 All right, so I feel a little silly talking to all of you this close with a microphone in my hand that's not amplifying. But we are very grateful to have Channel 17 here that's helping make this available to folks who might be watching at home or watching later. So thank you all for coming up to the Miller Center tonight. I think I know all of you, but for those of you that might be listening online, my name is Megan Tuttle. I'm the director of planning for the city. We also have Sarah Morgan and Charles Dillard here in the back if you have not met either of them. They're also planners in our office as well. So we're going to run through just a quick presentation to talk about the Burlington neighborhood code, a little bit about what it is. And then the purpose of tonight's gathering is really to start to get your perspectives on the types of middle housing that might be good fits for different parts of the city so that we can start to develop some ideas and recommendations to the planning commission about how we might introduce some zoning changes that could help facilitate more homes in our neighborhoods. So I was actually hoping to start by asking a couple questions of all of you just so that we can start to orient ourselves to different ways that people that we all have lived over the course of our lives. So if you wouldn't mind, I'm just going to say a couple different types of housing and raise your hand if you've ever lived in them or if you live in them now. So let's start with an apartment or a condominium. Yeah? These two had to think if they've ever done it. OK, what about a duplex or a triplex? OK, a townhouse. I live in a townhouse. OK, how about a house that has been converted into multiple homes? OK, single-family home. OK, dorm room. I think almost everyone's raised their hand for everyone. What about a mobile home? I've lived in a mobile home. OK, great. I think it's just it's kind of helpful for us all to understand the different housing types that help us meet different needs at different times in our lives. Because part of what we're talking about when we talk about the neighborhood code is thinking through different housing options that can be available for people within the same neighborhood and community where we all live that can help meet their needs at different points in their life. So I think many of you have mentioned that you've heard or have heard us talking about the neighborhood code at different points over the last year. This is one of the three zoning changes that we have been tasked with looking at as part of the 2021 Housing Action Plan. I think many of you have been involved in discussions about the South End Innovation District zoning. So thinking about parts of the city where housing has never been allowed before and envisioning how new neighborhoods could be formed in those places. We're also, we have been not recently, but in the past, we have been talking about the potential for thinking about housing on the institution's campuses. And then the neighborhood code or really thinking about housing within existing neighborhoods is the last item that we're talking about as part of this work. I do also just want to mention for those of you who are not aware, Bob and I were talking about this right before we got started, but just within the last few months, the state legislature passed a bill called S100 or the Home Act is what it's been also referred to that really starts to look at housing types like what we're going to talk about tonight at the statewide level. And the outcome of that bill is that across the state, communities will have to provide zoning that is more supportive of duplexes alongside single family homes. And in parts of the state like Burlington where we have water and sewer service, access to transit, we have to think also about three and four unit buildings and how those types of buildings might have a place in our community alongside single family homes and duplexes. So we're going to talk a little bit tonight about what it means for us to start to enable these types of homes more regularly across the city. And that bill is certainly something that we'll be thinking about as well. So I know a lot of you have been following a lot of the work that we've been doing. You know that over the past decade or so we've worked on a number of zoning changes that are helping us look at both our long-term housing needs and our kind of ever-evolving and changing housing needs. Many of these zoning changes, apologies, that is really dim. Many of those zoning changes have been focused on places like the downtown. Other areas of the city that our plan, Plan BTV has really indicated as being areas of the city where we would facilitate the most intense and the majority really of our future growth. We have paid a lot of attention to those areas and while we've had some success and particularly in adding about 1,300 new homes in the city in the last decade, we're starting to look kind of beyond these areas because we know that within the limited context of land that are in those areas there are only gonna be certain types of homes that can be created. A lot of what we're seeing are in larger developments, mostly in apartment buildings, so we are also looking through the neighborhood code at ways that we can think about different types of homes in different areas as well. So this is really helping us also to think about elements of Plan BTV which talks about our neighborhoods, our residential areas or the areas of the city that are zoned primarily for residential uses, I should say. These are the kinds of places that have really strong identities both in terms of their built patterns, their architectural styles, other features, kind of the history of how the city has developed. And are also places that we know in order for our neighborhoods to continue to be vibrant and sustainable, have to be places that can evolve to meet the needs of households as they're changing over