ODESSA, Texas — The City of Odessa heard from residents Wednesday night about a proposed carport overlay zone.
The city held a Town Hall meeting at Sherwood Community Center to get some feedback in figuring out the requirements. The carport overlay zone will allow homeowners, in certain single family zoning districts, to build in their front yards, between the front of their house and the street.
Building the carport overlay zone could potentially increase property value.
"Some of the questions is always how it can affect the property value. So that's why we care to do this correctly by us creating this overlay district, having this guideline of how to govern and how to add up onto your house," said Elizabeth Shaughnessy, director of development for the City of Odessa. "It increases your property value, instead of decreasing if you do something not to code, that's where your property values starts to decrease instead of increasing. So going with this ordinance, it allows us to actually do something right and work to serve the community also to have protection for their vehicles because they're not inexpensive and this allows us to also increase property value tax."
The city has maps and more information on their website.