December 2, 2025 Land Use Committee - Dec 02, 2025

meeting

Fairfax County Board Committees 53 min 4 speakers 5 agenda items transcribed 2 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the purpose of the Land Use Committee meeting and who is presenting the ALU overview?

Kathy L. Smith 0:01

Good afternoon. I am going to call the land use policy committee meeting to order. Um originally when I had the prep meeting for this meeting, we were going to have two presentations today, but to save everyone's time, we decided one of the presentations could be a nip, so that will be forthcoming in the future. So my message is we didn't plan for this to take the whole time. Um I am going to turn it over, you know, we we first approved the ALUs when we were doing ZMOD. And now staff has had enough time to look at this, to analyze it. We had memos in the past. And so this is the beginning of a discussion to look and see where did we get it right, where do we need to make changes and I am turning it to

Kathy L. Smith 0:46

Casey.

Casey Judge 0:48

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Casey Judge with the Zoning Administration Division, and I'm joined joined by my co-lead on the project, Carmen Bishop. We also have Tracy Strunk, Leslie Johnson, Bill Malin, and Catherine Lunsford all with the Department of Planning and Development. Uh today we'd like to introduce, like um Supervisor Smith mentioned, the some potential ideas and concepts related to accessory living units or ALUs for short. So this topic is a priority one item on the zoning ordinance work program, and it was carried over from the previous fiscal year work program. ALUs were last updated as part of the Zoning Ordinance Modernization Project or ZMOD in 2021. And since that time, we've issued two status reports in 2023 and 2024.

Casey Judge 1:32

Those provided updates on the implementation of the provisions as well as analysis and recommendations on potential changes to the regulations. So some of what we're going to go over today is not new and is included in each of those status reports. So in Fairfax County we do call them accessory living units, ALUs, rather than ADUs, accessory dwelling units. That's to distinguish from our ADU ordinance, which is our affordable dwelling unit um provisions. So it is defined as a secondary dwelling unit established in conjunction with and clearly subordinate to a single family detached dwelling unit. So that detached distinction is important since they're only allowed with detached, currently not with townhouses, duplexes, or any other attached configuration.

Casey Judge 2:14

An ALU does have to have the um all the provisions for living, so that's eating, sleeping, living and sanitation, and it also is occupied by somebody as their principal residence. So we see a variety of occupants in Fairfax County, ranging from in-laws to au pairs to renters. Um anybody that's occupying that space would be considered um to be living in an ALU. So currently those provisions that were adopted with ZMOD, we do have a variety of standards. We allow interior administrative permits for ALUs that are inside a dwelling, and they do have to meet a variety of standards. The special permit option is for detached accessory living units. So in order to apply for that special permit with the Board of Zoning Appeals, you do have to have a minimum lot size of two acres.

Casey Judge 3:01

Um we also do have a special permit option to modify certain provisions for the interior ALUs. Um ALUs in all situations are limited to two people and two bedrooms and that those standards cannot be modified. Um for interior ALUs we have a maximum size limitation of eight hundred square feet or forty percent of the dwelling, whichever is less. Um that can be modified with special permit approval. And then twelve hundred square feet is our detached maximum size, and that cannot be modified at this time. We also have standards related to owner occupancy of either the primary, the principal dwelling, or the ALU. We have standards related to new external entrances to prevent looking like a duplex, uh curb cuts, and we also do require currently uh one additional parking space be provided off street in addition to what's required for a single family detached dwelling.

Casey Judge 3:48

We also have a renewal requirement, so the administrative or special permit has to be renewed after an initial two year period, and then based on a record of compliance, we can then renew that permit every five years after that.