Cottage housing, billed as smaller, affordable homes for different types of home buyers, is becoming a big issue for North Bend.

Now under an emergency moratorium, the development of cottage housing will be the subject of a special work-study meeting of the North Bend City Council, 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, at North Bend City Hall, 211 Main Ave. North. Linda Pruitt, a representative of the Cottage Company, will give a presentation to the council. The meeting is open to the public.

Councilmembers also held a work-study on the issue April 5, just before a public hearing on the moratorium, enacted Feb. 16.

The housing type was established in city zoning in 2006. It was amended in 2013 to prevent standard-sized homes. It was amended again in 2014 to allow greater flexibility in unit sizes, explained North Bend Community and Economic Development Director Gina Estep at last week’s meeting.

Last year, three new council members were sworn into office, and “we started discussing collective vision and with that discussion came discussions related specifically to housing in our cottage zone,” Estep said. “It was determined that additional time was necessary for this council…to have a deep conversation about what cottage housing looks like in North Bend and how to properly regulate and zone for it.”

As a result, staff recommended, and council members approved a halt to all cottage housing development, effective Feb. 16. The April 5 hearing was required by state law as a follow up to the action.

Only one person spoke at the hearing, an attorney representing a developer that had begun the application process before the moratorium took effect. He asked the city to allow his clients a three-week window to complete their application.

Current cottage zoning in North Bend calls for a maximum density of 6 to 10 units per acre, lots of 10,000 square feet, with a minimum width of 30 feet, minimum front-yard setbacks of 5 to 10 feet minimum back-yard setbacks of 10 feet and a maximum height of 29 to 35 feet.