ForwardDallas Draft Plan Proposes Accessory Dwelling Units ‘By Right’ Citywide

The Dallas Comprehensive Land Use Plan Committee spent six hours during a workshop Jan. 9 reviewing the draft ForwardDallas plan line by line. While the committee cleaned up clunky language and typographical errors — and had some intense discussions on things like housing density — what may have been most revealing were the public comments from Dallas residents. 

Several people addressed the “CLUP” to say they’re not happy with the draft plan that will guide future land use over the next 20 years. Specifically, they took issue with a policy statement that accessory dwelling units can be allowed by right in single-family neighborhoods. 

ForwardDallas Comprehensive Land Use Plan Draft Released, Council Adoption Slated For June

A use “by right” is permitted in a zoning district and is therefore not subject to special review and approval by a local government. The policy statement outlined in the comprehensive plan is “100 percent” subject to review by the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Commission, City Plan Commission, and ultimately the City Council, officials pointed out during Tuesday’s meeting. 

An updated ForwardDallas draft plan and placetype map were released on Dec. 11. The CLUP voted at the Jan. 9 workshop to send the draft to the City Plan Commission for review. The Dallas City Council is expected to adopt the document in June. 

Virtual ForwardDallas roundtable discussion meetings are scheduled from 6 to 7 p.m. Jan. 16 and from noon to 1 p.m. Jan. 19. 

Residents Say ForwardDallas Draft Plan ‘Destroys Neighborhoods And Neglects Southern Dallas’

About a dozen residents weighed in on the draft plan, and many took issue with the lack of a single-family residential “placetype” and the suggestion that ADUs could infiltrate their neighborhoods. 

Resident Greg Estell said the plan appears to be about 25 percent complete and not ready for any action by the CLUP other than “reset your timelines.” 

“Driving density using a blunt-force approach of by-right development of duplex, triplex, fourplex, and accessory dwelling units in single-family neighborhoods rings favorably only to developers,” Estell said. “It’s lazy policy.” 

District 14 resident Melanie Vanlandingham said the plan should address specific and focused planning areas where the North Central Texas Council of Governments shows the expected influx of 300,000 residents will go: far southeast, far east, and northwest Dallas. 

“This ‘density everywhere’ mantra only continues developers’ focus on hot real estate areas and is completely inequitable for Southern Dallas,” Vanlandingham said. “Is the city turning its back again on the southern sector for another 20 years? The matrix needs a single-family residential placetype, allowing ADUs by [Board of Adjustment] permit only, as it is now, separate from ‘community residential.’ Allowing three-story multiplex buildings of four or 10 units or even more right next to single-family homes everywhere is entirely unacceptable.” 

The plan incentivizes “bulldozing single-family neighborhoods, replacing them with wildly incompatible units,” Vanlandingham added. 

Other residents expressed similar sentiments, but Vanlandingham, a landscape architect, didn’t mince words. It’s not about affordability but rather it’s an “assault on existing homeowners,” she said. 

“[It] replaces multigenerational homes with expensive studios and one-bedrooms that may have actually less density,” she said. “And those Millennials wanting to return to or stay in Dallas, they want single-family homes, not mini-studios.” 

District 14 resident Ed Zahra suggested that because the “blanket ADU mandate” is a zoning change, all 257,000-plus single-family homeowners must be notified and public hearings held to determine acceptance. 

Evelyn Mayo, representing Downwinders at Risk, expressed concern about environmental justice, noting that the commercial flex placetype allows for warehousing as a primary land use along the Trinity River Corridor south of downtown. 

“We propose removing this land use from the placetype or, at a minimum, making it a secondary land use,” Mayo said. 

Jim Schermbeck referenced Southern Dallas’ Joppa as “per capita, perhaps the most polluted neighborhood in Dallas, precisely because public policy made it so.”

“It should now be public policy to provide proportional relief,” Schermbeck said. “Joppa should be off limits to industry of any kind.” 

Comprehensive Land Use Plan Committee Members Talk Housing, Density, And Affordability

It was clear the CLUP committee members heard the comments about accessory dwelling units and industrial/warehouse uses. The panel spent a considerable amount of time talking about air quality and impervious surfaces, then shifted to housing. 

Chief Planner Lawrence Agu facilitated the meeting and presented the draft plan, incorporating numerous revisions as suggested by the committee. 

Committee member Deborah Carpenter questioned language that suggested the loss of affordable housing coexisting with an excess of older housing stock. An anti-displacement or anti-gentrification toolkit is needed, Carpenter said. 

“To me, the document comes down very heavily on pro-new construction,” Carpenter said. “It seems that the priority is to bring down the price of new housing, however you can, but by doing that, it seems to me that we’re negatively impacting preserving naturally [occurring] affordable housing.” 

CLUP member Maureen Milligan pointed out that there’s not a pressing need to redevelop older areas like Swiss Avenue because people really want to live in those homes. Historically disinvested communities where homes have not been adequately maintained are vulnerable to real estate investors, she said. 

“I would suggest adding ‘equitably preserve and increase attainable housing options’ because those homes that people are in right now and are well-maintained are the source of our affordable housing,” Milligan said. 

CLUP Chair Brent Rubin agreed that tools are needed to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing — and more discussion is needed on how best to accommodate increasing housing needs and affordability.

“There are a wide range of opinions on this,” Rubin said. “We heard from a few people … who think we need to stick with our single-family zoning as it is and that’s the best tool to preserve, possibly with some additional overlay elements and things like that. We hear from people at the opposite end of the spectrum who say, ‘Let’s get rid of single-family zoning.’ And we have a range of opinions in the middle saying infill, vacant lots, corner lots, corridors. There is a wide spectrum of opinion.” 

ForwardDallas does not call for a specific solution to the future of single-family neighborhoods, Rubin added. 

“I’m convinced that single-family areas will continue to exist after we adopt ForwardDallas,” he said. “But it opens up the conversation to look at potential options for accommodating density to potentially address some of these issues relating to housing availability and affordability and preservation of naturally-occurring affordable housing. The only thing I see as a very strict policy call that we make here on density is we do call for ADUs by right, citywide.” 

And that’s the only specific policy implementation called for in ForwardDallas, Rubin pointed out.

“Otherwise, all of this missing middle piece that we’re looking to potentially integrate in the middle of neighborhoods, on the edges of neighborhoods, is a much more detailed and complex policy conversation that this document only facilitates,,” he said. “It doesn’t ultimately make the call on those questions. Allowing ADUs by right in single-family areas will have to go through appropriate measures including ZOACand CPC.”