Ronald Yocca v. Turtle Creek Zoning Hearing Board and Borough of Turtle Creek

Summary

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the denial of Ronald Yocca’s request for a special exception to operate a sober recovery house housing seven individuals in an R-2 Residential district. The court held that the zoning board and trial court failed to properly analyze Yocca’s request for a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Amendments Act, particularly under the framework requiring consideration of necessity and reasonableness. The court vacated that portion of the decision and remanded for further findings and a new decision.

Holdings

1. The zoning hearing board properly denied the requested special exception because the ordinance unambiguously limited a group home in an R-2 Residential district to no more than three individuals, and a seven-person recovery house was not a use set forth or allowed by the ordinance.
2. The board and trial court erred by treating the ordinance's three-person group-home exception as an adequate accommodation without applying the FHA reasonable-accommodation framework. Because the three-person limit was based on use type rather than space and did not apply neutrally to all residences, it was not within the FHA's absolute occupancy-limit exception; the matter had to be evaluated under the necessity-and-reasonableness framework.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the zoning hearing board properly denied a special exception for a group home housing up to seven individuals when the zoning ordinance allowed group homes by special exception but limited them to three occupants.
2. Whether the zoning hearing board and trial court applied the proper Fair Housing Amendments Act framework in denying Yocca's request for a reasonable accommodation from the three-person group-home occupancy limit.

Disposition

other