Cardiff Feuds Over Building ‘Twin Homes’ on Small Lots

Esther Headley moved to Cardiff back in 1951. Those were the days. Headley could sit in her cozy home, nestled on one of the terraced steps rising from the Pacific, and gaze outward to where the sea and the sky collide.

So how’s life in Cardiff today?

“Terrible, terrible, terrible,” says the 84-year-old homeowner. “When I first moved here, it was like being in the country. And I had a beautiful view of the ocean. Then, they put a big double home up in front of me. It broke my view.”

Ma’am, meet George Wardner, a.k.a. “The Twin Homes King.”

Wardner, owner of a residential development and marketing firm, is the chief advocate of the type of two-unit residences, known as twin homes, that are popping up with increasing frequency in Cardiff these days. Esther Headley may abhor them, but Wardner argues that all those twin homes are the best thing to hit Cardiff in years.

“The twin home is a very, very high-quality, market-sensitive way of redeveloping this area,” Wardner gushes. “I only wish we had more property to build on. We could sell everything we built.”

It is a curious sort of coastal conundrum. Many communities would trade half of City Hall for a few good custom-built homes fetching more than $300,000 a unit, but in Cardiff, a busy gridwork of streets rolling up from the sea, the twin home issue has feathers flying.

Higher Density Opposed

On one side are a band of residents irked by the units. These homeowners complain that the twin homes threaten to double the density of the community, cramming two homes on land where typically only a small beach cottage had stood before.

Such opponents argue that the result of a higher-density community will be a marked increase in crime and traffic. They also complain that the sheer size and bulk of the units is far out of scale with the rest of the neighborhood, blocking views and ruining the coastal ambiance. Watch out, they warn. Cardiff-by-the-Sea could soon become Concrete-by-the-Sea.

Developers and landowners eager to build twin homes see it differently. They consider the two-unit structures a pleasing ingredient being added to the community, providing comfortable, high-quality living close to the beach.

Moreover, they say, efforts by opponents to outlaw twin homes in Cardiff could cause property values to plunge, limiting the ability of residents to recoup their investment in the land.

Once a lazy enclave of seafront bungalows in San Diego County that played host to a curious mix of elderly residents, vacationing families and beachcombing bohemians, Cardiff today is a pack of houses, duplexes, apartment buildings and condominiums.

Although now largely developed, the community has remained a ready target for the building industry. Most of the construction activity has focused on erecting replacement housing for the aging homes of yesteryear.

It is not uncommon for a home buyer to purchase a sagging bungalow and almost immediately knock it down to make room for a pastel-colored twin home, using the sale or rental of one half of the property to finance the project.

Such density-doubling practices would be expressly forbidden in most communities by zoning and land-use laws. But, in Cardiff, the zoning ceiling of 10.9 units per acre has been superseded by a historical precedent.

When the community was first subdivided after the turn of the century by a transplanted Bostonian named J. Frank Cullen, the parcels were broken down into narrow, 25-by-100-foot lots. Newcomers would often buy several lots, building a house in the middle of them.

In recent years, however, developers have used those original lot divisions to circumvent the modern zoning laws. When an old home is scraped off a parcel consisting of two lots, for instance, a builder can legally erect a home on each one.

‘Skinny Minnie’ Homes

Some developers have done just that, building narrow detached houses, known as “Skinny Minnies,” which opponents of the practice complain look like railroad boxcars planted on a foundation.

A far more popular alternative has been the twin home. Unlike a duplex, the twin home is two completely independent housing units sitting flush together on separate 25-by-100-foot lots. The two units may share the same roof and exterior skin, but the inner walls are separated by at least an inch of air space.

Since the early 1980s, twin homes have been the house of choice for developers in Cardiff, the perfect means to tap into the growing number of upscale workers migrating to the region for jobs in San Diego County’s growing high-technology corridors.

‘Yuppie, Dink Market’

“We’re appealing to the yuppie market, the dink (dual income, no kids) market,” said Wardner, who has put together deals for scores of twin homes. “It’s for that segment that wants high quality, that wants to live by the beach. The property owner not only owns the building, but the land underneath. It’s been attractive to buyers who are tired of homeowners’ fees and condo stuff.”

