The Summit Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday approved a number of amendments to the county’s land-use code aimed at making affordable housing development easier and faster. 

Commissioners began considering the revisions last summer and ultimately landed on a set of amendments that they say will expedite the review and approval process for developments where affordable housing makes up a majority of the project while cutting red tape for building accessory dwelling units, commonly called granny flats or ADUs. 

Changes regarding ADUs will affect height, size, parking and setback requirements. Specifically, the county will increase the height limit for detached ADUs from 25 feet to 35 feet as well as increase the maximum allowed footprint from 550 square feet to 1,000 square feet on lots smaller than 5 acres. 

“Already today, attached ADUs are allowed to be 35 feet, and this will allow for greater flexibility,” said senior planner Simomn Corsen. 

Other changes include reducing minimums for setbacks — the space between detached units and primary homes — from 15 feet to 7.5 feet and scaling back parking requirements from two spaces for all dwelling units to one space for studios or one-bedroom units. Units with two or more bedrooms would still be required to have two parking spaces. 

“I would suggest that all of these code amendments,” Corsen added, “are things that we’ve heard from folks who say they’re close to being able to construct an ADU on their property but they can’t fit it within the 25 feet (height) requirement, for example.”

Any ADU built will still need to be deed restricted, with the goal of keeping that housing reserved for working county residents or retirees. 

Other land-use code revisions target the review process for multifamily and single-family homes. 

Get the news you want, when you want it. Sign up for daily or weekly newsletters at SummitDaily.com/newsletter

Under the approved changes, site plans, which represent one of the final plans officials consider before development begins, will no longer go to a public hearing before any of the basin planning commissions and will instead be approved by staff. 

A subdivision review, which is for single-family properties, will no longer need to be approved by commissioners as part of their consent agenda and will instead be approved by planning commissioners and county staff. These changes would only be for developments with a floor area that is at least 60% affordable housing. The previous proposal was to target developments that have 50% or more units as affordable housing. 

Corsen said he believes this will save three to six weeks of review time for multifamily buildings and two to four weeks for single-family homes. 

Commissioner Eric Mamula asked Corsen, “How do you feel about the 60% floor area ratio compared to the 50% number we were talking about.”

Corsen said shifting from units to floor area will give developers more flexibility and potentially maximize the amount of affordable housing that is included in a project. 

“If we were to propose 50% of units overall … you might have a scenario where a developer proposes a very small workforce housing unit and a very big market-rate unit,” Corsen said. “This code amendment allows for that to not take place.”

He added that an expedited review process could encourage more private affordable housing developers to submit applications to the county. 

It will also help the county meet requirements to access funding through Proposition 123 — the 2022 ballot initiative that created a dedicated state fund for affordable housing projects. As one of the funding provisions, the state requires local governments to have an approval process of no more than 90 days for building permits.

Commissioner Tamara Pogue said there’s “obviously concern that we’ve heard from the public” that streamlining that process will “eliminate the public’s ability to give comments on these projects.”

But public hearings will still be held during other points of the review process, she said. 

The county will still require public comments for rezoning requests, for example, which come before site plan and subdivision reviews and represent one of the key first steps toward giving a project a green light. 

“The ability to change an application in a technical review,” such as a site plan, “is extremely limited,” Corsen said. 

“I would see these changes as centralizing or moving the public comment to the meeting where they can make the most difference, where they can have conversations about density,” Corsen added.

Other code amendments will add definitions for what Corsen called “nontraditional” forms of affordable housing, such as tiny homes and shared amenity living.