Last night, Advance Huntsville and HSV YIMBY showed up to City Council en masse to voice our support for ADUs. Six or seven people ended up making public comment about ADUs or mentioning support for ADUs in their comments.
Only one person signed up to speak against ADUs.
Sadly, the city recently stopped posting video of public comments not related to agenda items. We are trying to find the footage elsewhere to share.
After expressing concern around never receiving a response from the Planning Department to either of us or to Councilperson John Meredith as to why the ordinance was pulled, our Mayor addressed the question directly. Huge shoutout to Meredith for pushing for answers over email and at the meeting!
Mayor Battle told us the city is currently working on revising the language of the ordinance to ensure that they can progressively roll it out, with a somewhat limited ordinance initially being adopted, to be relaxed over time as they measure its impact. Basically, they told us they need some time to write something because they want to get it right. They mentioned the current feedback they’re receiving is apparently around 50/50 for and against, which was new information to us.
Also, congratulations to Battle for being reelected last night.
Overall, it was a solid, very informative evening. We stayed positive, complimentary, and on-message. Huge, huge thank you to everyone who showed up to support abundant, dense, affordable housing.
In other ADU news, between our last happy hour and our last business meeting, we wrote and sent 26 postcards in support of ADU legalization. We also have more than 100 signatures on our ADU petition.
Very much looking forward to what’s next.
