Want to add a cottage or mobile home in your backyard? In this NC county, you now can.
Rural homeowners in Orange County can now rent out an apartment, mobile home or backyard cottage on their property or use it to provide aging relatives with accessible housing.
The Orange County Board of Commissioners voted 6-0 to approve the change to land-use rules Tuesday as a way to boost affordable housing.
The new rules won’t apply to homeowners in Chapel Hill, Carrboro or Hillsborough unless those towns adopt similar rules. County staff notified the towns about the proposed changes in late August, but said the towns have not responded.
Orange County previously let homeowners build “efficiency apartments” of up to 800 heated square feet on their land with another 200 square feet of unheated space. The rules did not permit mobile homes.
That forced homeowners to subdivide their property to build larger living spaces, increasing design costs and fees, and reducing the number of affordable units being created, county staff said.
The rules approved Tuesday will update the county’s definition to identify secondary homes and apartments as “accessory dwelling units,” or ADUs, and allow homeowners to add a mobile home if desired.
Owners who live in a home with up to 3,000 square feet of space will be allowed to build an apartment or small home with up to 1,500 square feet of space. Owners of larger homes can build an ADU that is half the size of their primary home.
The change will not allow duplexes and will maintain other county rules, including for septic systems, parking and buffers, Planning Director Cy Stober said.
Commissioner Anna Richards praised county staff for taking the initiative to change the rules.
“We’re all struggling with how to provide housing and meet the needs of our growing, aging community and affordable housing needs, so I thought it was a good, innovative way, with little change,” she said.
Delores Bailey, executive director of the Chapel Hill-based nonprofit Empowerment Inc. and a member of the Orange County Planning Board, said the changes will help address a 1,200-unit gap in affordable housing.
However, Bailey said, she does have concerns about the amount of impervious surfaces, such as roofs and driveways, that will be added, and how future homeowners will use the extra housing.
“It is a wonderful thing to create new ideas and ways to create affordable housing, but I want us to be careful to watch what happens and that it does continue to serve the people we want, and it doesn’t become an apartment building or it doesn’t become a boarding house for someone,” she said.
Smaller, affordable for families, seniors
Financial experts consider housing to be affordable if utilities and rent or a mortgage only cost a person or family up to 30% of their annual income.
In Orange County, roughly half of renters and 1 in 5 homeowners are struggling to pay their housing costs, according to the N.C. Housing Coalition’s most recent report.
The average sales price for an Orange County home in December was over $575,000, according to a market trend report from Triangle MLS. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment was over $1,400, according to the ApartmentList.com online marketplace.
Orange County’s Department on Aging says there is a growing need to serve older residents, many of whom require disability-friendly housing near services and public transportation.
Roughly 1 in 5 Orange County residents was age 60 or older in 2020, the department reported. By 2040, older adults could represent more than 1 in 4 county residents, it said.
The county’s housing need is especially acute in Chapel Hill, where officials have identified the need for over 3,800 affordable units to serve individuals and families earning less than $50,000 a year.
Chapel Hill is looking now at changes that could allow diverse housing types, such as duplexes, townhomes, triplexes and quads, in some neighborhoods. The town already allows accessory apartments over garages and in basements.
In 2020, Raleigh’s City Council voted to allow ADUs with staff-only approval, and late last year, the city launched a gallery of pre-designed cottage plans that meet local rules to make ADUs easier to build.
Durham also is considering changes to promote more ADUs. The city has allowed accessory units since 2006, but, as in Orange County, the current limit is 800 square feet of heated space.
This story was originally published January 18, 2023 at 11:21 AM with the headline "Want to add a cottage or mobile home in your backyard? In this NC county, you now can.."