time. So that's one of the things that we're gonna be focusing on as part of this neighborhood code. When we talk about the neighborhood code or when we talk about use the term missing middle housing, we're talking about a specific group of building types that are generally, we'd call them house scale or neighborhood scale buildings. These are buildings that might have multiple units in them but from the exterior they may appear to be exactly the same size as a single family home or a similar size to a single family home. And you can see in this diagram that one of the things that we're gonna be talking about and exploring is kind of to what extent these different middle housing types might be a good fit for different parts of Burlington. Certainly, as I mentioned with the bill that was passed, the state has said a duplex is really the same scale as a single family home and therefore the bill is asking all municipalities to allow duplexes wherever single family homes are allowed. So that's kind of all the way on the left side of the scale and three and four unit buildings start to move in a little bit beyond that and we'll be exploring kind of what or how those buildings might be able to be incorporated in Burlington. The reason that these are often called missing middle is that for a variety of reasons, including changes to zoning laws over time, these types of homes have become harder or in some cases even illegal to build in a lot of our neighborhoods. Even neighborhoods where they may have been part of the original development of certain neighborhoods. You can think about the lakeside neighborhood in the south end built alongside the blodget factories and that's a neighborhood that was originally and exclusively built as duplexes, triplexes, small apartment buildings and even some commercial buildings. But our zoning would make it very hard for us to replicate a neighborhood like that today. We have examples of these buildings. These are just a couple, we're gonna use some terms tonight and part of what the boards are that are set up here is to help us dig in a little bit more and look at what these building types really are so that we can understand what their scale might be and how they could be placed alongside other homes. And I think the interesting thing is that we may not realize it but we have examples of many of these types of homes throughout Burlington. In fact, this one down here, actually both of the blue ones on the left side of the screen are both from North Avenue. If you came from the south or east part of the city tonight you drove by both of those on your way here tonight. So we do have examples of many of these middle housing types across the city. Before we get into talking more about what these are, I think it's important to talk about why we are talking about this. As noted in the beginning, these are opportunities for us to explore how we bring new homes into existing neighborhoods. And there are a lot of different reasons and benefits that many folks have identified for middle housing. We are working closely with AARP Vermont on this work and I know that they have been talking a lot about middle housing types as an opportunity specifically to provide different diversity of homes in neighborhoods to help facilitate really aging in place, being able to have options within neighborhoods as people's needs are changing. We also know that what types of homes are available in a particular neighborhood can really greatly influence who is able to live in a neighborhood. Part of the reason we were asking about what type of home you've lived in over the span of your life is just to recognize that our housing needs change over our lives. But in particular, when we think about the middle housing types that we're gonna be talking about, there are a number of households that seem to be a good fit for various reasons. I mentioned older adults in particular thinking about smaller homes that have lower maintenance requirements, younger households and first time home buyers, particularly to find homes that are maybe of a more attainable price point or provide more flexibility and support for people who are moving into their own housing for the first time, as well as smaller households. We do have a larger number of one-person households in Burlington now and this provides more options for people to find smaller homes. I think altogether these groups here that we've mentioned are about a third of the city's population today. We also know that, again, within when we think about the intersection of what type of housing you have access to, there are a lot of relationships to income, race, even whether you're able to access renter or owner occupied housing. One of the things I think is particularly important to mention is that while we know and talk a lot about the fact that many off-campus students live in rental housing, it's important to note that of all the people, all the households in Burlington that rent their home, 70% of them are people that are 25 and older. So I think the majority of age groups in the city, there are more people renting than owning their home in all age groups. So when we talk about more housing in neighborhoods, we are certainly trying to explore opportunities for both new rental and owner occupied housing, which is really important because it touches everyone in our community. And again, when we think about middle housing types, there can be some cost savings associated with these types compared in particular to single family homes. If you think about a lot that might have two or three or even four homes on it, sharing the land cost associated with a lot in the city, we can start to see some potentially positive effects on the overall affordability of the homes that are on that lot. And we know that this is really important when we look at the current home sale, single family home price in Burlington in the last several years. I think in order to kind of transition into why we're