By Paul Maryniak | Ahwatukee Foothills News
Phoenix City Council was poised this week to start undoing the product of months of wrangling involving citizens groups and most of its 15 village planning committees.
Only a year after approving tough regulations for the development of Accessory Dwelling Units, commonly called casitas, Council was scheduled to be briefed yesterday, Oct. 8, on how it must bend to the will of the State Legislature.
It must allow not one but two casitas on a single-family residential property and cannot forbid those units from being used as short-term rentals.
The city also must designate “not more than 10% of the total existing commercial, office, or mixed-use buildings within the municipality for adaptive reuse and/or multi-family conversion, by right” – with no public hearings, according to a city council memo, which said 20% of such buildings in Phoenix would be affected by the change.
