Illegal porches and stoops

Porches can be wonderful spaces to hang out in. It's an outdoor space where you can sit and read the newspaper with a cup of coffee while watching your neighbors walk around. It also helps activate the street with human activity instead of a street being devoid of life. They do need to be a certain depth to be really functional and comfortable to sit and relax in, which we've found to start at around seven feet in depth. However, even if you only have space for something less than that, it's preferable to just a stoop. You can place some decor and potted plants there, have space for visitors to stand in the cover from the rain, or build a small fort to pelt passers by with water balloons.

I'll be the judge of that, says the Livermore development code (566 page PDF; happy reading).

You want an integrated porch in your new house in Livermore (4.03.050). Great! Due to the depth of your lot and your housing needs, you can only get a six foot deep porch, which you decide is okay because you have some smaller patio furniture and the porch will be twelve feet wide. Plenty of space for you.

Sorry! You can't do that. The guidelines state that for an integrated porch, the minimum depth is eight feet.

But wait, there may be hope yet. If we turn the page on the design guidelines, there are dimensions for a stoop that allows for a depth between five and eight feet. Let's get our porch on!

Sorry! You can't do that either. The guidelines state that stoops may only be between five and eight feet wide also. Your porch is twelve feet wide. You now realize that a six foot by twelve foot porch is illegal. Something you didn't think to check beforehand because it's, well, quite frankly, ridiculous.

The difference between in compliance and out of compliance.
Someone at the city needs to ask Richard Dawkins about the discontinuous mind.

Then you realize that the guidelines state that the front porch must be raised eighteen inches above the grade, forcing a much more expensive raised floor foundation as opposed to a slab on grade. Thankfully, we were told that one isn't enforced, further adding to the absurd, arbitrary nature of the guidelines.

This is in the code to comply with, but c'mon...we're, like, totes kidding on that one!

So your options are:

1. Increase the depth two feet to a legal porch by eating into your house, within which you have no room to give.
2. Decrease the width four feet to a legal stoop, which will look ridiculous since you have some second floor above the porch and windows in front of where your new column would be.
3. Keep the roof form, but find some kind of loophole where if you don't pour concrete more than eight feet wide, you can call part of your porch -- I mean, stoop -- a "covered landscape strip".
4. Beg the planning staff, commission, and city council to grant you a variance, and pray to the housing gods that you get one. 

We tried for #4, then opted to go with #3 when we weren't successful and we're told we must conform to the code (except for the 18" raised porch...just 'cuz). When we did the change, the city saw how ridiculous #3 was, they finally granted #4. So we had the pleasure of changing all the drawings back to what they were. What a waste of time.

This may seem like small beans to a single house, but for a subdivision, this could be a major difference. If you want to get a porch, you need to expand the depth of your house or townhome by two feet each for an eight foot deep porch. Or in a higher density project, by two feet to get you to a five foot deep stoop. Across the site, if you have eight rows of houses, and you need that extra sixteen feet to squeeze in another row of housing (along with tightening up some fluff in the site), the market just lost out on several to dozens of new houses.

But at least you'll have a super comfy porch to throw water balloons from.

Who cares if your lounge chair depth porch decreased housing stock by six units?
Water balloons for the allegorical win!