Sometimes, building a house is simple: an opportunity arises, capital is borrowed, labor is contracted, and after a few months a new house pops up in our neighborhood. Other times, a house belies a months’-long slog through the city bureaucracy.
Such is the case for the lot on 1841 Lincoln Ave. in St. Paul, which contains a single house nestled in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood just off of Grand Avenue.
The site at 1841 Lincoln was once two lots, each originally platted and sold with a 40-foot width – not too different than many houses in Macalester-Groveland. Sometime between 1908 and today, the two lots merged and became an 80-foot lot with just one house. Today, the owners wish to split the lots back to their original 40-foot sizes, which would allow them to build and then sell an additional house.
You might expect this process to be painless. After all, the lot owners are simply going to split the lot back to its original size. And shouldn’t our city be welcoming the addition of new housing to address our low rental vacancy rates in the face of rising demand? St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said there’s an “urgent need for more housing for Saint Paul residents of all incomes,” and our city’s comprehensive plan calls for us to “support the development of new housing,” especially near transit. This house is a block from the 63 bus and 0.6 miles from the A Line rapid bus.
Unfortunately, things aren’t quite so easy. Since the lots were originally platted, everything about how we plan our cities changed. Strict local zoning became the dominant mode of land use control. In St. Paul, as in many other American cities, this means extensive swathes of land zoned solely for single-family homes alongside a thicket of other regulations on things like lot sizes, building setbacks, and the ratio of floor-space to total lot area. 1841 Lincoln is a section of St. Paul zoned R3, which means that all lots must be 50 feet wide, and though these lots were once 40 feet wide, their narrower size would make them illegal today.
As a result, the landowners of 1841 Lincoln Avenue are currently embroiled in the long, painful process of obtaining a variance. Variances are intended to grant landowners with exceptions to existing zoning codes for special circumstances. Because the landowners are asking for a special exemption to the zoning code, they must meet a set of standards, some of which present no problem. For example, this project is in line with the city’s stated goals of adding more housing, and city staffers don’t believe it will “alter the essential character of the surrounding area.” But the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) believes they fail to meet other standards: the landowners’ request for a variance is not “due to circumstances unique to the property not created by the landowner,” and thus fails to meet two closely related requirements.
Based on this finding, the BZA recommended denial of the variance. The landowners appealed this decision, so they are now wrapped up in the same discussion at the city council, where council members appear to be interested in the housing opportunity this lot split would provide, but have their hands tied. Councilmember Chris Tolbert said that this is a “quasi-judicial decision,” and so they can only make a decision based on the predefined set of variance standards.
[image_caption]Zak Yudhishthu[/image_caption]
The problem isn’t that we’re going to miss out on this single house. It’s that our planning environment contains a set of policies that leave us with consistent housing shortfalls. This is what Tom Basgen once described as the “wonky, boring, and exclusionary nature of the zoning realm.” We openly acknowledge that a new house would benefit our city, and then look to the zoning code and find that our hands are tied to historical decisions. Then, we build less housing and make competition for the existing housing stock increasingly cutthroat. In cutthroat housing markets, people lose.
Whatever the outcome of this specific variance, it’s not functional to require that simple projects like this one receive individual approval – and across our city, people are making efforts to change this. St. Paul’s 1-4 Unit Housing Study is one of the most promising measures to allow more housing by right. The study’s first phase led to meaningful reforms around accessory dwelling units in early 2022, and its upcoming second phase will consider legalizing all kinds of cottage clusters, townhomes and two/four plexes. This last summer, the city council also passed a reform to remove hyperlocal veto powers over certain conditional use permits.
So momentum is going in the right direction. Hopefully, city planners are also taking a hard look at the many other binding constraints in our zoning code and asking what purposes they serve, because our current set of rules doesn’t work.
Zak Yudhishthu is a student in St. Paul, and participates in the Macalester-Groveland District Council.
A house like this with a side yard in St Paul is a gem. Why would you want to give that up by force fitting another house on a minimum size lot? Sell half of the lot to your neighbors and enjoy a nice garden or fruit orchard. We need housing. There are lots of vacant parcels in St Paul where you can build housing, without destroying historic neighborhoods.