talking about zoning changes, we wanna just very briefly touch on a few, things that we know are kind of standing in the way of helping us achieve more housing in these neighborhoods today. And this really starts with some great work that Sarah in our office has been doing to explore the sort of history and how our zoning ordinance has evolved since we first adopted zoning in the city. So we'll give you the very abbreviated version of that. Burlington first adopted zoning in 1947. And at the time we first adopted zoning, I think it was close to 40% of all the lots that are in our residential districts had already been developed in some way. They'd been subdivided, maybe a home had been built on them, maybe not the home that we see there today, but they had been developed in some way before we created that first zoning ordinance. Let me just see where I'm at here. When we first adopted this zoning ordinance, we actually only had one residential zoning district. And this zoning district allowed for a mix of housing types, single family homes, small apartment buildings, duplexes, rooming houses, really allowed for a mix of home types. What was really interesting though about this first zoning ordinance is that we started to establish standards for things like how big a lot had to be when it was subdivided. And interestingly, almost 80% of the lots that had already been subdivided didn't meet those lot size standards. So from kind of the first time, what did you say? I'm very curious. Big surprise. Big surprise, right. That's sort of the point. That's where we're going with this story, right? Is that from 1947, when we first adopted our first zoning ordinance, despite the fact that it was very permissive in the sense of a mix of housing types, we were already starting to regulate new buildings in a way that didn't allow the things that we were already building to be built again. 1973 was a major moment for us in terms of making a major change to our zoning code. And this is where we see the basis of the zoning standards that we have in place today. This is where we first introduced our five different residential zoning districts. We started to limit housing types based on what zone they were in. So we started to split them and separate them from each other. And we created new parking and density limits that started to control how many homes could be built on a lot. We made some changes in the 1990s that further reduced that and even scaled back in certain neighborhoods what could be built from the previous few decades. And while we've made some corrections in 2008, which was our most recent major rewrite of our ordinance, we still find that there are a number of barriers in our zoning code to getting more of these middle housing types in some of our neighborhoods today. I know all of you have been in Burlington for a long time. You could probably tell me more reasons why we've changed the zoning ordinance than all of the ones that I know. But certainly some of the factors are not unique to Burlington. Nationally and locally in, especially the 70s through the 90s and even into the 2000s here in Chittenden County, there have been trends towards suburbanization. And a lot of older communities would try to update their standards to be kind of competitive with those growing places and to shape neighborhoods in ways that were consistent with the homes that were being built in growing nearby communities. We know that federal, if we look further back, federal housing policies really informed a lot of what could be built and where, including who had access to live in certain neighborhoods. And while Burlington was never a city that was formally redlined, if you've ever heard of that term, we did start to introduce zoning tools into our ordinance in many decades ago that were tools that became proxies for redlining when redlining was outlawed. But more recently, I think it's fair to say that some of these changes had to do with the fact that our previous codes just weren't very context sensitive and we didn't have great ways to shape exactly what types of new homes we wanted to see in certain neighborhoods. So I think we can all think of very large, potentially out-of-scale buildings that have been built alongside smaller homes in neighborhoods that we were trying to kind of pull the reins back in on. So one of the things that we're gonna be looking at is how our ordinance can become a bit more context sensitive. We wanna look at how do we re-legalize some of these older housing types that were small and could fit alongside existing neighborhoods, but how do we also kind of address some of those barriers that are precluding that? We're also, and I think this is definitely an important point for the neighborhood that we're in here tonight in the New North End. We're kind of looking beyond the neighborhoods that may have originally been built with these middle housing types and thinking about neighborhoods where it's fair to say they have developed much further after zoning and may have a largely single family character to them. A lot of the neighborhoods up in this area fit that bill. This is an example of a middle housing type that's called a cottage court. So if you can see this example, this is an actual lot up here in the New North End. It's an acre. And we've explored this concept of a cottage court which would enable five new small, single family home type structures on the same lot as the existing home that's there on the lot. Provides ample open space, in fact some interior shared open space for the people who might live in this cottage court as well as some off street parking. But our zoning today, maybe of all the middle housing types we're talking about, this is probably the one that would be the hardest to achieve in Burlington. There'd probably be virtually nowhere that this could be built today for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that we do not allow multiple homes to be built on the same lot. And