California’s ADU Laws: Major Changes and How They Affect You The Good Men ProjectCalifornia’s ADU Laws: Major Changes and How They Affect You The Good Men ProjectCalifornia’s ADU Laws: Major Changes and How They Affect You The Good Men Project
The City of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce it is now accepting submissions for designer-owned preapproved plans for detached Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). These plans will be considered for preapproval by the City, with the goals of speeding up the review and approval process, guiding homeowners who may not know where to start, and ensuring that those homeowners work with qualified, experienced professionals. For more information on how to apply, please read the “For Designers” section below.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: JULY 1, 2024
WHAT ARE PREAPPROVED PLANS?
Preapproved plans are ADU designs submitted by designers, architects, builders, and other qualified professionals and vetted in advance by Planning and Building & Safety. Once preapproved, they can be selected for use by homeowners for their own ADU projects with an expedited review timeline and lower permitting costs.
FOR DESIGNERS
Having your ADU plans preapproved by the City is a great way to help your future clients move through the permitting process quickly and smoothly. All preapproved ADU plans will be featured on the City’s website to help connect you with homeowners who are interested in adding an ADU to their property. You will still retain your copyright to the preapproved design, so any homeowner who wishes to use the design must contract with you to do so.
FOR HOMEOWNERS
Available in January 2025 – the City will launch the Preapproved ADU Program for homeowners to use. Homeowners can then reach out to the designer of the plan they select and work with them throughout the process. Browse the City’s list below – New plans coming soon!
How to Apply for a Building Permit
Preapproval does not mean that the designs already have their building permits, but rather that elements of the permitting process for your ADU will already be addressed upon application submittal. Pre-approved plans are around 70-80% complete but you will still be required to provide site-specific information. To use a preapproved ADU plan, you must:
New plans coming soon!
Learn more at https://santabarbaraca.gov/preapproved-adu
NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS
The City of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce it is now accepting submissions for designer-owned preapproved plans for detached Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). These plans will be considered for preapproval by the City, with the goals of speeding up the review and approval process, guiding homeowners who may not know where to start, and ensuring that those homeowners work with qualified, experienced professionals. For more information on how to apply, please read the “For Designers” section below.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: JULY 1, 2024
WHAT ARE PREAPPROVED PLANS?
Preapproved plans are ADU designs submitted by designers, architects, builders, and other qualified professionals and vetted in advance by Planning and Building & Safety. Once preapproved, they can be selected for use by homeowners for their own ADU projects with an expedited review timeline and lower permitting costs.
FOR DESIGNERS
Having your ADU plans preapproved by the City is a great way to help your future clients move through the permitting process quickly and smoothly. All preapproved ADU plans will be featured on the City’s website to help connect you with homeowners who are interested in adding an ADU to their property. You will still retain your copyright to the preapproved design, so any homeowner who wishes to use the design must contract with you to do so.
FOR HOMEOWNERS
Available in January 2025 – the City will launch the Preapproved ADU Program for homeowners to use. Homeowners can then reach out to the designer of the plan they select and work with them throughout the process. Browse the City’s list below – New plans coming soon!
How to Apply for a Building Permit
Preapproval does not mean that the designs already have their building permits, but rather that elements of the permitting process for your ADU will already be addressed upon application submittal. Pre-approved plans are around 70-80% complete but you will still be required to provide site-specific information. To use a preapproved ADU plan, you must:
Contract with the designer responsible for the plan set.
Submit additional site-specific plans, studies, and engineering, as applicable.
Obtain a building permit from the Building & Safety Division for the construction of a preapproved ADU. The full list of submittal requirements for a building permit are included below.
New plans coming soon!
Learn more at https://santabarbaraca.gov/preapproved-adu
Preapproved ADU Program for City of Santa Barbara Santa Barbara Edhat
Shed with terrace and wooden garden furniture during spring
Pasadena residents planning to embark on Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) construction projects should now have a clearer path forward with the city’s newly launched Accessory Dwelling Unit Standard Plans Program.
