The City Planning Commission on Thursday advanced a proposal to allow Detroiters to keep chickens, ducks and honeybees.
Planning commissioners voted 6-1 to move the ordinance along to Detroit’s City Council for a vote, but with a few tweaks.
Kimani Jeffrey, a city planning commission staffer, said Thursday that the commission will work with the Detroit Law Department with the aim of getting the proposal on the council’s formal session agenda before its July 31 recess.
The ordinance, spearheaded more than a decade ago by Detroit City Council President Pro Tem James Tate, would allow residents to keep eight chickens and/or ducks for personal consumption and honeybees. Details about honeybee hives are still being ironed out, but the ordinance as written would allow two honeybee hives per household.
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City Planning Commission Chair Donavan Smith said he’s got his “fingers crossed” that the ordinance will be approved.
Residents showed an upwelling of support for the ordinance at Thursday’s hearing. A petition with 555 community signatures and 60 letters of support from urban farmers were presented to commission staff. One letter of opposition was submitted.
Commissioner Gwen Lewis cast the lone no vote. Earlier in the hearing, Lewis raised concerns about rodents and odor control, research that livestock attracts coyotes and suggested creating a separate ordinance to address beekeeping.
Throughout the hearing there was prominent debate over whether bees should be included in the ordinance, whether the limitation of two honeybee hives was too restrictive and if bees are already legally allowed in Detroit.
Jeffrey said planning commission staff will tweak the ordinance in an internal working group, with beekeeping recommendations from the local nonprofit Keep Growing Detroit. Keep Growing Detroit submitted a letter recommending that bees be removed from the ordinance and that beekeepers instead follow state guidelines, which allow up to six hives on less than an acre.
Commissioner David Esparza voted in support of the ordinance language, “with the hope that somewhere down the line beekeeping be separated.”
Across the country, many cities, including Chicago, Portland, and St. Louis, permit livestock. In Michigan, numerous cities, including Ferndale, Ann Arbor, and Troy, allow animal keeping.
A number of questions raised by commissioners at a February City Planning Commission hearing were addressed on Thursday, including the history of animal-keeping restrictions in Detroit, impacts on property values, fencing requirements and other concerns.
The furthest city staff could trace the ban back was to 1959 when there was a restriction on “the keeping of wild animals, serpents and reptiles within the corporate limits” of the city.
Many residents already keep animals in the city. Proponents of the ordinance say that is a reason to codify and decriminalize the practice. Detroit farmer Leandra King is currently facing criminal charges for keeping horses, goats, and other animals at her farm on the city’s west side. Opponents say that residents already keeping animals is evidence that an ordinance wouldn’t be followed, as the laws aren’t being followed now.
On Thursday, commission staff presented research showing that animal-keeping benefits property values and could increase home values by 9.4%. Staff also highlighted a positive correlation between community gardens and owner-occupancy rates and socioeconomic diversity among renters.
If the ordinance is passed by the City Council, two groups—the Land Based Projects Team and Animal Husbandry Guild—would work to support its effectiveness.