No Chickens Allowed

Can you keep backyard chickens in Alexandria, Virginia?

One day I asked myself this question, as any programmer who owns even a tiny piece of land would do. Wouldn't it be nice to get my own fresh eggs for free, and embrace something of the farmer lifestyle? (Probably not—I'm a programmer for a reason.) But before I go out to buy any chickens that would probably annoy the neighbors, I'd better check the local laws.

The Alexandria city ordinance says:

Sec. 5-7-2 - Keeping fowl.

It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or allow to be kept within the city, within 200 feet of any residence or dwelling not occupied by such person, any fowl. The word "fowl," as used in this section, shall include, but is not limited to, chickens, hens, roosters, ducks, geese, pigeons or any domesticated barnyard bird. (Code 1963, Sec. 4-2)

If you're a resident of Alexandria, you're probably well aware that this city—which averages over 10,000 residents per square mile—is fairly dense. You'd have a hard time finding a residence that's perfectly outside a 200 foot boundary from any other residence. When I first read this regulatory, I thought to myself, "This sounds like backyard chickens are just plain illegal."

But that is just a vibe—I needed to know, exactly how illegal are the chickens really?

Entirely too much work to answer this question

First, I needed to define exactly what I wanted to check. The city ordinance mentions fowl generally, but I was specifically interested in backyard chickens. That implies that it must be on residential land with at least one dwelling on it—commercial zones or empty residential lots wouldn't count. To know where backyard chickens would be permitted, I wanted to know what land in Alexandria:

Is zoned residential or some other zone that allows residential

Has at least one dwelling on the parcel

And has land in the parcel that is 200 feet or more outside the boundary of any other residential building in the city.

Alexandria very helpfully makes a number of GIS map files available to the public in the City of Alexandria, VA GIS Open Data Hub.

I had to combine a number of their datasets to answer my question:

Buildings data from which to draw 200 foot boundaries

Buildings use data to know what kind of buildings were dwellings

Parcel data to know what land is available

Land use codes to know how the land is zoned

With this data in hand, I could use Python to write a script that would figure out very precisely where someone could keep backyard chickens. If anyone wants to review that code, I've made it available on GitHub. I'll spare everyone the nitty-gritty details of how the script works, and get to the part you really care about: answers.

Technically yes, practically no

When all the numbers were crunched and checked, I had my answer.

In the entire city of Alexandria, Virginia, 1 acre of land is technically available for keeping backyard chickens. You can only have backyard chickens in one of three locations:

The Episcopal High School Athletic Fields

The greatest amount of land that met all the requirements was found at Episcopal High School, a private boarding school in central Alexandria. The land is zoned residential, which sounds odd but is actually common for schools in the city. Residences are present on the land due to the fact that it contains student dormitories, which means you can technically have a backyard. The athletic fields are the only land on the campus far enough away from any other residences in the city to allow for keeping fowl. There's a building on the south side of their football field that would be ideal for keeping chickens.

A maintenance shed for Parkfairfax Condominiums

This land parcel is very, very weird. Most of its area is comprised of the Parkfairfax condo development's residences, but there's a weird little sliver on the north end next to the city limits that houses the maintenance yard for Parkfairfax. Even though this area appears non-residential, it's jammed onto residential land and thus technically meets criteria. If parcels determined anything to do with elections, I'd say this one was gerrymandered. You could keep chickens in this maintenance area, but it's probably not as nice of a backyard as the football field was. We can get even worse, though...

Underwater at Cameron Run

For reasons unbeknownst to me, the city's GIS maps include part of Cameron Run within the parcel boundaries near Bell Old Town apartments. There is a sliver of land on the south end of the parcel that technically meets our criteria. Probably a better location for backyard ducks than chickens, honestly.

You must really like chickens to do all this work, huh?

Not really. My dog would probably kill any chickens I tried to cram into my parking space sized backyard. I gave up on getting any long before I finished this work.

What I do like is laws and regulations that actually make sense.

This ordinance is from at least 1963, maybe older than that. Once upon a time, Alexandria probably had plenty of land that met these requirements. Now, it effectively has none. The result is that we've got a law that doesn't ban backyard chickens explicitly but does ban them in practice. And that's dumb.

If the city wanted to ban backyard chickens, they've got the authority to do it. While lots of cool things we would like to do are not allowed thanks to the Dillon Rule, this is one we really could do!

Sec. 2.04 - Power to make regulations for the preservation of the safety, health, peace, good order, comfort, convenience, morals and welfare of the city and its inhabitants.

(p) To regulate or prohibit the running at large and the keeping of animals and fowl and provide for the impounding and confiscation of any such animal or fowl found at large or kept in violation of such regulations; and to provide for the appointment of dog wardens and deputy dog wardens who, in the enforcement of the dog laws of the city, shall have the powers of a state game warden, within the city only.

Conversely, if we wanted to allow the backyard chickens that some residents definitely already have, we could do that!

What we shouldn't do is have laws and regulations like the current one. It only pretends to allow something while making the requirements to do it so burdensome that it's not possible. That's bad policy, and we shouldn't do it!

Addendum

Some of you might remember that I've made this map before.

View post on Bluesky

You'll see that this older map differs from the new one, though the overall conclusion is obviously the same. I remade the map because I somehow lost the code for the original. In the original, my criteria were a bit looser and more ad hoc. Major differences, so far as I can remember what I did previously, include:

Land with schools on it is now permissible; previously I excluded it.

Multi-family housing is tracked better, which now rules out the Southern Towers parking lots as a place to keep chickens.

Only parcels are considered, not all conceivable land. So keeping chickens under highway overpasses is no longer an option.