City approves moratorium on shipping containers
The City Council passed a moratorium that temporarily restricts residents from placing shipping containers in their yards while the Council decides how to regulate the structures, which are popping up as tiny homes and storage sheds. The Council passed the measure on first reading, intending to amend it at its May 22 meeting and to give it final approval.
Coun c i lmemb e r s Tommy Kimbro and Chuck Stennett opposed a permanent ban on the structures, saying they were interested in possibly using them for outdoor storage. Mr. Kimbro urged the Council to put a two-month time limit on the moratorium “so we don’t forget about it.”
The issue of whether to allow shipping containers as residences or outbuildings came before the Council last month when resident Carol Vorel appeared at the public comment period to complain about a neighbor’s shipping container on West Oak Street and Avenue E. Mayor Rue Rogers asked City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon to research which ordinances pertain to using shipping containers as storage sheds.
“You asked if there was an ordinance,” Mrs. Pagsuberon told him. “There is not. We don’t have any city ordinance right now about if someone wants to put a storage unit in their backyard. If I come up here to pay my fee, then I can just go do anything I want at that point.”
Mrs. Vorel’s neighbor, Brenda Nurre, said she and her husband, Steven, and daughter, Emberly, moved a year ago from a five-bedroom home in Avondale, Colorado to a two-bedroom home in Olney and were storing some of their belongings in the container while they repaired and remodeled their new home. The Nurres are all retired veterans and firefighters and chose Olney because of the welcoming residents they encountered while visiting friends here a couple of years ago, Mrs. Nurre said. She said Olney’s slower pace also makes her feel safe because she is deaf and relies on a service dog named Windy.
“It’s peaceful, your heart feels full. You’re not stressing about everything,” she said.
She and her husband purchased the second- hand container, intending to paint it while she sorts through it, but unexpected repairs to their new home became priorities. Steven Nurre works for Rocky Hickam Towing and Brenda Nurre, a former firefighter, works with a veteran-led disaster and humanitarian relief organization.
“We haven’t gotten to move into the house on Oak yet,” she said. “We still have to do all the paint and cosmetic things before we move all of the stuff in. I’m not a packrat but there are memories from my kids … and my mom who passed and my grandparents. It’s stuff I can’t get rid of. I know I need to but … that’s my family.”
The Nurres did not violate any City ordinances by placing the container on their property, and they and others who already have containers will be grandfathered in during the moratorium, City officials said.
Mayor Rogers noted that shipping containers may fall into the same category as storage sheds, governed by ordinances that “spell out the location and give you setbacks [from property lines].” Although Mrs. Vorel had complained about the appearance of the Nurres’ container, the ordinance “cannot dictate the aesthetic look of the structure,” said Police Chief Dan Birbeck who oversees code enforcement. “We can just state on there that we’ll follow state law.”
The push to address shipping containers used within City limits comes from the City’s ongoing efforts to attract developers to town to build homes on some of its foreclosed lots, and to clean up derelict homes. “This ordinance tonight essentially just says no one else can bring them in,” Mayor Rogers said. “If they’re already in, there’s nothing we can do about it. And then we go to work coming up with the ordinance and … something that we all agree upon.”
Existing containers will have to have permits or be subject to a fine, Chief Birbeck said.