Ames City Council will have a meeting this Tuesday focusing on the first passage of exemptions to a recent rental cap ordinance and the final passage of zoning laws that were tabled at the June 12 meeting.

The cap limits the percentage of rental homes in neighborhoods surrounding the Iowa State campus to 25 percent.

The City Council discussed three options that would give waivers to people undergoing hardships due to the rental cap.

The first option would allow people to rent out their property for two additional years if they had been trying to sell their property.

Homeowners would be able to qualify for this if they had lived in Ames for a minimum of five years, the house has to be appraised and on sale for a reasonable price and the house must be adjacent to at least three rental properties or two if the “geography is unusual.”

The second option would be the same as the first but it would only allow for nine months of  additional renting and wouldn’t require any number of adjacent rental properties.

The third option was to allow a window for any property owner to get a letter of compliance within the next six months to help grandfather in homeowners and smooth the transition process.

The Council was supposed to pass a zoning ordinance for the stretch of Lincoln Way near downtown but tabled it until staff could draft exemptions giving businesses who meet the criteria a pre-existing status rather than non-conforming. This would apply for businesses in retail trade, wholesale trade, detention facilities, warehousing-mini storage, vehicle service stations and vehicle repair facilities.