Update: Cleveland's livestock ordinance was renewed in March, 2010 for another 1-year term. In its first year of existence, some 15 applications for raising chickens were approved. It is likely that many more chicken owners are still to be registered.

“Hopefully, this is one in a long line of laws to promote sustainability in the city,” Cleveland Planning Commission chair Tony Coyne remarked as the seven member advisory body to city council unanimously agreed on Nov. 14, 2008 that rules for tending chickens, goats, bees and livestock in the city should move ahead. The ordinance now goes to council who will decide if farm animals can be kept in backyards, businesses and vacant properties.

The so-called “chickens and bees” ordinance would update existing zoning to allow up to six chickens (or ducks) on the typical residential lot, provided they’re located in a backyard and housed in predator-proof coops that are no closer than 10 feet (a change from the existing 100 foot setback) to a neighbor’s house. Other changes allow one beehive per typical residential lot, and larger animals such as goats, geese, pigs and sheep on one-acre lots.

The meeting turned out dozens of residents and urban farmers, such as Carl Skalak, proprietor of Blue Pike Farm in Cleveland’s St. Clair-Superior neighborhood. Skalak doesn’t see the need to include geese in the larger area requirement. “Their presence is quite pleasant and they really don’t make a peep.” Meagan Kresge of Gather Round Farm on Lorain Road in Ohio City thinks the ordinance will add a financial and administrative burden to citizens and businesses like hers who are already keeping chickens and roosters (the new ordinance would prohibit the latter except on one-acre lots). “Roosters protect the flock from predators. In (the Near West Side) there are probably more roosters than anywhere in the city. Our councilman (Joe) Santiago told me he gets more complaints about barking dogs than roosters.”

Cleveland Planning Director and commission member Bob Brown observed that this law will make tending those thousands of chickens in the city finally legal.

It’s the process of applying and paying fees to the Building Department for an occupancy certificate for the animals and a building permit for the coops and/or hives as well as a license with the Health Department that beekeeper Karen Wushner and urban agriculture advocate Josh Klein, don’t care for. “In researching how other cities handle livestock, I found the more densely populated the city, the less restrictive they are toward chickens,” Klein says, citing New York and Chicago’s policy that chickens can be raised as ‘pets’ as long as they’re only providing eggs (not for slaughter).

“Creating a law that’s restrictive when many (Clevelanders) are keeping chickens as pets will be a hardship, hard to enforce, and it won’t make our food system more secure. If chickens are innocuous, why not make it easier for Cleveland residents?”

The commission vowed to make the building permit fees significantly lower than the typical $100-200. “We’re moving to make it five dollars,” commission member Joe Cimperman said. “This is a work in progress, and we don’t intend to make it difficult for older or immigrant populations.” The city’s Community Relations department can be enlisted to help spread the word and translate for those tending chickens who may speak English as a second language, he added. Christina Maggiora, who tends a community garden with her brother Carlo on a vacant lot next to his house in Midtown (and who remembers when nearby Dunham Tavern kept chickens), commented that some coops are movable and collapsible and so may not be permanent structures.

Brown promised that the Planning Department would work on a definition of what is a permanent structure.

Many residents commended Cleveland for promoting urban agriculture. One Cleveland resident likened the liberalizing of laws to the essential moments of food security in modern history – bombing raids on London during World War II and Perestroika after the fall of the Soviet Union -- when backyard gardens literally staved off starvation. “We have food deserts in Cleveland where people who grow their own food are three times as likely to eat it,” Cimperman added. Some city residents are three times more likely to find a Big Mac than a banana, he added.

“This will help us become producers, not just consumers, of food, again,” said octogenarian Cleveland resident Mary Ann Pride. “It will cut down on gas use and create green jobs. Imagine raising sheep and selling the wool. We should have gardens and animals as part of every Cleveland school.”

At the center of Cleveland's sustainability agenda is the cultivation of land to grow healthier food for its citizens. The city has a rare urban garden zoning overlay which protects urban gardens, but it also has to deal with food desserts—large territories where residents don’t have a supermarket within a 1-mile walk or bus ride but plenty of fast food within a half-mile.

On November 14, 2008 the Cleveland City Planning Commission considered a series of resolutions that could open new urban agriculture opportunities for its residents. Specifically, the city will allow backyard chicken coops, bee keeping and even grazing of cows and goats. Its part of a larger local food initiative and some creative rethinking around how to make a shrinking city more sustainable.

Read the draft of Cleveland's livestock ordinance to be considered by City Planning Commission.

Update: Text of Cleveland Codified Ordinance 347.02.