“destroying historic neighborhoods”?
Adding a house to an empty lot is destroying a neighborhood? You can’t seriously believe that nonsense.
If that is the case, I hate to bring horrible news but there are currently hundreds of others houses just blocks away from this empty lot providing very little in the way of tax dollars to the city.
Comments like this are honestly why elected officials should take public comments with a grain of salt.
But you could build something that would be in accordance with the historic flavor. However, let’s be real, even the second house would require the buyer to be in a high income range and that party could probably find housing anywhere.
“Destroying?”
Really?
This kind of fear-mongering, history-fetishizing, emotionally drenched language is a big part of what makes progressive public policy so difficult.
This may be news to you, but our population is increasing rapidly. So we still need farm lands, so new, greenfield development has to be preserved, too. Housing will simply need to be denser — and it shouldn’t be just the lower-income neighborhoods that shoulder that.
Our cities and neighborhoods HAVE to change and adapt. That means your worldview needs to change and adapt as well.
Perhaps not a stellar or even good example of where a new house should go.
Look at the photo and imagine squeezing a house in there. We had a house (rebuilt) not too far away and it was rebuilt on a higher foundation, pushes out to the property line limits and practically cries – look at me! It no longer fits the character of the neighborhood.
Reading the Appeal Application, one reason listed for the variance is – hardship. They list it requires extensive maintenance on their part. And has taken a large toll on them physically and mentally. (Read it for yourself.) Now, after reading what I wrote, take a look at the photo again at the start of the article and apply the applicant’s words.
Next, look at the site on Google Maps or some like website. Zoom down and look at the adjoining blocks. You will find open spaces in the nearby. The open lot is not, not an outlier.
I agree with Mike, the lot and space is a gem, that many would love to sit out in or have the space to raise a family or let a dog run.
Plenty of people buy houses in the city with 40′ wide lots. In fact, these houses can command sale prices at $500K or more. Just a couple blocks away a house sold for $500K on a 40′ wide lot.
I bought a house on a 40′ wide lot in Minneapolis and it was a great purchase despite a bidding war. When I sold it 6 years later, there was another bidding war. People value location and amenities. The location where this empty lot is located is great and the StP should grant a variance so more housing can be built in a city that has done a poor job creating new housing for the last several decades.
At first, I figured the opposing witness (Owner of the house on 1845) was a NIMBY. Then, I went to a satellite view of the area. I have to admit that putting another house onto that half lot would result in some pretty close quarters. I owned a house on Saratoga st near Randolph Ave from 1986 to 1998. When we decided to move (raising 3 growing boys in an 800 sq ft house wasn’t working anymore.) We quickly discovered that we simply couldn’t afford any houses in the area that met our space requirements. The lot in question is in a pretty desirable neighborhood. When the previous owner of our house built a 3 stall garage, he had to apply for, and got, a variance. I’m amazed there are 3 and 4 stall garages in the area of the lot in question.
The applicant, according to testimony, no longer lives at the address. It’s obvious their plans are to build a house on that empty side, then sell the two houses separately. I’m guessing that they’d get almost double the money compared to what they’d get if they sold the property as-is. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but if you look at the satellite map, you’ll see that if they did build on the empty side, it would be REALLY snug.
It seems pretty asinine to zone a neighborhood minimum 50 foot lot size when a large number of houses were already built with 40 foot lot sizes. They essentially made the whole block illegal.
Bravo!
A well written insightful article on a timely topic! The Council was correct to deny the variance application as it does not meet state and local law. If it had been approved the Council would have been acting in an arbitrary manner. The solution is to amend the code itself and eliminate these barriers to production of housing. If you are in favor of continuing the restrictive zoning regime, you simply do not care about the housing crisis in St. Paul and throughout the state.
Mark from Duluth
What an unfortunate picture to use for this article. Really, you should have used an overhead aerial or a different angle. The picture makes the house look gigantic. and the lot tiny.
I agree. The picture used makes the lot look quite spacious. Look at it using a satellite view on mapquest, and you can see just how cramped things would be if they shoehorned another house onto that lot.