Building a cottage or tiny home in your back yard for your parents or kids to live in isn’t legal here now. But the Brown County Area Plan Commission has started talking about whether or not it should be.
Their conversation started at a work session which no audience members attended in January. It’ll continue at their meeting this month, at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26 at the County Office Building.
These kinds of structures go by a variety of names — tiny homes, granny pods, mother-in-law suites or garage apartments, to name a few. Accessory dwelling units were what the plan commission was calling them — ADUs for short.
One of the ideas behind making them legal is that perhaps this could be another way to provide more affordable housing options in Brown County, where the median price for a single-family home is often significantly higher than in surrounding counties.
To start the discussion, the board looked through the rules for accessory dwellings which Bloomington put in place in 2017. Monroe County has allowed them since 2015, said Brown County Area Plan Commission member Russ Herndon.
“In talking with the Monroe County planner today, it’s been in effect since 2015, and to his recollection, maybe like five people have done this,” Herndon said. “It’s not like the whole county is going to go after accessory dwellings.”
Commission members also wondered if there would be a great new demand for them here because they believe people have already built these kinds of structures, such as “studios” that could be used as a living space.
Some of the details that the plan commission intends to discuss this month include the maximum size of an accessory dwelling, required distance from the primary dwelling on the property, allowable number of bedrooms, how much parking would be needed, and whether or not a shared driveway would be OK.
They had some discussion about square footage, but didn’t decide on anything; suggestions ranged from 440 to 1,000 square feet.
Also to be considered are whether or not Brown County would allow ADUs to be rented long-term by someone who is not related to the person in the main dwelling, and whether or not that ADU could be used as a short-term rental, like an Airbnb.
An ADU could not be added to a property if there wasn’t enough extra capacity in the septic system to handle its waste, commission members agreed. But it could go on a sewer system, or a separate septic system could be built to serve it, members said.
Discussion also took place at the January meeting about whether or not to allow tiny homes on wheels. The general consensus was to require a foundation for any accessory dwelling, tiny home or otherwise.
“We’ve run into a lot of trouble trying to explain to people that they can’t have full-time camper (RV) occupancy,” said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann.
The county does have a “medical special exception” which allows a person to bring in a trailer, park it and tie it down for a year — for an aging parent to live in, for instance — but that exception has to be recertified every year, Ritzmann said.
Commission members saw allowing ADUs as a way for generations of families to help each other out, enabling them to continue to live in Brown County or bring other family members in. Child care can be easier if there are grandparents nearby, Herndon said; likewise, so is taking care of an aging parent.
“I think we should have the ADU option,” he said. “It’s one more option we don’t have, and it helps people live here.”