By offering pre-approved plans and streamlined approval procedures, the city aims to demystify the ADU process and to empower homeowners to enhance their properties while contributing to the city’s housing diversity.
The initiative, spearheaded by the Department of Planning and Community Development, presents a gallery of pre-approved ADU plans ranging from studios to two-bedroom units. These plans, designed by both the City and licensed professionals, promise time-saving benefits in design and permitting.
The program’s launch includes two city-designed plans offered at no cost, with more designs by licensed professionals slated for addition in the coming months.
“All plans featured as part of this program have been pre-approved by the Building and Safety Division resulting in time-savings in both the design and permitting of an ADU,” the Planning Department said. “Note that any modification to pre-approved ADU plans would result in the need for plan check and the plans would no longer be considered pre-approved.”
An ADU provides complete independent living facilities and is situated on the same parcel as the primary residence. The city categorizes ADUs into single-family, multi-family, junior ADUs, and ADUs in historic districts or in individually designated historic properties, each with specific permitting criteria.
As published on the ADU webpage, the available pre-approved ADU plans cater to various needs, including Prototype A, a 374 sq. ft. studio unit, and Prototype D, a 682 sq. ft. two-bedroom, one-bath unit. Estimated plan check and permit fees range from $7,000 to $13,000, excluding additional permits like fire sprinkler or grading permits.
The submission process for pre-approved plans involves contacting the Permit Center, preparing a site plan, completing agreements and applications, and undergoing plan review.
Applicants can request a virtual meeting to obtain preliminary feedback from city staff on building code and zoning code requirements for your proposed ADU. The virtual meeting service is offered to anyone interested in building an ADU in Pasadena before plans are submitted for plan check review.
To view the ADU plans that are now available, visit the Planning Department’s ADU webpage, www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/planning-division/community-planning/accessory-dwelling-units/ or www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/planning-division/community-planning/accessory-dwelling-units/adu-standard-plans-program/#step1.
For more information, visit www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/.
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Shed with terrace and wooden garden furniture during spring
Pasadena residents planning to embark on Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) construction projects should now have a clearer path forward with the city’s newly launched Accessory Dwelling Unit Standard Plans Program.
By offering pre-approved plans and streamlined approval procedures, the city aims to demystify the ADU process and to empower homeowners to enhance their properties while contributing to the city’s housing diversity.
The initiative, spearheaded by the Department of Planning and Community Development, presents a gallery of pre-approved ADU plans ranging from studios to two-bedroom units. These plans, designed by both the City and licensed professionals, promise time-saving benefits in design and permitting.
The program’s launch includes two city-designed plans offered at no cost, with more designs by licensed professionals slated for addition in the coming months.
“All plans featured as part of this program have been pre-approved by the Building and Safety Division resulting in time-savings in both the design and permitting of an ADU,” the Planning Department said. “Note that any modification to pre-approved ADU plans would result in the need for plan check and the plans would no longer be considered pre-approved.”
An ADU provides complete independent living facilities and is situated on the same parcel as the primary residence. The city categorizes ADUs into single-family, multi-family, junior ADUs, and ADUs in historic districts or in individually designated historic properties, each with specific permitting criteria.
As published on the ADU webpage, the available pre-approved ADU plans cater to various needs, including Prototype A, a 374 sq. ft. studio unit, and Prototype D, a 682 sq. ft. two-bedroom, one-bath unit. Estimated plan check and permit fees range from $7,000 to $13,000, excluding additional permits like fire sprinkler or grading permits.
The submission process for pre-approved plans involves contacting the Permit Center, preparing a site plan, completing agreements and applications, and undergoing plan review.
Applicants can request a virtual meeting to obtain preliminary feedback from city staff on building code and zoning code requirements for your proposed ADU. The virtual meeting service is offered to anyone interested in building an ADU in Pasadena before plans are submitted for plan check review.