because we have very strict standards if somebody would be interested in subdividing a lot like this to make for sale lots under these homes, they would not be able to meet our subdivision standards today. This is another example of a lot here in the New North End. This one is actually on the avenue. Right now it's sort of a large, very large surface parking lot next to an existing duplex. And this is looking at the idea of sometimes it's called a quad or a fourplex or maybe a small apartment house that could fit at that corner on the avenue. This is something that I know in talking with AARP, they've been really excited to explore more because of the potential for ground floor accessible units that are walk-in instead of stair entry kind of units. It has walking distance access to the Hannaford Plaza, to the bus, and is even in close proximity to other neighborhood businesses. So in addition to thinking about this as an option for accessible housing, you also start to think about this building and this location as a potential place where maybe people who are working in some of these nearby neighborhood businesses could find housing. But again, our zoning makes it very difficult today for a building like this to be built, in particular again because we don't like to build multiple buildings on a lot in residential neighborhoods, but also because of the number of units that would be on this lot at the end of the day. Our zoning standards would not allow six total homes to be on one lot despite how large it is. So in addition to those first few things that I had mentioned about looking at how to re-legalize historic patterns, we're also gonna be looking to kind of evolve our zoning from thinking about typical standards like lot sizes and density limits to try to find more context sensitive zoning tools that could help us actually fit some of these homes within and alongside existing neighborhoods. And then that last example of North Avenue, we're gonna look at whether there are different housing types, maybe some that are on the bigger end of the spectrum of the middle housing types that I showed that might be appropriate for things like right on the avenue or right on Shelburne Road, near commercial centers and as those districts evolve. So I'm happy to answer a couple of questions, but before we do that, I just wanna explain what we're gonna do here tonight, what we would really love your feedback on here tonight. We have a poster set up in the back of the room under the sun camp sign that describes these middle housing types in more detail. So we invite you to explore that and read about these different housing types. And then we have three sort of example neighborhood streets that we've set up. The neighborhood streets already have their own unique sort of mix of building types on them. And we want you to just think about and consider which of these middle housing types you think might be most appropriate to fit on the empty lots that are on these neighborhood streets. We have little stickers with the different building types. Feel free to put as many of them on the vacant lots as you'd like based on your thoughts about how they would fit alongside one another. And then we'll try to come back with about five or so minutes left at the end and we'll just talk a little bit about why it might be, more specifically, why it might be hard for some of those buildings to fit in the neighborhoods that you've identified. So go ahead, Eric. Can you talk about eliminating density as a measure altogether? Yeah, so that is actually something that we're contemplating here. We specifically, we're looking at the residential zoning districts as part of this project. We have effectively eliminated density limits in our downtown, for example. Instead of saying you can only build a 5.0 FAR, we actually say that every floor of the building can be a certain size, proportionate to the lot itself. But we are thinking for the residential districts that especially through this work that we may wanna shift towards something different than a dwelling units per acre standard. You can put it right here. I'll say that. Hi, Chair. Yes, I was handed the mic. Why was that, why did that happen? Maybe Charlie knows you. It would be interesting to know, thank you for this information, first off. It would be interesting to know how many large lots there are that could entertain marios that are intriguing, like the cottage courts, et cetera. I think that that is something that inventory is really key to know how interesting the development could be. And so that's one question. When you were talking about the percentage of single family homes that are rental versus owner occupied, I wondered if that scale was tipped because we're close to a college and all of the students that occupy single family homes and really makes that out of proportion with the rest. And I wasn't sure if you were counting just structures or people when you were talking about that. Okay, great question. And so to me, that was something else. I wanted to mention that when I, I bought my first house before you were born, but anyways, in 1972, yeah, that's when I bought my first house. And we qualified for a VHA loan, which allowed us to buy the house. It was on Colchester Avenue, and it was $19,000 guys, $19,000. But without that loan, we could not have bought that house at the time. So, I mean, there seem some barriers here when you're talking about who lives where. I just wanted to offer that. There was something else that I wanted to ask you. Let me just look. So, another style of house that you had mentioned that I thought was intriguing. Oh, last thing I wanted to say is that because we're close to a college, because of the, I think we have real pressure for investors to purchase smaller homes and rent them to people, a lot of people that are either affiliated with the school, with the college. And some professionals, but not as many, but some professionals with the