Impact Fees (Senior Living)

When it comes to senior living communities, most city codes and ordinances do not specifically address senior living developments. Many times cities just group senior living in with apartment complexes. Senior residents, and their uses of city provided services, are very different than a typical apartment resident.

Some cities charge impact fees for those city provided services. If your senior living development's demand for those city provided services is low, you should try to get your impact fees lowered. Below are examples of impact fees you can argue that the city should lower for your development.

Water Impact Fees

When it comes to water use (and the subsequent sewer use) our senior residents typically use only a fraction of what a typical apartment resident would use.

Most senior residents do not shower daily. They have mobility limitations, and getting undressed, showered, and redressed is too burdensome a task to do daily. Also, because of their mobility limitations, they are not usually sweating or getting dirty enough to need a shower often.
None of the resident living units have a bathtub in the bathroom, so no one is taking a high water consuming bath.
Some units may have a kitchenette, but the large majority of senior residents don’t do much cooking or dish washing.
Seniors don’t have a heavy demand on clothes washing.
Many water and sewer impact fees are charged based on the number of units in the complex. While a typical apartment complex may have a couple of people or a whole family living in a unit (all consuming water), senior living communities usually only have one resident per unit.

When a city attempts to charge your senior living development a water and/or sewer impact fee as if you were a typical apartment complex, make the above arguments that your actual water and sewer use is much lower, therefore your impact fees should be much lower.

Roadway Impact Fees

These are fees to expand and maintain the public roads. Every new development adds to the vehicular traffic to the public roads, so that development should pay the marginal burden (impact) they put on those public roads. However, when it comes to senior living development, most of the residents don’t drive, and the ones that do, drive very little. This low driver count decreases the burden your senior living development is placing one the city’s public roads. Therefore, you should not be charged the same roadway impact fees as a typical apartment complex.

Park Fees

Some cities charge park fees for the construction and maintenance of public parks that the additional citizens from a new development will use. It is extremely unlikely that the residents of your senior living community will use a public park. As a mater of fact, your senior living community will likely be developing, and 100% paying for: swimming pools, courtyards, dog parks, pickle ball courts, bocca ball courts, putting greens, yoga lawns, and walking trails that your residents will use for their outdoor activity. It makes no sense for you to pay for a portion of a public park that your residents will never use.

It's a Long Shot

To be honest, the chances of any developer getting relief from a city imposed impact fee is probably slim, and it would likely have to be approved at the city council level. Cities wouldn't want to establish a precedent of offering some projects impact fee relief. But it is still worth asking about. If you can provide a convincing enough argument to city council, you could save your project tens of thousands of dollars by paying reduced impact fees.

Finally, if the city you are developing in charges an impact fee for EMS and/or fire department services, your argument for relief from impact fees goes out the door. Your senior living community will put a disproportionate high demand on EMS and fire department services as they respond to the medical and death needs of your community. Fortunately, most cities that charge impact fees usually do not have a EMS/fire impact fee, so still try to get the relief from the fees that you can.

Next Page: Development Budget (Senior Living)