Pastor Criminally Charged With Zoning Violations Gets His Day in Court

Plus: New York City moves forward on zoning reforms, Utah city moves backward on granny flats, and D.C. considers a ban on landlords' pit bull bans.

Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week's stories include:

• The New York City Council giving final approval to City of Yes zoning reforms.
• Provo, Utah, moving backward on accessory dwelling units (ADUs).
• Washington, D.C., removing landlords' ability to set limits on the breed and size of animals they allow on their properties.

But first, our lead story on yet another city's efforts to shut down a homeless shelter while the weather outside turns frightful.

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Dad's Place on Trial

It's coming down to the wire for Dad's Place.

For close to a year now, the Bryan, Ohio, church and its pastor Chris Avell have been locked in a fierce legal battle with the city government and the local fire chief over a makeshift shelter it's operated on the first floor of its rented church building.

Dad's Place has argued that letting people rest and worship in its building 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is an integral, First Amendment–protected part of its ministry. The city and the fire chief have argued the church has illegally converted its commercially zoned space into a residential use, in violation of the local zoning code and the state's fire code.

Last Thursday, a local trial court sided with Bryan Fire Chief Douglas Pool in a civil suit he's brought against the church. It granted a preliminary injunction against Dad's Place, forcing the church to relocate the homeless who had been sheltering there overnight from the cold.

A few days prior, Avell stood trial on criminal charges stemming from his church's alleged zoning and fire code violations.

On Monday, an Ohio appeals court paused that trial court's injunction, which temporarily forbids the city from taking enforcement action against Dad's Place or filing new criminal charges against Avell. The city has until Thursday to respond to the trial court's ruling. On Friday, attorneys for Avell and the city will meet for a post-trial conference in his criminal case.

"For over a year, we have sought to collaborate with Dad's Place to address public safety requirements, including the installation of an automatic sprinkler system," said Bryan Mayor Carrie Schlade in a press release following the Thursday ruling. "Dad's Place and its legal representatives have opted to engage in a protracted process of filing court motions instead of adhering to the law."

"It's safe inside Dad's Place. We've known that for a long time. But it's 19 degrees over the weekend outside of Dad's Place," counters Jeremy Dys, an attorney with the First Liberty Institute, which is representing Avell.

Avell was first criminally charged with close to 20 zoning and fire code violations in January. Those charges were later dropped in February in exchange for Dad's Place agreeing to "cease residential" operations and cure fire code violations at the building.

This compromise broke down a few months later after a fire inspection from Pool found people sleeping in the church. Charges against Avell were refiled in April.

The sticky legal situation Dad's Place has found itself in is not unique.

Reason has covered a number of similar cases just this year of city governments shutting down shelters and warming centers because of alleged zoning code violations and safety issues. These are just a few examples of all the red tape and regulations that shelters with limited resources have to contend with when trying to provide temporary housing for the most vulnerable.

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City of Yes Gets Final Approval

At long last, City of Yes has won final approval from the New York City Council.

The suite of zoning reforms, which this newsletter covered in detail two weeks ago, eliminates or reduces minimum parking requirements in much of the city, allows denser housing near transit stops and on commercial corridors, and allows homeowners in many low-density districts to add ADUs to their property.

The City of Yes reforms were first proposed by Mayor Eric Adams back in 2022. The proposal was whittled down during the subsequent two-year planning process.

A plan to eliminate parking minimums citywide was replaced with a more modest reduction in parking requirements. Density allowances were shrunk in some areas, and a few low-density districts were exempted entirely from the plan. ADUs will be allowed in more places, but the property owner will also be required to live on-site (a frequent poison pill policy that significantly reduces ADU construction).

Nevertheless, "yes in my backyard" (YIMBY) zoning reform advocates have celebrated the final passage of City of Yes as a decent first step to build on.

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Utah City Goes Backward on ADUs

Provo, Utah, has two cumbersome processes property owners can use to build ADUs in areas that aren't zoned for them. The city council just got rid of one of them, reports Utah news outlet KSL.

Prior to the city council vote, groups of property owners could seek allowances for ADUs through appealing to the city council for a zoning amendment that would rezone multiple properties to allow rental units. Individual property owners could also apply for special-use permits to legalize individual ADUs, provided they had support from 66 percent of adjacent neighbors.

The city council's vote eliminates that latter pathway.

ADU legalization is one of the most successful YIMBY-backed policies, both practically and politically. Homeowners who often oppose any upzoning have been more amenable to allowing granny flats in low-density neighborhoods. Jurisdictions that have done the most to get rid of ADU regulations have seen a boom in ADU construction.

The dynamic is clearly different in Provo, where concerns about single-family neighborhoods being overrun by rental units caused the city to tighten its already restrictive regulations on ADUs. The city will likely see less housing, and more expensive housing, as a result.

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D.C. Considers Eliminating All Dog Breed Restrictions

Washington, D.C., is on the cusp of banning landlords from restricting the size and breed of animals they allow residents to keep on their properties. It also caps pet rents and pet deposits.

