Council debates transitional-housing designation as staff present data on concentration of family care homes
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Summary
Planning staff presented a proposed transitional-housing use and asked council direction on separation distances and permissible zoning districts. Police and planning staff described a high per-capita concentration of licensed family care homes and identified public-safety workload implications; council asked staff to return with a map and further analysis.
Jamie Lawson, Executive Director of Planning and Development Services, introduced a proposal to add a transitional-housing use to the Unified Development Ordinance and reviewed how it differs from boarding homes, family care homes, group homes and halfway homes.
Staff highlighted that, as drafted, the transitional-housing use would be a new land-use category with no cap on occupancy in the draft language and would initially have proposed separation-distance standards (consistent with other family-care categories) pending council direction. The planning presentation traced the history of separation-distance regulation in Burlington, noting the ordinance removed buffers in 1990 and reintroduced separation requirements with the UDO in 2019.
Public-safety staff described the concentration of licensed family care facilities within the city and the resulting service demand. Police staff said Burlington has a notably high per-capita concentration of these facilities in North Carolina and presented a map of existing facilities with a 250-foot visualization bubble and a summary of calls for service. Staff said common call types at family care facilities include missing persons, disturbances and assaults and that these locations require disproportionate police and fire resources.
Council and staff debated policy goals and tradeoffs: some council members advocated keeping a half-mile separation buffer to limit concentration and preserve neighborhood character; others warned a hard separation rule can make it infeasible to site transitional housing in many zoning districts and urged alternatives such as stronger code enforcement, licensing standards or conditional zoning to enable quality operators while limiting negative impacts. Staff said they would return with a map overlaying available parcels (by zoning district and after applying proposed separation and proximity restrictions), acreage totals for candidate districts, and additional data to inform a tighter recommendation. Council did not take a final vote and asked staff to bring the map and analysis back to a future work session.
