A Tiny House in Cleveland Park? DC's New Zoning Rules in Effect

• September 30th 2016

by UrbanTurf Staff

At the beginning of September, significant new zoning rules went into effect for DC. Now, we are seeing those rules in action.

This week, the Historic Preservation Review Board unanimously approved the first accessory dwelling unit in a historic district since the new rules went into effect, by giving the green light to a tiny home behind a house in Cleveland Park.

The project, designed by Catarina Ferreira, Principal at archi-TEXTUAL, PLLC, will remove a garage and construct a new building dubbed the Granny Pod, that will function as a house for visitors. The building will have a roof with solar panels and a skylight on one side, and a vegetated roof on the other. The property will be enclosed from the alley and adjacent side yards by privacy fences.

“The ANC originally opposed the idea, but after some revisions and it became clear that we had strong support from the Cleveland Park Architectural Review Committee, we were encouraged to move forward with the original scheme,” Ferreira told UrbanTurf. “We were able to get it approved (unanimously) even though we did not follow all of the ANC or HPO’s recommendations for revising the design, as we felt that simplicity of the building and the quality of the architecture would be compromised. A tiny house should be a simple, efficient building by definition.”

The regulations that went into effect earlier this month allow accessory dwelllings for all types of city dwellings by-right, with special exceptions required for certain historic districts. Under the new rules, accessory apartments can take up to one-third of the home’s total footprint; accessory buildings are also recognized, as long as they have permanent access to a street or alleyway and do not have a roof deck.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/tiny_house_in_cleveland_park_historic_district_approved/11740.