hospital. So, if you look at, Eric, what street did you live on? Brooks. Brooks, thank you. It was the captain's street from the lake would be there, but there were single-family homes. There was an apartment structure. I don't know how old that white house on the corner was, but it was a mix. Anyways, it's still there, and it all works. It all worked, but I feel that people are fearful of creating bigger structures because of not the people, but the investment and not that it will be occupied and create stability to neighborhoods. So, I think people are looking for some type of stability that doesn't mean commitment forever, but they are looking to stabilize neighborhoods so that they're safer and they're more livable. And I think that's a challenge as you move forward. And I think that's a resistance that has nothing to do with the housing type, but gets imposed on the housing type. Anyways, thank you. So, did you wanna say something? No, I just wanted to answer a question about 70. Only 30% of our renters are students. She asked that the first time. Yeah, no, I was actually, so I was gonna go back to this one. So, when I mentioned this in the bottom corner here, so what we're talking about here are all households. So, a household is like any group of people that live together in a home, right? So, we're talking about of all the households in Burlington that rent their homes, 70% of them have people 25 and older living in them. 70% of those households. So, it's not 70% of all people who rent. It's 70% of those people who live together in a rental household. Thank you. The other question that you asked was about how some of these middle housing types might be able to fit in different parts of the city. Right, because of the lot size. Right, exactly. And so, it's really, it's interesting because when we think about these different housing types and what needs they might have, some of them, like different types of duplexes, maybe even some smaller buildings with four units in them, they may be able to fit on lots that are very similar to the range of sizes of single family homes. We have single family homes that are as small as 900 square feet in the city, all the way up to probably several thousand square feet. So, we'll be looking at those as ones that might be able to fit kind of in that smaller context. Something like a cottage court, you're right. You would probably start to need more like a quarter of an acre, maybe a half of an acre sized lot before you'd be able to fit that number of homes in that configuration. So, one of the things that Sarah has also been doing is starting to help us look at where are those lots around the city? And I think you can probably guess certain neighborhoods around the city where you'd see lots like that. So, as we start to identify which of these housing types people are comfortable with, we'll also be looking then at, what is really the potential for them? Some of that has to do with things like, how big are the lots and where are those lots? Some of it has to do with, what does our zoning say you can do? And that's where, if these are housing types that we want, we might have to make some changes to our zoning rules to help them fit in more places than they could today. I would love you to look at Brooks Avenue and North Prospect just around Brooks Avenue because I think that integrates a lot of what you're saying. There are larger apartment houses, there are single family homes, and it all works. And it all works and it's a desirable neighborhood. It all works. So, I would like you to look at that because I think that should be desirable for most everyone. How could we replicate some of that? Right, exactly. And the other thing that's missing are row houses. Row houses are so popular. I mean, the new ones that you put down on Lower College Street are incredible. They make me think of Back Bay, Boston, and then the ones up higher up on College Street near across from the Y, et cetera. Those were also very desirable places and I don't see that in the mix. So, we're calling them a townhouse here, but I think we're talking about a similar kind of thing. Yep. I'm curious as to when you look at a neighborhood in terms of what's the appropriate housing type, are you looking more at household type? Are you looking at architecture in the aesthetic fabric of the neighborhood? We're looking more at that aspect of things. What is the scale and pattern of the neighborhoods? And that's why these three different neighborhoods that we've put together, while we are not necessarily talking about the specifics, like this neighborhood is a ranch-style home on a lot or this neighborhood is a two-story house with a gable, those are the types of things that we'll be thinking about in developing ordinances that are more context-sensitive. What are some of those patterns that we want to be able to replicate? Instead of focusing as much on the number of homes that are inside the building, maybe, we're focused on what is the right kind of pattern of those buildings to fit in those neighborhoods? Well, I think an interesting thing about that is as you grow some of these neighborhoods and do larger structures, then the fabric starts to change and then maybe even larger structures a few years down the road would even be more appropriate and that thing can just keep growing that way. And I'm not saying that's good or bad, but I was interested in whether it was driven more by architecture or... Yeah, the sort of pattern and scale of the buildings. And I think that's the other thing that we'll be looking for is if we say that buildings of this kind of general footprint are the appropriate size to fit here, we'll be sort of exploring what that means in terms of could you actually fit a duplex in a building of that size or four units in a building of that size? And maybe there are some tweaks we need to make to scale buildings up or down or maybe they're allowed to scale up or down in certain neighborhoods based