To view the ADU plans that are now available, visit the Planning Department’s ADU webpage, www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/planning-division/community-planning/accessory-dwelling-units/ or www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/planning-division/community-planning/accessory-dwelling-units/adu-standard-plans-program/#step1.
For more information, visit www.cityofpasadena.net/planning/.
Get our daily Pasadena newspaper in your email box. Free.
Get all the latest Pasadena news, more than 10 fresh stories daily, 7 days a week at 7 a.m.
Pasadena Unveils Standard Plans Program to Simplify ADU Construction, Offers Pre-Approved Plans and Streamlined … Pasadena Now
Last month, we featured San-Diego-based architect Lily Robinson, who explained what accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are and the benefits they offer homeowners. In Part 2 of our interview, we’ll explore the design process and the ADU experience.
Q: Tell me about your property and the decision to build the ADU that you now live in?
A: The original house is a 1200-square-foot, single-story, Spanish-style home built in 1926. I bought the property in 2017 with the idea to convert the detached garage to a second living unit for my mom and dad to use as a vacation home. But during the design process, my father passed away, so I shifted the design to be for my husband and myself to live in.
We decided to keep the garage and build over it. We filed our ADU project permit in 2019 and did the work during the pandemic.
The design was very important to me, as an architect, and because my husband and I both were working from home. We needed separation between our living area and our work area, and an environment that optimized our physical and mental health.
We built a loft-style 900 square-foot residence above the existing garage. We also added a laundry room, art workshop and music studio on the ground floor adjacent to the garage, which we kept since I love the security of having my car off the street and protected.
Q: So, you are happy with how it turned out?
A: It’s perfect. Our living area is an open plan with a full kitchen along one wall, one bedroom, one bathroom and a large walk-in closet we call the dressing room. We have a seating area where the TV is, and there is enough space to accommodate my husband’s grandmother’s antique dining table which has seven leaves (to seat 12) when we need it.
We used all natural materials, with white oak wood flooring, limestone in the bathroom and granite counters in the kitchen. There are two windows on opposite walls in the bathroom for cross ventilation and views to a big tree. It’s very calming.
Q: Where is your front door? Is it behind the garage?
A: Yes. It’s very private. You reach it by going up the steps of an outdoor staircase that is sheltered by an overhang. In the back we’re also working on a garden and a pretty pathway to the staircase.
Q: You said your aim was to create an environment that optimized your physical and mental health. What does that mean?
A: We can start with the stairs. I included it into the design so that we can get our walks in, going down to the office to work and then up the stairs to our living area. There’s no bathroom on the ground floor, so we get our exercise every day.
Other optimal touches are the placement of windows for natural light, relaxing views and the prevailing sea breeze. Our ADU has cathedral ceilings, but rather than install a skylight — they always leak! — we have operable clerestory windows. They capture the afternoon breeze and help create a cross breeze without letting in the heat of the sun.
Did you know ceiling height can affect creativity and focus? I have an “idea corner” for creativity, which is a strategically placed desk in the main room with a 16-foot vaulted ceiling. When you need to focus, like in the office, a lower ceiling is better.
Q: From the outside, your ADU doesn’t look anything like the original house. Why?
A: My neighbors were surprised that the new ADU didn’t match the style of the existing house, but for me, architectural style is like fashion. I envisioned the new ADU as a younger sister to the main house — and you wouldn’t necessarily want the newest member of the family to dress like the oldest one, would you?
Q: I know you do residential remodels and room additions, but are ADUs your favorite thing to do?
A: ADUs are so much fun to design, especially when you plan to live in it. I tell people that an ADU can make your life so much better.
I have a client who built an ADU for herself on top of her parent’s one-story home. It’s only 650 square feet but it’s got everything she needs: a large bedroom, a balcony, a laundry area and a full kitchen. Not only that, but she also has great views. Her new kitchen looks out to a park in the front of the house and the bedroom … has a view of the ocean.