Tenant advocates have cheered the policy as protecting people from having to part with their animal friends when seeking housing.

Property owners have criticized the policy as overreaching and saddling them with uncovered liabilities. Tenants will also lose the option of opting into buildings that don't allow large, vicious beasts to live next door.

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Quick Links

• Public housing didn't fail, it was sabotaged, argues a new piece in Vox. There's some interesting history in the piece. Nevertheless, it's hard to argue that the current incompetent, occasionally criminally corrupt management of public housing in 2024 can be blamed on Richard Nixon.
• GlobeSt has a review of recent state-level zoning reforms in Washington, Colorado, and Hawaii.
• Housing advocates and housing industry groups are urging Congress to pass the YIMBY Act, which requires federal housing grantees to report on the zoning reforms they have adopted (or plan on adopting), before the end of the year.
• Oregon's state economist blames post-recession credit restrictions, not urban growth boundaries, for the state's high housing costs. Couldn't both be bad?
• Forbes on factory-built homes.

 

Comments

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Here's what this really shows:

Dad's Place has argued that letting people rest and worship in its building 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is an integral, First Amendment–protected part of its ministry. The city and the fire chief have argued the church has illegally converted its commercially zoned space into a residential use, in violation of the local zoning code and the state's fire code.

1. The more words you give lawyers, the more room they have for quibbling. Brevity, buddy, brevity.

2. Precedent sucks. Because the Supremes don't want to admit that the Slaughterhouse cases were badly decided and the 14th amendment was intended to incorporate the entirety of the Bill of Rights against the states, they've had to incorporate most of them some other way. And because they don't want to admit that economic liberty is a core fundamental right akin to marriage and picking your nose, they've had to contort the First Amendment into all sorts of "free speech" penumbras and emanations -- but only on a case by case basis. Topless or nude dancing? Expressive speech, sometimes. Feeding the homless? A religious matter, sometimes.

Government sucks, among other reasons, because it defines its own limits.

[mad.casual]

Government sucks, among other reasons, because it defines its own limits.

Uh, your omnipotent, teleological-ending, self-creating government may define a sandwich as a burrito so big it can't eat it.

For the rest of us, people suck and specifically troll other peoples' laws, practices, norms, and customs to everyone's detriment and frequently for no other reason besides that. Like when they buy a bar or pawn shop in a commercial zone, declare it to be a Church, start housing people in it, and declare any objection to anything they're doing even knowingly harming and endangering people around them, a 1A violation. Just like Antifa-tards who would walk into restaurants screaming and yelling and, when the cops show up, start shouting about how their 1A rights had been violated.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

That's nice. Their troll ends with that incident. Government trolls affect everybody.

[mad.casual]

Government trolls affect everybody.

I'm not the one that proposed an all-powerful government that defines it's own limits, you did.

And the fact that Britschgi isn't reporting to us from his home in Bryan, OH belies your stupidity.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Last Thursday, a local trial court sided with Bryan Fire Chief Douglas Pool in a civil suit he's brought against the church.

You know who else couldn't find shelter on a cold winter's night that was so deep?

[Vernon Depner]

Mick Jagger?

[I, Woodchipper]

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/scotus-asked-block-state-investigating-doctors-who-question-covid-19-policies

Get rid of licensing. Problem solved.

[Longtobefree]

Good old Reason - so much missing, without so much as a phone call in "reporting" effort.

1. Why is a church zoned commercial?
2. How big a space is involved?
3. How many people are we talking about?
4. Why an 'automatic sprinkler system'? (Surely someone is there at all times)
5. What logic is used to define sleeping overnight as a 'residential' use?

[Minadin]

1. The church is zoned commercial because it doesn't look anything like the picture accompanying the article. In fact, it's a repurposed storefront space in the middle of a shopping district. So if you walked by it, you might think it was a bar, retail store, barber shop, etc.

2. Looks to be about 5k square feet, probably closer to 4800, for the footprint, but there's a 2 story area in front, maybe 6k sf total?

3. Per the city's press release from the initial article, 20 or so, at the time of their inspection. https://www.cityofbryan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/press-release.pdf

4. Automatic sprinkler systems are required in almost all commercial buildings these days, and a retrofit requirement would have been triggered when the building changed uses or occupancies. (BTW - No one has ever perished due to fire in a building with a working automatic sprinkler system)

5. The building code. Hotels are considered a residential use, they just have different requirements for that use group, compared to apartments, compared to single family homes. 'Transient' residential uses of more than 10 people are grouped in the same category as hotels and motels. Non-transient boarding houses with more than 16 people are in the group with apartments, where as if they have fewer than 16 residents, more like a single family residence.

[mad.casual]

And this is the generous/impartial take.

Again, the whole thing has been going on for over a year with multiple back and forths over multiple criminal and code violations that have precisely zero to do with free speech, religion, or free association. Christian's notion that he can just wade in and use libertarianism to solve all these poor plebs' problems for them would, in more self-determined times, get him punched in the face and tossed out on his ear (if not just for his one-sided dishonesty here).

