Board of Aldermen — 8/8/17 Page 14
President McCarthy
That is correct.
Alderman Dowd
| just want to be clear that the ordinance states that. Can | get confirmation from Corporation Counsel that that
is in fact the way it reads.
Attorney Bolton
Well it cannot be in separate ownership. | cannot have it converted into a condex, separate condominium
units. So it has to be in single ownership. This provides that for a period of five years the owner has to reside
as their principle place of residence either in the primary or the accessory unit. After five years, that condition
no longer applies.
Alderman Dowd
In essence somebody could own the property and lease both the main part and the accessory to separate
people.
President McCarthy
No. They have to live in one of them.
Alderman Dowd
So after five years...
President McCarthy
If the Board would indulge me for a minute to talk about the background of the legislation. There is a problem
that we’re going to have address that I’m going to take up with Attorney Bolton at some point. The legislator
changed it to State level was to simply allow accessory dwelling units by right in virtually every zone. We are
allowed to put some restrictions on that which is what this legislation does. One of them is the ownership
issue. There’s an issue there that was brought up by Alderman Clemons in the committee which is why the
ownership requirement is five years. There’s competing issues here of we don’t want somebody to move into
a house, flip it, put an ADU in it, and then flip the whole thing and make it a rental property. We want to avoid
the case where let’s say an elderly person living in Nashua has a single family home, their children live in
another city, and go to the trouble of building an accessory dwelling unit for the parent to move into so they can
continue to live in Nashua and rent out the big part of the house, and the parents shortly thereafter pass away.
We now have the problem of that child is now faced with marketing a property that they can’t market the way it
is on its face without moving into it because of the restrictions in our zoning code. We have that problem from
day one which is the one | think we’re going to need to address. | think that the State legislation fails to
address that and we may actually have to talk to the legislator about it at some point. What the committee
decided to do was put the restriction on for five years as a boundary between those two competing interests.
Alderman Dowd
My understanding the Planning Department sent a recommendation to strike that paragraph.
President McCarthy
The Planning Board recommended that we remove the five years and make it just continuous ownership. The
committee did not vote to do that.