Q: What happened to your original house?
A: I have offered it to my mother — if she wants to move here from New York. It could also turn into a rental unit later. The rent from the house could easily cover our mortgage payment.
We might add a Junior ADU as a third rentable space in the future. Then, if we decide to retire somewhere else, we’d have income from three rental units.
Q: OK, we’ve decided we want an ADU and we call you. What then?
A: The first thing is to get your address, so I can look up the zoning and jurisdiction authority. Every single lot is different, with multiple overlays that may impact your property. It might be along a transit corridor or in a high hazard zone.
Next, I would ask you to contact the county assessor’s office and ask for the residential building record. It’s only available to the property owners and is required as part of a permit process if your existing house was built more than 40 years ago.
Then we would meet for an hour so I could ask tons of questions about your goals, your timeline and your budget. Investing in an ADU on your property can add so much to your life.
Catherine Gaugh is a freelance writer.
Last month, we featured San-Diego-based architect Lily Robinson, who explained what accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are and the benefits they offer homeowners. In Part 2 of our interview, we’ll explore the design process and the ADU experience.
Q: Tell me about your property and the decision to build the ADU that you now live in?
A: The original house is a 1200-square-foot, single-story, Spanish-style home built in 1926. I bought the property in 2017 with the idea to convert the detached garage to a second living unit for my mom and dad to use as a vacation home. But during the design process, my father passed away, so I shifted the design to be for my husband and myself to live in.
We decided to keep the garage and build over it. We filed our ADU project permit in 2019 and did the work during the pandemic.
The design was very important to me, as an architect, and because my husband and I both were working from home. We needed separation between our living area and our work area, and an environment that optimized our physical and mental health.
We built a loft-style 900 square-foot residence above the existing garage. We also added a laundry room, art workshop and music studio on the ground floor adjacent to the garage, which we kept since I love the security of having my car off the street and protected.
Q: So, you are happy with how it turned out?
A: It’s perfect. Our living area is an open plan with a full kitchen along one wall, one bedroom, one bathroom and a large walk-in closet we call the dressing room. We have a seating area where the TV is, and there is enough space to accommodate my husband’s grandmother’s antique dining table which has seven leaves (to seat 12) when we need it.
We used all natural materials, with white oak wood flooring, limestone in the bathroom and granite counters in the kitchen. There are two windows on opposite walls in the bathroom for cross ventilation and views to a big tree. It’s very calming.
Q: Where is your front door? Is it behind the garage?
A: Yes. It’s very private. You reach it by going up the steps of an outdoor staircase that is sheltered by an overhang. In the back we’re also working on a garden and a pretty pathway to the staircase.
Q: You said your aim was to create an environment that optimized your physical and mental health. What does that mean?
A: We can start with the stairs. I included it into the design so that we can get our walks in, going down to the office to work and then up the stairs to our living area. There’s no bathroom on the ground floor, so we get our exercise every day.
Other optimal touches are the placement of windows for natural light, relaxing views and the prevailing sea breeze. Our ADU has cathedral ceilings, but rather than install a skylight — they always leak! — we have operable clerestory windows. They capture the afternoon breeze and help create a cross breeze without letting in the heat of the sun.
Did you know ceiling height can affect creativity and focus? I have an “idea corner” for creativity, which is a strategically placed desk in the main room with a 16-foot vaulted ceiling. When you need to focus, like in the office, a lower ceiling is better.
Q: From the outside, your ADU doesn’t look anything like the original house. Why?
A: My neighbors were surprised that the new ADU didn’t match the style of the existing house, but for me, architectural style is like fashion. I envisioned the new ADU as a younger sister to the main house — and you wouldn’t necessarily want the newest member of the family to dress like the oldest one, would you?
Q: I know you do residential remodels and room additions, but are ADUs your favorite thing to do?
A: ADUs are so much fun to design, especially when you plan to live in it. I tell people that an ADU can make your life so much better.
