Decatur has a new infill ordinance, passed as an amendment to its zoning ordinance.

The ordinance can be summarized as "35-40 or fight" in that new infill homes can be no more than 35 feet tall, and construction can take up no more than 40% of the lot. This includes garages. And, as I understand it, driveways and sidewalks as well.

The new regulations didn't seem too onorous on developers, until I took a look around my own neighborhood and found several projects on my own block which violate them. The story is important no matter where you live because both DeKalb County and the City of Atlanta are presently considering infill ordinances, which developers are fighting.

The first example of a non-conforming new house is right across the street from me. The view is from the "back yard," which is actually more of a side yard. Between them the house and garage take up at least 50% of the square footage of the lot. The ordinance specifically prohibits three-story homes in single-family home neighborhoods. This one was originally offered with that top floor an unfurnished attic, but the buyers asked for a bathroom and use it as living space.

Next let's walk down the street, to 226 Winter Avenue. This is an old craftsman-style home, built in 1910, which was bought by a developer four years ago. The developer extended the back of the house about 10 feet (the extension has two stories), added a two-car garage (with an extra room above it) then ran a new cement driveway from the back of the lot to the street. There's also a deck on the back of the home. What was a 1,500 square foot beauty, in which 10 children had been raised over 30 years, became a 2,200 square foot McMansion (2,600 with the room over the garage) in which over 75% of the lot is impermeable (thanks to the long driveway).

What this means is that whenever it rains, all that water flows off this lot and down to the sewer. Hardly any stays to become groundwater.

Now let's go further down the street, to 266. A developer bought this as a "junker," with an aim of renovating it. But he found on buying it that the boards were all rotten, due to termite damage. He eventually had to peel the home back to the studs and throw the rest of it out.

In order to try and make a profit, he built a second foundation behind the house and built on it. (The bottom floor is a garage.) He also is running a driveway down an easement which other neighbors had long-ago taken over as their backyards. There is going to be no yard here, except in the front. Over 80% of the lot will be impermeable surfaces -- home and driveway -- when he's done.

He did this because he's an idiot who didn't examine the condition of the original home before he bought it. He's now trying to sell a 4,000 square foot home with a huge garage on a 50x100 lot.

But the real story is next door to him, here. It's a for sale sign, put up by by the victim of this hoser's trouble, a nice person who has lived in this area for almost 40 years. (The home across the way is for sale too.) I don't know who's going to buy this monstrosity, and whether the owner of the home next door will get anything like full value for their property. There are two sides to every development story.

The point is all these projects are in non-conformance with the new ordinance. (There is another on East Lake, with a huge garage which means it takes up well over half the lot, and yet-another project just started at the end of Winter, on Madison, pictured) Once these McMansions go up, future developments of this type will be illegal.

Assuming growth continues developers are going to seek variances on every project they build, complaining they can't make money otherwise. They will also point to these McMansions and say, why can't new neighbors have what "old neighbors" do.

The next step will be to seek repeal of the ordinance, claiming it's "anti-growth" and "anti-tax base." I don't expect Decatur to listen. Finally, expect a lawsuit claiming this ordinance is an illegal "taking" of property value by the government, based on the assumed value of a wall-to-wall construction development vs. one which conforms to the new rules.

In the short run, however, this may all become moot. The housing boom is ending. The developers in these cases may not make a dime, given the cost of money for funding this work. Each time interest rates rise it does more to increase the risk to development than anything a city like Decatur might do, because short-term construction loans are tied to short-term interest rates, not to mortgage rates. Smart ordinances like this one prevent stupid risks from being borne.

But the people who live in an area have to live with the results of get-rich-quick development. They have to live with the run-off these homes cause. They have to live with the loss of sunlight from huge homes built to their south. And they're getting sick of these outsiders ruining the neighborhood. They've acted, too late, but they've acted.