It has also begun to change the character of the community, twin home opponents contend. Although Cardiff once seemed a friendly, family-oriented neighborhood, it now appears destined to become a haven of high-salary singles and hard-charging career couples, they complain.

“It is becoming a yuppie land,” said Richard MacManus, former chairman of the Cardiff planning advisory board and a leader of Concerned Citizens of Cardiff, the anti-twin home forces. “It’s just a total change in the community makeup from what it was when we bought in.”

Before Cardiff became part of the newly incorporated city of Encinitas in 1986, the county held the reins on planning in the area, and developers pretty well had their say, MacManus said. The twin homes being erected were massive, virtually covering whole lots with two stories of stucco. Views were blocked, sunlight was blotted out.

‘Something Has to Give’

Since incorporation, the city has refined its land-use laws for Cardiff, setting tougher setback policies and restrictions on the height and bulk of the buildings as part of an interim law adopted in mid-1987.

Those regulations have helped, MacManus said, but problems still exist.

“When you’re trying for 3,000 square feet of home on only 2,500 square feet of land, something has to give,” MacManus said. “And, in Cardiff, it has been the trees and the yards and the green spaces.”

More ominously, the increase in density brought about by twin-home construction has been followed in recent years by a doubling in arrests in the community, he said. Traffic also has increased along the community’s narrow streets, which were laid out “during the horse-and-buggy days,” MacManus said.

He argues that virtually the entire community could one day be developed as twin homes--even single-family houses built during the past decade.

Lure of Profits

The reason? Profits. Small homes selling in the $200,000 range can easily be turned into a twin home, with each half fetching in excess of $300,000.

“I think any home, if it’s older than about five years, is subject to being torn down to become a twin home,” MacManus argues. “It’s happened elsewhere. It happened in Los Angeles, in Manhattan Beach.”

Wardner and other proponents of twin homes chafe at such allegations. They say their foes are exaggerating the impact of new development on the community.

Cardiff, they argue, changed long ago. The laid-back beach town is now 97% developed, and the personality of the past is hard to detect.

“They seem to see Cardiff as still being a little old vacation community of 800-square-foot vacation cottages,” Wardner said. “But, then again, I guess a lot of people live in the past.”

Moreover, Wardner argues that there is little potential for much more twin-home development in Cardiff. Now, he said, less than a quarter of the units in Cardiff are single-family homes, and an even smaller percentage of those are ripe for demolition to make way for a twin home.

Beach Is Back Yard

“Richard MacManus and his political cronies are perpetuating a myth,” Wardner said. “It’s a red herring. It’s just not the way it is in Cardiff today.”

Although some new twin homes lack a big back yard, he said, the community is blessed with the biggest back yard of them all--the beach.

“A lot of people call the beach their back yard, or the ability to walk to the park their back yard, or to be able to walk a few blocks to the Seaside Market their back yard,” Wardner said.

What rankles him most, however, are efforts by twin-home opponents to get the City Council to adopt regulations to effectively outlaw twin-home construction.

Earlier this year, MacManus and other twin-home foes persuaded the City Council to initiate an effort to begin merging the 25-by-100-foot lots into larger parcels suitable only for single-family houses.

Council Backs Off

The council backed off in April when Wardner and other twin-home supporters stormed City Hall, contending that they had been denied due process because several landowners had not been afforded a chance to speak during the first hearing on the lot-merger issue.

Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines, the prime backer of the lot-merger concept, says she plans during the coming weeks to push the issue forward again. Other council members, however, question whether Gaines will have much success.

“I just don’t think there is enough interest on the council as a whole to consider eliminating the rights of people to build a twin home,” Councilman Gerald Steel said. “I think the question most of the council members are considering is whether we need to be more aggressive and reduce the bulk and size of twin homes even further.”

Twin-home foes concede that the lot-merger concept does not enjoy much political support in the council, but they promise to come up with a fresh proposal they hope will ease Cardiff’s development problems. So far, however, leaders of Concerned Citizens of Cardiff are keeping their new ideas under wraps.