I have a client who built an ADU for herself on top of her parent’s one-story home. It’s only 650 square feet but it’s got everything she needs: a large bedroom, a balcony, a laundry area and a full kitchen. Not only that, but she also has great views. Her new kitchen looks out to a park in the front of the house and the bedroom … has a view of the ocean.
Q: What happened to your original house?
A: I have offered it to my mother — if she wants to move here from New York. It could also turn into a rental unit later. The rent from the house could easily cover our mortgage payment.
We might add a Junior ADU as a third rentable space in the future. Then, if we decide to retire somewhere else, we’d have income from three rental units.
Q: OK, we’ve decided we want an ADU and we call you. What then?
A: The first thing is to get your address, so I can look up the zoning and jurisdiction authority. Every single lot is different, with multiple overlays that may impact your property. It might be along a transit corridor or in a high hazard zone.
Next, I would ask you to contact the county assessor’s office and ask for the residential building record. It’s only available to the property owners and is required as part of a permit process if your existing house was built more than 40 years ago.
Then we would meet for an hour so I could ask tons of questions about your goals, your timeline and your budget. Investing in an ADU on your property can add so much to your life.
Catherine Gaugh is a freelance writer.
All about ADUs, Part 2 The San Diego Union-Tribune
There’s no ignoring the current housing crisis in California. California needs approximately 3.5 million new housing units by 2025, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Many experts see accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, as a possible solution to this issue by providing additional housing for family members or renters on existing properties. One key step is finding the right partner to craft a sustainable, turnkey home.
“The goal of Perpetual Homes ADU is to build the highest quality at the most affordable price point,” explains Katherine Anderson, founder of Perpetual Homes ADU. “My experience, with 39 years in residential development, has come together to design and create ADUs that fit families’ needs. No where else can your family members live in such full-scale luxury at an affordable price point than in a Perpetual Homes ADU.”
“If your family member, for example, has been priced out of the area, adding an ADU in your backyard can help them stay in the area and live in a beautiful luxury setting,” she adds. Our goal is to help families stay together whether it’s the boomerang young adults or move-down parents. It’s extremely rewarding to help families stay together in the high-priced Bay Area.
Now is the time to act — both for Anderson and homeowners — to take advantage of visionary California legislation that enables ADUs to be built quicker and with fewer jurisdictional costs. New California ADU laws passed in 2022 include AB 2221, which includes new government-backed finance programs, no more front setbacks for statewide exemption ADUs, stricter 60-day limits on all permitting agencies, a height of 16 feet for a detached ADU on lot with existing or proposed single-family or multifamily unit (two detached ADUs per property), and over a dozen other rule changes that make California ADU law better than ever in 2023.
In addition, Senate Bill 9, also known as SB 9, went into effect at the beginning of 2022 and Perpetual Homes has already leveraged this bill to provide fee simple lot splits with single-family homes (up to 2,600 square feet) for some of their clients. SB 9 gives homeowners in many single-family zones the green light to build additional ADUs and single-family homes on their current property or subdivide their land into two separate parcels and sell one of the parcels. Whether you’ve thought about a multigenerational home, a guesthouse or a rental income stream, SB 9 offers the opportunity to build more on your existing homesite.
With decades of experience in real estate development and market analysis, Anderson acquires the highest-quality homes at the most affordable prices for her clients. Her vast network of prefabrication companies, engineers, architects and general contractors makes the process of building an ADU much smoother. ADU prices start in the mid-$200,000s for a one-bedroom ADU.
Whether you want to increase your property value, add a new source of income or provide housing for family members or renters, contact Perpetual Homes ADU for more information! Call (925) 309-0205 or visit www.perpetualhomesadu.com to learn more.
Content provided by Perpetual Homes
There’s no ignoring the current housing crisis in California. California needs approximately 3.5 million new housing units by 2025, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Many experts see accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, as a possible solution to this issue by providing additional housing for family members or renters on existing properties. One key step is finding the right partner to craft a sustainable, turnkey home.