on the size of the other buildings around them. So that's some of the very in the weeds things that we'll be exploring. Well, and the last thing I'll say and then I'll shut up is that because of the significant increasing costs, obviously it drives people to... And a lot of people wanna live in smaller spaces because they're more affordable and they're more efficient and whatever. And so the old fashioned four plex, you could probably fit eight units into that same building. And that's my beef with density as a measure. So this is all very exciting. I think there's so much potential to be thinking creatively about how we develop our neighborhoods and increase density and so on. One of the things that I think is important to be considered is there needs to be a cross department interest in this. And I say that because a number of the examples that you showed not only couldn't be built according to zoning, they also can't be built according to building code. So unless, you know, we have in some cases in Burlington designed by Fire Marshal, you know, it's based on the size of truck and where the truck can turn around. So for instance, the cottage court example that you had, not only couldn't you build it because of five buildings on a lot that isn't allowed by zoning, but there's no way the Fire Marshal is gonna approve that site plan because they can't get a truck to the last unit at the end. So there needs to be a kind of a rethinking of how you incorporate building codes and issues with the Fire Marshal into the zoning as well, because that all has an impact. And if we don't do that, then we're gonna have a zoning ordinance that's gonna be impossible to actually implement, or not impossible, because there'll be some things you can, but there'll be some things that we dream for and say, well, you can't do that because you can't have windows on that wall because it's too close to the property line or whatever the reason is. So I don't know how we bring that interdepartmental aspect into play here. And that's one other point, and I'm not one to ask for more regulation, but one of the things that we don't have in the city of Burlington is any single family or duplex level building code enforcement. We actually apply all commercial building codes to single family homes. So some of the things that might be allowed under the International Residential Code aren't allowed under the International Building Code. So when the building inspector tries to apply the International Building Code to a single family home, well, all of a sudden, there's all sorts of things that come into play. So I think we need to think about how we address these things at smaller scale so that we can accomplish some of these goals and not be thwarted by things that we're not even talking about tonight. Yeah, that's a really great point. There are lots of other things that Eric mentioned, one of them cost, construction cost. I know there are lots of different people who are thinking about this across the state because there's a recognition that you're right. It's not just zoning alone. That is the barrier to why we're not getting more of these homes. We have started conversations with the fire marshal and the building inspector. I do know there's also, I think S100 or maybe another bill also directed the state agency of public safety to study the building code and think about how we could find improvements even in the state's code that would help us better balance the need for housing with safety. And so that's another area that I'll be looking forward to a lot. Yeah, and there's, okay, are you in our zoning code? Is there a certain percentage that our law has to be green? Yes. What percentage is that? It depends. Okay. Well, we have a low density residential one. 35% of the law. Okay, because. No, no, no, buildings can only occupy 35%. That's right, okay. Okay, one of the things that I just filled in my back porch with a bathroom. I didn't change my footprint. And the first, that was part of the vision of the building. First question zoning says is, I wanna see your law plan to see that you're not taking up more green space. So there has to be some coordination here also. And I also curious, university place, university terrace, which I live on has duplexes, has multi apartments and buildings. It has three stack apartment buildings. It has, so I think we're perfect for what you're talking about. But when I look on the map, it says we don't conform to zoning. And I don't know whether that's because our lots are too big or what the reason. Yeah, you know, that goes back to what I was saying before about a lot of those buildings were probably built. Well, they were a hundred years old. That's exactly 1920, so. So then we started adopting zoning. Okay, so the lot is too big. Or maybe too small, or maybe there's too many homes on it. Yep. Because we're about 10 feet apart. So I'm just trying to think, well, why are we not conforming? Exactly, I think that's one of the things that we've been trying to look at is like, in some places our zoning just doesn't even match what's on the ground. And so there are legitimate reasons in some cases why that is the case. I think in previous eras, maybe we allowed buildings that were too big and we wanted to scale them back. But I think in the process of scaling them back, we had some unintended consequences in that we made homes that in some cases are homes that people may love the most in their neighborhood are actually considered non-conforming or illegal and couldn't be repeated. And so we wanna look at how do we kind of address that point because I think your point about building your bathroom onto your house, that while it doesn't maybe seem like a big deal that I have a house that doesn't meet the zoning standards, it can actually start to run counter to you being able to evolve how your house meets your needs over time, right? It makes it accessible so that we can stay in the house longer. Yep, right. Great, well, why don't we, if you guys are all okay with it, I would love to get your opinions here on what Sarah has put together for us. So if you wanna wander around and talk to Charles and Sarah and I, happy to continue any of the other discussions too while we're doing that. So I was telling someone earlier that the only good thing I can think that ever came out of COVID was the acceptance remote work. Yeah. And so if you have a place where you can do that in the same facility, not everybody wants to work in their home. But they'll work in something adjacent to their home or in the same building. Like a little space on the ground floor or something. