In an effort to prevent low-quality housing in unincorporated Johnson County, the Johnson County Plan Commission and Board of Commissioners recently approved the county’s first set of subdivision design standards.
The standards address common complaints that remonstrators make about new subdivisions, such as lot sizes, fencing and construction materials, said Dan Cartwright, a plan commission member.
“We have more growth in Johnson County than we’ve ever had,” Cartwright said. “There are so many subdivisions and almost all of them going in have had a significant amount of remonstrators.”
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On the plan commission and board of zoning appeals, Cartwright and other volunteers have listened to hours of testimony about these issues. While the standards won’t eliminate more broad concerns about traffic, school overcrowding or loss of farmland, they are a start, he said.
“It is something that will make life a lot easier for volunteers who work on the BZA and Plan commission,” Cartwright said.
The goal of the new standards is to avoid “vinyl villages” cropping up as housing grows in unincorporated areas of the county, said David Hittle, the county’s planning and zoning director.
Though vinyl-sided housing developments have not been proposed in unincorporated Johnson County since the housing bubble burst, the standards were created to make sure developers know the county’s goal is to cultivate high-quality housing stock, Hittle said.
The standards only apply to single-family houses or duplexes platted in major subdivisions after Jan. 1, and would not be retroactive to subdivisions that are already under construction. That means houses that are planned on agriculture- or rural residential-zoned land in minor subdivisions or unplatted lots would not be subject to the standards, he said.
Both Hittle and Cartwright said it is not necessary to apply the same standards to rural homes because the lots are already large and the exterior design only matters to the homeowner.
“We don’t get complaints out there,” Hittle said. “If you live on a large lot it is less likely that you would complain about your neighbor’s lot or their vinyl siding.”
To address the popular lot size concern, all three classifications of major subdivision will see an increase in lot size and building dimension requirements.
The R-1 classification will be geared toward estate homes, with a 90-foot minimum lot width and a 16,000 or 24,000 minimum square footage requirement, depending on whether the home is one or two stories, the standards say.
R-2 takes a middle ground with an 80-foot lot width and a 1,000 or 2,000 square foot minimum; while R-3 is a smaller lot option with a 70-foot lot width a 900 square foot minimum, according to the standards.
Each classification will also be subject to the same building material, window and fencing requirements, according to the standards.
Each classification may have vinyl siding on no more than 40% of the exterior, and brick, stone or other types of siding must make up at least 60% of the exterior. Vinyl siding may only be on the back of the building and must be heavy grade vinyl, the standards say.
One or two windows per floor must also be on each side of the house, according to the standards.
The fencing requirement will provide a more uniform look and make sure fences are not placed in drainage or utility right of ways, Cartwright said. Fences placed in drainage right of ways has emerged as a common reason older subdivisions are now experiencing drainage problems, he said.
An architectural diversity standard requires that no more than 30% of houses with the same exterior color or design appear on the same block in a subdivision, standards say.
“It will eliminate the potential of building 50 shotgun houses 20 feet apart that all look alike,” Cartwright said. “We don’t want that. Nobody wants that.”
Though several of the standards, such as material and size requirements, could make homes pricier. But Hittle and Cartwright both believe the standards won’t drive up home prices.
Instead, Cartwright expects the houses to cost similar to those that are already on the market or under construction in subdivisions across the county, he said.
“The housing market right now in Johnson County is an average of $175,000 to $300,000. When they develop a subdivision of that price, it builds up fast,” Cartwright said. “These standards would fall in line with this price range.”
The county also updated its zoning code to allow a secondary dwelling to be constructed on rural residential- or agriculture-zoned land without a variance, meaning homeowners may build a small house or garage apartment on a property if they get a building permit, Hittle said.
The secondary dwelling policy does not apply to existing subdivisions, but it could apply to new subdivisions if the homeowner’s association chooses to adopt the policy into its covenant, he said.
The change was made after the board of zoning appeals increasingly and repeatedly saw requests to build secondary dwellings, Cartwright said. The board had been approving the requests but with the requirement that only blood relatives would occupy the second dwelling, he said.
The new rule does not require a relative to live in the dwelling, but it does require that the homeowner live on the property.
