Following a public hearing on Oct. 3, the Geneseo Village Board voted in favor of revising the town zoning law in order to prevent the conversion of single-family homes into two-family houses that could potentially be rented out to students.
Residents of Wadsworth Street, a neighborhood largely populated by student renters, attended the hearing to support the board’s decision.
“We’re trying to correct a problem that occurred when we rewrote the code in 2007,” Board Trustee John Fox Jr. said while addressing the Wadsworth residents. “This opened up the door for the opportunity [of conversion to rental housing] to occur on Wadsworth Street, and what you folks are having to deal with [as well as] the village … and the planning board.”
The zoning revision, adopted in 2007, originally allowed for special use permits that would give homeowners in single-family residential neighborhoods the opportunity to build apartments for family members in their homes. This revision, however, also made it possible to convert single-family houses into two-family homes that could legally house eight students.
The revision also allowed for the creation of row houses, or attached unit dwellings, in Residential-2 neighborhoods typically allowed only in Residential-3 neighborhoods.
“We didn’t realize the implications of the law,” Mayor Richard Hatheway said during the hearing.
According to the Livingston County Planning Board Zoning Referral Form, the purpose of this amendment to the zoning law is to “limit the spread of non-owner-occupied housing; that is, to retain the residential character of the village by discouraging rental housing in R-1 and R-2 [neighborhoods].”
Residential-1, or R-1 neighborhoods include certain areas surrounding the village of Geneseo, whereas R-2 neighborhoods include most streets within the village itself.
The amendment to the zoning code eliminates special use permits for two-family dwellings in R-1 and R-2 neighborhoods, but does not address the issue of row house creation in R-2 neighborhoods. Because the Village Board did not include row-house creation in the Zoning Referral Form proposal, they will have to amend this issue at a later date.
Although the revisions will prevent the conversion of single-family homes in certain neighborhoods, they will not have an effect on single-family rental units.
“A single family [house] can still be a rental unit; there just can’t be more than four unrelated [students living there],” said Margaret E. Duff, a Village Board trustee.
In the future, the Village Board hopes to look into other ways in which single-family homeowners can legally add apartments for family members.