District backyards could soon resemble urban farms as the D.C. Council considers a bill that would ease long-standing restrictions on raising chickens and harvesting eggs on residential property.
Ward 6 D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells is proposing to erase rules that prohibit fowl within 50 feet of any building “used for human habitation,” a regulation that denies most District residents the opportunity to harbor hens.
Urban chickens are increasingly popular nationally in the down economy, as families look to produce their own eggs and cities pass laws to ease the process. The D.C. measure was drafted on behalf of a Capitol Hill family, Wells’ constituents, whose eight hens were recently confiscated by animal control officers.
“From our perspective they were pets,” said Caryn Ernst, who owned the hens with her husband, Josh Silverman, and their two daughters, Leah, 6, and Ada, 4. “They give you an egg a day. We already go through a dozen eggs a week, and we would love it if our eggs came from our own backyard.”
Wells’ bill requires that 80 percent of the households within 100 feet of a proposed coop provide their written consent. If one neighbor objects, there can be no hens. Homeowners must obtain annual permits and meet sanitary requirements. Roosters are banned.
The Ernst family home has a “very small back courtyard,” Ernst said, but she added that the family’s hens were entertaining animals and no bother to the neighbors, making only “a very slight, pleasant buck-buck-buck noise every once in a while.” Wilbert Hill, the family’s advisory neighborhood commissioner, said he welcomed the chickens as a positive, enriching experience for area children.
It was a “total stranger” who tipped off animal control, Ernst said, which seized the fowl and delivered them to Twin Oaks Farm in Fauquier County, Va.
Wells said he was following the lead of cities such as Baltimore and Buffalo, N.Y., “to be more permissive about urban hens.” New York City, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., also permit backyard chickens.
“For quality of life and for improving nutrition and health, this is part of a greater movement of sustainable living,” Wells said, noting the resurgence of community gardens and even beekeeping. “What I see is that people are being far more creative with what little plots of land they have.”
