NIMBY Lawsuit Accidentally Abolishes City’s Entire Zoning Code
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week’s stories include:
- The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up a major challenge to Los Angeles’ COVID-era eviction moratorium
- Maine passes a suite of zoning reforms.
- The urbanist case for tourist traps
But first, our lead item on how a challenge to slightly more permissive zoning rules in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to the accidental abolition of zoning in the town.
NIMBY Lawsuit Ends Up Deleting City’s Entire Zoning Code
The comedy of errors unfolding from a lawsuit challenging Charlottesville, Virginia’s new zoning code took a surprisingly libertarian turn last week when a judge’s ruling ended up voiding all the city’s zoning regulations.
The lawsuit, filed by neighborhood activists in early 2024, challenges the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to allow apartment buildings in more areas of the city and “middle housing” development in formerly single-family-only neighborhoods.
The plaintiffs, who are alleging the city failed to coordinate the zoning changes with infrastructure planning, appeared to score a total victory last week when Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Claude Worrell ruled that, because the city missed a key filing deadline, the new code had to be scrapped.
But now, local media outlets are reporting a surprising twist. Charlottesville had to repeal its old zoning code before passing the new one. With the new code now voided and the old one off the books, the city officially now has no zoning code to speak of.
In other words, a NIMBY lawsuit challenging a slightly more liberal zoning code has resulted in complete zoning abolition.
Critics of zoning like to point out that many of the things people think they like about zoning—rules regulating the health and safety of new buildings, stormwater runoff, etc.—actually have nothing to do with zoning at all.
Charlottesville’s accidental zoning abolition is a great illustration of that point.
As Charlottesville Tomorrow reports, building codes and other related regulations remain on the books. But the zoning code’s rules about where apartments can be built, how tall they can be, how many units they can include, etc. are gone.
”If there’s no ordinance, then we don’t even need site plans,” Justin Shimp, the head of a local engineering firm, told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “You would simply say, I want to build an apartment building, and I would turn the building permit into the building department, and if it met the [state] building code, they would approve it, and you would build an apartment building.”
Unfortunately for zoning critics, the city is doing what it can to prevent a blossoming of new unzoned development while it scrambles to reinstitute a zoning code.
City planning staff told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they will delay any processing of building applications that “involve zoning” until they receive “further legal and procedural clarity.”
One Charlottesville city councilor told 29 News that until a new zoning code is adopted, the city’s goal of incentivizing more affordable housing and walkable neighborhoods
Article from Reason.com
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