The Boston Planning Department met with residents virtually on Monday to go through the new proposed zoning for Roslindale under the Neighborhood Housing rezoning initiative – https://gvimes.link/nhbrhdzng

This new initiative is working from the Mattapan rezoning effort enacted last year to create new zoning districts that allow for greater density in areas that had issues with building more units, as well as small work on houses, new decks, additional dormers, and other mundane repairs.

The issue is, according to Project Manager Will Cohen, that much of the housing in the Parkway – Hyde Park, West Roxbury and Roslindale – was built before the current zoning was enacted. He said great swaths of the neighborhoods, up to 90 percent in some cases, were out of compliance. That means that most upgrades to a house – dormers, decks, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) etc. – required a zoning variance. This is a lengthy process, involving getting a hearing (which can take up to six months) and potentially sitting through hours of other applicants’ hearings. Many times, residents would have to hire an architect to get small jobs through, increasing time, cost and effort.

Cohen said this has also led many homeowners and developers to swing for the fences when trying to add more units to a house. If you’re going to need to do the same thing as a big-time developer – go to the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA), hire an architect, create plans, defend your position and possibly more – why not go for as much as you can, like a big-time developer?

So the idea for the majority of these districts – Dormer-2, Dormer-3, Decker-4, Decker-6 – is to allow residents to build without having to go through that much trouble.

These districts allow for more housing to be built. Dormer-2 allows for existing homes to go up to three units (new building only goes to two), Dormer-3 allows both new and old up to three, Decker-4 allows up to four and Decker-6 up to six.

Resident and Roslindale Coalition member Laurie Radwin asked that more be done to reach out to groups historically left out of the zoning process, especially with the Dormer-6 districts.

“Some of those areas are highly burdened and I put the Mass Enviroscreen Map link in the chat – https://gvimes.link/envscrnmp – and so people in that neighborhood have a number of economic and social challenges,” she said. “They’re also at higher risk for displacement, they rank in the 90th percentile for unemployment, 93rd for low-income households, and the 73rd percentile for linguistic isolation. Now you can’t fix that, but certain kinds of zoning can really hurt it. And so I’m inviting you to think about ways these residents can have meaningful opportunities to learn about this proposal, share their perspectives, and help shape the decisions. Because this is their community.”

Boston Planning Deputy Director of Zoning Kathleen Onufer said the department is “all ears” for anyone who knows of organizers or leaders in these communities to help reach out to more voices, but only as much as they want to.

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“If you have a connection or the right place to make sure that we’re meeting other groups of folks who aren’t at the meeting tonight, we’re always all ears on that, Laurie, from you or any community member,” she said. “I would just say from an advocacy perspective, we are always most focused on making sure we reach as many people as possible. Under this current federal administration, one, the city has always let people self-identify whatever level of detail they want to, about their own background, whether they live in a certain location or others, and we’ve always had an intentional strategy in reaching out to groups to reemphasize that is optional, because many of our neighbors and community members are really uncomfortable identifying any part of their status right now.”

Resident Michael Williams said he’s concerned about increasing density that might lead to increased fighting for on-street parking.

“The more units you get, the more cars you’re going to have, and where are they going to park?” he said. “That’s going to be an issue for some people.”

Resident Nia Lewis said she was also concerned about this. Cohen said before they released this plan to the public, they enjoined architects to have a go at the maps and rules and asked them to try to skirt them as much as possible to try to break the system and create such problems.

“In all cases, those developers, or those architects putting on their developer hats, so to speak, were able to accommodate parking under the new zoning,” he said. “We are quite confident that when people are proposing new units in this, that they will be able to add parking without having to change the design in a meaningful way. The other piece here is that parking is bigger than zoning. You’re talking less about what people are doing on their house and more about what’s happening on the street itself. That’s actually where the idea of parking steps away from zoning. We agree with you as planners and Planning Department professionals dealing with how people use cars on the street requires a lot of different solutions.”

There is currently a survey out, as well as other forms of community input the Boston Planning Department is seeking. For the survey, go to https://gvimes.link/srvynghbrhdzng