Again, with "The People's Republic of Boulder"

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_31374151/boulder-woman-learns...

Keeli Biediger only recently learned the term "accessory dwelling unit," even though she's lived in a house with one for nearly 50 years.

Now she's fighting for the right to preserve that unit, lest she possibly be forced to pay for its demolition and kick out two renters in the process.

Her problem is as follows: There's a basement apartment in her home on Graham Court in Martin Acres, complete with a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms that are both rented out. Her mother used to rent out the space, and now Biediger does, for the same reasons shared by many others who keep accessory units.

"First, it's for supplemental income," she said. "It also just makes me feel good to be able to give housing to people who are looking for housing."

Her renters make low incomes at jobs based in Boulder — one is a painter and the other works for the city's Parks and Recreation department — and would not be able to afford their own housing in the city.

"They're looking to have somewhere affordable where they can stay and do their work," Biediger said.

But the city requires one off-street parking space per accessory dwelling, and Biediger, in the opinion of Boulder enforcement officers, has failed to provide adequate parking.

City housing staff has said that the one-spot-per-unit requirement should be eliminated so that people like Biediger can more easily establish accessory units — better known as ADUs or granny flats, which are catch-all labels that apply to garages or portions of properties that are converted into separate, new units, often for the purpose of housing a renter or a family member.

The City Council will, in coming months, initiate a process to examine potential changes to Boulder's policy on ADUs, and they could ultimately agree with the staff's recommendations on parking and other items.

However, if and until that happens, Biediger's stuck with a non-conforming, unlicensed unit, and no obvious way out of the quandary.

"I don't know what to do at this point. I seriously don't," she said on Thursday. "I don't want to put my tenants on the street. I think that's so wrong, so mean. I just feel sick about the situation.

"When city codes and regulations are such that they infringe on a homeowner's rights, something has to change. That is wrong. And every homeowner in Boulder should feel the same way, because it is an infringement on our rights."

She's hoping the council will issue a stay on enforcement of illegal ADUs, at least until the process of revising the current ordinance is completed.

No estimate on units' number

As of now, there are 205 people in Boulder who have permitted accessory units. Biediger is among an unknown number of homeowners with an accessory unit either out of conformity with city code or otherwise unknown to Boulder permitting officers.

The practice of maintaining an accessory unit without a permit is thought to be fairly common in Boulder — Biediger said she's aware of "a lot of people" in Martin Acres alone who share her situation — but officials have no working estimate of illegal accessory units.

Jay Sugnet, a senior planner for the city, said he's been trying to pin down that number for a year.

"No one even dares to guess," he said in an email.

In theory, some number of those who have undisclosed units would come forward to seek permits were the city to change its approach during the council's review.

And Biediger would happily be one of those people.

But earlier this year she learned her home needed an entirely new electrical system, which prompted a standard visit from a city employee who came by to make sure the retrofit would be done correctly.

That employee reported her accessory unit, kicking off a "nightmare" process, in her words.

A different city employee was in touch with her by phone, soon after the initial visit.

"So he came out, I showed him around," Biediger said, "and he told me, 'What you have down there is an ADU.' I didn't know what he was talking about. I had it in my head that I was renting rooms out to people. I'd never heard the term ADU.

"He said I needed to go to the city, get an application, make it legal that I'm renting this out down there."

Bitter irony

A spokeswoman said on Thursday that the city would not comment on the case, but, as Biediger describes it, she went through several rounds of brainstorming with enforcement officers on various ways to come into compliance by Sept. 28, the deadline Boulder gave her.

She could remove the separations that make the basement a private, accessory dwelling, as opposed to just a part of the house with a couple beds in it. After doing that, she and her renters could start sharing a kitchen, which would remove another layer of separation.

She could pay to have her house literally moved by 2 feet, to create the 9 feet of required space for parking; right now, she's only got 7.5 feet. Alternatively, she could take a 2-foot chunk out of the house.

"I said to the woman who came out to the house that there must be something that people do," Biediger said of her parking-space issue. "She said the option she could see was to move my entire house back two feet, to the south, to allow for parking between my house and my neighbor's house.

"I said, 'Are you kidding me? She said, 'I don't see any other resolution,' and, "You know, not everybody in Boulder that's a homeowner is allowed the right to have an ADU.'

"I pay property taxes here," Biediger continued. "My house is completely paid off. And you're telling me what I can do with the lower part of my home? How is that right? I went away in tears that day."

The simplest option she saw, following her conversations with city representatives, was to demolish the unit.

None of those options appealed to her, but, forced to do something by the deadline, she pulled a permit for demolition late last month. To her knowledge it has not yet been processed, and her renters haven't yet moved out.

Biediger's now bracing for the loss of income and companionship, and the renters are staring down the possibility of having to leave Boulder.

There's a bitter irony in all of this that's not lost on Biediger: she may end up kicking out her renters and spending thousands to tear down a 47-year-old unit that, depending on the council's review of the city ADU laws, could plausibly be in compliance by this time next year, at which point she could pay thousands more to rebuild and finally become permitted.

"What they're doing to three lives," she said, "just for 2 feet of parking space that I need at the side of the house — it's ridiculous."