The popular in-demand Huntington Farmhouse features three bedrooms, two bathrooms (1,173 square feet), which includes high-end appliances and finishes, all starting at $339,000. “The goal of Perpetual Homes ADU is to build the highest quality at the most affordable price point,” explains Katherine Anderson, founder of Perpetual Homes ADU. “My experience, with 39 years in residential development, has come together to design and create ADUs that fit families’ needs. No where else can your family members live in such full-scale luxury at an affordable price point than in a Perpetual Homes ADU.”
“If your family member, for example, has been priced out of the area, adding an ADU in your backyard can help them stay in the area and live in a beautiful luxury setting,” she adds. Our goal is to help families stay together whether it’s the boomerang young adults or move-down parents. It’s extremely rewarding to help families stay together in the high-priced Bay Area.
Now is the time to act — both for Anderson and homeowners — to take advantage of visionary California legislation that enables ADUs to be built quicker and with fewer jurisdictional costs. New California ADU laws passed in 2022 include AB 2221, which includes new government-backed finance programs, no more front setbacks for statewide exemption ADUs, stricter 60-day limits on all permitting agencies, a height of 16 feet for a detached ADU on lot with existing or proposed single-family or multifamily unit (two detached ADUs per property), and over a dozen other rule changes that make California ADU law better than ever in 2023.
In addition, Senate Bill 9, also known as SB 9, went into effect at the beginning of 2022 and Perpetual Homes has already leveraged this bill to provide fee simple lot splits with single-family homes (up to 2,600 square feet) for some of their clients. SB 9 gives homeowners in many single-family zones the green light to build additional ADUs and single-family homes on their current property or subdivide their land into two separate parcels and sell one of the parcels. Whether you’ve thought about a multigenerational home, a guesthouse or a rental income stream, SB 9 offers the opportunity to build more on your existing homesite.
With decades of experience in real estate development and market analysis, Anderson acquires the highest-quality homes at the most affordable prices for her clients. Her vast network of prefabrication companies, engineers, architects and general contractors makes the process of building an ADU much smoother. ADU prices start in the mid-$200,000s for a one-bedroom ADU.
Whether you want to increase your property value, add a new source of income or provide housing for family members or renters, contact Perpetual Homes ADU for more information! Call (925) 309-0205 or visit www.perpetualhomesadu.com to learn more.
Content provided by Perpetual Homes
Add value in your backyard with an ADU The Mercury News
I try to be cognizant that I’m writing for an international audience here at Strong Towns. A lot of my idea fodder comes from walks around the city I’ve lived in for the last 11 years, but I fear I can only write so much about Sarasota, Florida, and have it be relevant and interesting to people who don’t live here.
I’ve always wanted to write about Laurel Park, a Sarasota neighborhood which I lived in from 2014 to 2016 and have admired for longer than that. Now that my family and I are moving away from Florida, it feels like the right time to pay a bit of tribute. (We are relocating to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up and where my parents and some of my extended family still live. It’ll be good to be close to family and (more) friends, and to raise the kids amid that “village.”)
This isn’t an exercise in mere nostalgia. The built form of Laurel Park actually provides some excellent insight into what the next incremental stage of growth could look like for the over 75% of America’s residential landscape that is currently mostly (or wholly) occupied by single-family homes with yards. Good urbanism doesn’t have to mean large apartment buildings or some immaculate row of brownstones; the ad-hoc version on display in a neighborhood like Laurel Park is more relevant as a model of adaptation for, well, “the rest of us.”
Laurel Park is located just southeast of and adjacent to downtown Sarasota. The neighborhood is roughly 100 years old. Many homes and apartment buildings showcase the telltale Mediterranean Revival style of the city’s first big development boom in the 1920s, while others were built later. Today it’s a historic district and something of a relic: restrictive zoning and fierce (one could, not inaccurately, say NIMBY) advocacy by longtime residents has preserved Laurel Park’s lush greenery and its built form of mostly one- and two-story buildings in the shadow of downtown’s modern high-rises. What you see is a time capsule of the development pattern that evolved in the pre-suburban era. And the best word for that pattern is “eclectic.”
