A year after approving standards for how new homes must be built, Greenwood is looking to make changes to the rules to address concerns from local builders.
A five-person committee — four council members and planning commission president Trent Pohlar — will begin meeting at the beginning of next year to consider changes to the construction rules that have been in place since September 2015.
The standards, which include what roofing and siding materials need to be used and the amount of decorative features required, were intended to ensure the city had aesthetically pleasing housing, officials said at the time.
In the year since the new standards began, the city has faced complaints from home builders as well as a lawsuit. Earlier this year, Arbor Homes, the Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis and the Indiana Builders Association field a lawsuit against the city, claiming the new rules are unconstitutional, violated state law and are outside of the city’s zoning authority. They also said the new standards would drive up the cost of homes, make them too expensive for buyers and make some of their current lots unbuildable.
The city has received pushback from several builders associations over the new standards, Pohlar said.
Pohlar cited the uniform, side-by-side box homes built in the 1990s and early 2000s as an example of what the city is trying to move away from.
“We want an architectural standard that is appealing to everybody,” Pohlar said. “We aren’t trying to raise costs for homes.”
Some of the concerns from builders include the percentage of brick they are required to use as well as the rules about the pitch, or slope, of roofs, he said.
The additional construction costs added due to the new standards is one of the main concerns builders have had, said Kate Collins, government affairs director for the Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis.
For some builders, the new rules have meant spending as much as $15,000 more on homes, which risks pricing buyers out of the market, she said.
Any action the city can take to reduce the financial impact of the regulations would be helpful, Collins said.
What the city council wants is attractive housing that is still economically feasible for builders to construct, council member Bruce Armstrong said.
“We will look at concerns builders have to see if there is anything we can do to meet them halfway to we get what we are looking for and they get it in a cost-reduced manner,” he said.
Citing the ongoing lawsuit, Armstrong declined to comment further about what the committee’s goals are.
