‘Historic zoning reform’: Chattanooga passed an overhaul of residential rules with an aim to ease the housing crisis

Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / The advocacy group CALEB's Janice Gooden, center, speaks at a news conference in February on the steps of Chattanooga City Hall to offer a public response to the city's housing action plan, released in August.

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly and his staff are celebrating what they consider to be a big win in their push to boost housing supply.

After working intensely for three years to build support for rewriting the city's decades-old zoning laws, Kelly's staff watched new zoning regulations pass the city council unanimously on Tuesday without fanfare or open criticism, at a time when mayors and governors across the country have struggled to get similar efforts off the ground.

The "historic zoning reform" will be "transformational," the city's news release after the vote said.

By allowing for different housing types within the same zone and reducing lot size requirements for a single house from from 7,500 to 5,000 square feet in the urban core — 7,500 to 6,000 in the suburbs — the new regulations could encourage the construction of more houses on single-unit lots and more townhomes and apartments wherever the new multifamily and mixed-use zones are eventually applied, Chris Anderson, who spearheaded the project for the mayor, said in an interview.

"Everyone who wants to live in Chattanooga should be able to live in Chattanooga. That has been the guiding principle for changing the zoning code," he said. "People are moving farther out. Firefighters can't afford to buy a house in the city."

With the new zoning regulations, nobody's lots or rights change, Anderson said. Instead, the new zones will give the same or greater entitlement by allowing more uses.
Still, the application of the new zones is yet to be determined, he said.

Homeowners who have been following the process closely don't yet know what it will mean for their neighborhoods, but the city has assured them that no property will be automatically rezoned as a result of the new laws.

"I am not really fearful, but I think it will mean different things to different people," said Janice Gooden, an East Chattanooga neighborhood leader following the process. "The intent is supposed to be more options."

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