Cohen repeated his earlier statement that detached ADUs arent often feasible because of fire code regulations, not zoning code ones.

They dont fit on our lots, he said. Where we do think ADUs are possible is when its an attachment to the main structure, but the bulk of that unit is going to be a reconfiguration of that existing structure. If you add on a room to a house and then carve out part of the house to put two units in the space of one it can functionally be a new unit, but really its an addition.

Youre still vacillating on my question, how many feet from the property line? the resident said.

I dont have answers tonight. For me to come up and answer today would be the opposite of what were doing.

What people are concerned about here tonight is they came into this community, and a lot of the senior citizens here, when they were young and busing was introduced into Boston, we didnt leave, we invested in West Roxbury, the resident said. West Roxbury would have collapsed if we left. And all of a sudden, now, the city is coming in and saying we want to demonstrably change the feel of this neighborhood.

To be clear, we do not want to demonstrably change the feel of this neighborhood, Cohen said.

Well thats what the presentation is, the resident said.

In a different exchange, the same resident intimated that more units and density would demonstrably change the feel of the neighborhood.

You think making a one-family into a two-family is not a major change in the neighborhood? the resident said.

Cohen pointed out that 3,000 of the neighborhoods 10,000 residential units are not in single-family properties.

But that doesnt win the argument, the resident said.

I think it might if you think about it, Cohen said. Many are two- and three-families. There are a lot.

What youre talking about here tonight is density, the resident said.

No, were talking about the shape of buildings, Cohen said.

For more information on upcoming neighborhood housing meetings, go to https://www.bostonplans.org/neighborhood-housing