Council talks all relative

Some members of the Chapel Hill Town Council said Monday night that area residents ought to be able to live with as many of their unrelated cohorts as they want.

The issue emerged as council members discussed a number of proposals aimed at ensuring that new duplexes fit the aesthetic of their communities.

One proposal before the council would have taken a direct approach to the problem, dropping the limit on unrelated co-residents from four to two.

The suggestion was tied to a concern that duplexes are being used to house numerous unrelated individuals, who could be rowdy more often than people in houses with related residents.

Council member Ed Harrison said that, among others, many college students move off campus and cram together in duplexes.

But council member Mark Kleinschmidt pointed out that college students mainly seek single rooms. He added that freedom is also a draw for students.

“It’s not the 1950s anymore,” he said. “When kids go off campus, it’s to get their own room — that and to have your own keg, I suppose.”

Kleinschmidt also said such a regulation would affect the area’s growing immigrant population.

“We need to consider the needs of that community, which is just continuing to grow,” he said.

“That is the new challenge to occupancy,” he added.

Regardless of whether students or the foreign-born were cramming into duplexes, council member Jim Ward said, such a restriction would be difficult to enforce and morally distasteful.

“We need to come up with a strategy that is enforceable and does not take us into people’s lives that way,” he said.

In the past, duplexes have been viewed as a valuable form of housing and feared as residences that are annoying to neighbors at best.

“We have some really excellently designed duplexes and some really horrendous duplexes and everything in between,” said George Cianciolo, chairman of the Community Design Commission.

A townwide moratorium on duplex construction was enacted in October 2002 and rescinded in February 2004, except for the Northside neighborhood. When duplexes were allowed again, additional restrictions were put on the buildings.

Council members probed these new restrictions Monday.

The issue of parking space allotment per duplex, which some saw as another means of attacking the issue of unrelated cohabitants, elicited some community reaction.

Chapel Hill resident Martin Feinstein of Coolidge Street asked that the council address the number of cars parked in front of each unit.

Feinstein asked for a limit on the number of vehicles in front of each residence, citing a similar regulation that was enacted on his street after residents petitioned the council.

“There ought to be some strict numbers about cars in front of the house,” he said.

Cianciolo largely agreed, but he emphasized that causation is not proved by correlation.

“The duplexes that had the most parking were the most poorly designed and obnoxious,” he said.

Mayor Pro Tem Edith Wiggins proposed a solution to the spat.

She suggested that a spacing regulation be required to ensure that entire neighborhoods are not developed as complexes, as Feinstein said his neighborhood has been.

Town Manager Cal Horton noted that such restrictions are also imposed on adult businesses.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.