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. And I think depending on where you are, probably some of the limits to that would be kind of where we allow commercial uses in residential neighborhoods. So I think for some places, it's not so much the building style itself. Like we were actually talking today about one of Stu McGowan's houses on Spring Street is actually looks like it probably used to be a commercial building that's been fully converted. But you could easily imagine how that would be a great live work building, having housing and it's great too. But I think probably one of the biggest limits, we don't allow office as a use in a neighborhood or in a residential district. So in our apartment buildings at Cambrian, we do pretty generous common spaces. So we have some workspaces like libraries, but we don't allow business invitees. You can't take a meeting in there. No, you can't bring customers or clients in. Gotcha. Work there yourself. Anyone else? Any buildings that you really liked? I like the Stack Duplex that I have a preference as I've told you, because my daughter lives in one. I really, I like it because it looks, it's a way to integrate more housing. And yet I think it fits into a street that is maybe mainly single family that might have room for a different housing style. I like that better than the side-by-side and I'm not quite sure why. Yeah, maybe because the buildings look like they're a different size. Yeah, I think the Stack because of the roof line, because of the way you designed it looks smaller. It's interesting, we have lots of different examples of both stacked and side-by-side duplexes in Burlington. So the Stack Duplexes, you probably saw this over on the cards, but they're very common in the Old North End. And then the side-by-sides are really common in Five Sisters and parts of the South End. And so it can be very interesting to go through those neighborhoods and just see them right next to a single family home because in that context, they actually don't look very different until you notice the doors or something. So, and for duplex is really the biggest challenge with having more duplexes in Burlington today are the density limits that Eric mentioned and the fact that we require you to have almost twice the lot size to have a duplex than to have a single family home. So even though the building may literally be the exact same size and scale of a single family home, a lot of properties can't actually have them for that reason. I think another efficient building, and Bob can correct me if I'm wrong about this, is if you have a three-story apartment building with a limit of four units per floor, I think you can serve that with a single staircase and an elevator. That's right. So that's a very cost-effective way to build a multi-family that's not too out of scale. Right, smaller. So let's see if the units are a little bit on the smaller side. Then, you know, because when you get beyond that and you have to put an elevator in, you have to put two staircases. It changes the dynamics. You lose your efficiency. Yep, yep. Yeah, and I think in those cases, considering that to be more of a mid-size apartment, again, you're going to run into density limits and the lot size problem again, yep. But that comes under the three or four unit apartment house. Two, yep, yep. I didn't use townhouses. You said that at the beginning. I would have put row houses. I would have used them. I just looked at that when I don't know why I didn't do that. Yeah. Because I think there are areas that it would be nice to have that style of home. And definitely the sort of intersection of talking about all these building types that we've heard lots of questions about and one of the things that I was asking Bob about, especially when we think about building code or even just thinking about cost and access, one of the things I didn't mention earlier is that the Vermont Housing Finance Agency is also trying to develop some programs that will help address what it costs to actually build homes like this and the gap between the construction cost and the appraised value, which is a big deal because that means for people who are trying to buy those buildings, they can't necessarily get financing to buy a building like that. And so they're trying to develop some programs that would provide some funding to actually help the builders build those buildings and kind of help offset that gap so that these can become more feasible. Again, kind of like the building code thing. But with some of these, kind of like I mentioned with the cottage court, besides just not being allowed, thinking more creatively about some of the things that have to do with the land under the buildings so that, yeah, we can explore any of these building types as a mix of owner or renter, kind of housing options as well. Awesome, well, that's what we had for tonight. So really appreciate you all coming out. You have to show your permit still. I forgot my permit pass. I forgot my permit pass. All you want is the pass. You need to have your permit pass. Yeah, we'll be having some more conversations later this summer as we start to actually develop some ideas for what these zoning changes could look like. So hopefully you all will stay engaged. Yeah, great. Thanks, Mike. All right, good night. Thank you.