It's very much akin to the Haitian immigrants where progressively-retarded white knights like Christian can stick their thumb up their own asses and determine what's best for Bryan, OH, while the government *and people* of Bryan, OH are overtly saying, "Sympathy and good will doesn't magically fix crime and related social issues. This shit is a problem."

[Minadin]

Well, the thing is, the owner / lessor of the property could have gone in and requested a variance, for both the zoning category (planning and zoning), and for the use group / occupancy change (building code / fire code enforcement), but apparently didn't. They might not have known that these things are required, but they would have, with even the most cursory of inquiries.

If you read the document from the City of Bryan, there were a number of other issues other than putting up homeless people for the night, many of which were rectified by the property, but initially included a number of potential life safety hazards, as well as criminal complaints. The life safety violations included things like an active gas leak, and the criminal complaints included violent crimes such as sexual assault.

It was initially the increased crime in the immediate surrounds that alerted the local authorities to the potentially unsafe building conditions, which were apparently a larger concern than the zoning violations.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Tenants will also lose the option of opting into buildings that don't allow large, vicious beasts to live next door.

STOP BEING POOR. Buy your own house.

[Don't look at me!]

STOP BEING POOR.

That does solve most problems.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Can't do it. Poor is defined, legally and politically, relative to median income. So 20% or something of the country will always be poor.

[Longtobefree]

Not necessarily; remember the academic achievements of Lake Woebegone.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

And Poor is a institutional sub-population that progressives and Democrats use to justify (D)emocratic socialism, and thus can never be eliminated/

[mad.casual]

As long as they aren't eating cats, I suppose there's nothing to see here:

Dys [Special Counsel that negotiated the charges dropped in Feb., the agreement Dad's/Avell violated] addressed three points the city alleged in the most recent release.

“A grand jury recently indicted an adult male charged with five felony counts for acts involving a child that allegedly took place at Dad’s Place last year. The charges include two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, two counts of illegal use of a minor or impaired person in nudity-oriented material, and pandering obscenity involving a minor.”
“Another man who was convicted of aggravated criminal sex abuse with a victim between the ages of 13 and 16 and now is a registered sex offender has told Bryan Police that he ‘lives’ in the back of Dad’s Place.”
Since May 2023, Bryan Police have been called to Dad’s Place 51 times on reports of sexual assault, harassment, larceny, criminal mischief and other concerns. Fort Comparison’s sake, the next most frequent location for police calls had 20 calls and the third-most had 5.”
Dys points out that the man charged with 5 felony counts was actually handed over to police by Avell, which the city confirms. However they don’t believe that washes the church of any wrongdoing.

“Because of a sexual crime that happened, I just can’t fathom anyone standing quietly and not calling something out,” Schlade said. “Not so much that it’s the pastor’s fault that it happened, in fact he brought the person to the police department for questioning, but there is no parameters to prevent that.”

Fuck you, Britschgi . Fuck you, Reason. I hope people like Jeff Copeland, Chris Harris, Brant Freeman, and Joshua Mogus can see exactly what sort of disinformation they're paying for and what sort of behavior it's covering for.

[mad.casual]

Even being generous and setting aside the housing of known-violent sex offenders and the ongoing and rampant criminal disruption, this whole "Libertarians oppose all zoning laws ever anywhere." fist-swinging obviously meets the end of lots of other people's noses when it comes to "Even if that means we have to take over the world and tell the last town like Bryan, Ohio how to live correctly/properly."

I know Christian or Nick or someone at Reason/Cato thinks this is some sort of "Aha!" or "Gotcha!" moment, but it's not. It just continues to make you look retarded and dishonest. Like Sullum or Greenhut or whomever it was trying to lecture about how good Christians would/should support Good Samaritans blocking and screening people on the internet.

[AT]

"For over a year, we have sought to collaborate with Dad's Place to address public safety requirements, including the installation of an automatic sprinkler system," said Bryan Mayor Carrie Schlade in a press release following the Thursday ruling. "Dad's Place and its legal representatives have opted to engage in a protracted process of filing court motions instead of adhering to the law."

Wait wait wait - they're objecting to installing a fire sprinkler system?

The city and the fire chief have argued the church has illegally converted its commercially zoned space into a residential use

*Googles "Dad's Place".

Um, yea, that's pretty clearly converted commercial space.

And, let's just be perfectly clear. Calling your commercial space a "church" doesn't make it anymore a church than calling yourself a woman makes a man suddenly have XX chromosomes.

Words have meaning. These strip mall community centers are precisely that. And they're almost unilaterally mockeries of faith by grifters.

[Roberta]

If the Dad's Place story had been reported on fairly, would we be interested in it?

[charliehall]

The City of Yes relaxation of zoning laws in New York City is the first step in that direction in over 60 years.

The vote in the City Council was 31 in favor, 20 opposed.

Among Democrats the vote was 31 in favor, 14 opposed.

Among Republicans the vote was 0 in favor, 6 opposed.

Republicans will be running for Mayor and Governor trying to weaponize this. They have been the Party of Big Intrusive Government in NY at least since Nelson Rockefeller was elected Governor in 1958 and that continues.