Things are cozy and close together here. You won’t have a grassy lawn to toss a football around. But what you sacrifice in elbow room, you gain in the benefits of compactness: a walkable, lively neighborhood with the population to support local businesses in close proximity.
You also gain a different kind of beauty. The buildings aren’t huge and monolithic. There are lots of little passages. The patios and modest yards and gardens of Laurel Park are high in delight per acre: lavish attention is paid to small landscaping and aesthetic details in a way that I’ve never experienced to be the case in a neighborhood where the lots are large.
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And there is green space: the eponymous neighborhood park is a delight. A collection of communal children’s toys—tricycles, scooters, little play houses—resides permanently on and around the playground. People are almost always in the park chatting in mid-afternoon on a nice day.
There are plenty of single-family homes:
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Many of these homes have accessory dwelling units (ADUs), guest houses, or carriage houses:
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There are duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes scattered throughout nearly every block:
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There are cottage courts (tight clusters of small homes around a shared space):
There are apartment buildings, mostly from the 1920s Mediterranean Revival:
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All of this coexists easily. Not one of these things is a nuisance, or out of character. There are simply no discernible negative effects caused by this mixing of built form. There are no traffic problems or parking problems here.
And there are beneficial effects. One obvious effect of a diverse mix of housing types is that the neighborhood is home to a diversity of residents: old and young, renter and homeowner, “snowbirds” and year-round locals, married with children, single with roommates. For many younger renters, it’s virtually the only opportunity to live a walkable, urban lifestyle in Sarasota on the kind of income you have early in your career. This was what drew my wife and me to the neighborhood nine years ago.
(Source: Laurel Park Neighborhood Association.)
When we moved to Laurel Park as newlyweds, it was into an accessory dwelling unit tucked behind a small dingbat apartment building and a duplex on a corner lot. Our apartment was on the fence line with a single-family home: we were friendly with the homeowner and got to know the stray cats he would feed daily. (One of those cats we ended up adopting.)
The ADU we used to live in.
We were also friendly with our landlord, a Canadian who came down a few times a year. The rent was a bargain for anywhere in town, let alone a five-minute walk from Main Street’s shops and restaurants. Nothing remotely comparable exists in the larger, newer buildings nearby.
Our region is in a dire housing affordability crisis: from 2021 to 2022, rent growth here was a mind-boggling 47% (compared to 18% nationally). The crunch is especially acute in and near the downtown core; in Florida, we’re good at building subdivisions in cattle pastures but not so much at handling a surge of unmet demand for walkable urban living. Affordable housing for a downtown workforce is a constant topic of conversation in city hall; new construction is too costly and too slow to be the answer in and of itself. In this context, I find it beyond obvious that the eclectic mix of ADUs and other modest housing options already available in a neighborhood like Laurel Park is a crucial source of relatively inexpensive housing.
Another beneficial effect of this neighborhood’s built form is financial productivity. This is a place that is paying its freight. Its public infrastructure is modest (streets, for example, are narrow) while the concentration of private investment is significant, a direct consequence of the variety and compact arrangement of housing in Laurel Park. To see this, we need only compare a block of Laurel Park with a much more conventional block of single-family homes in nearby Hudson Bayou, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city.
The Laurel Park block accommodates roughly triple the number of homes in about the same land area. These are, on average, much smaller homes, and less expensive overall, even as the total assessed value per acre of the real estate is 39% higher in Laurel Park.
The actual market values of property here tend to be higher than the tax-assessed value by a significant margin. Real estate in Laurel Park has become tremendously expensive—in fact, prices here are just about the highest in the city when measured on a per-square-foot basis. (Keep in mind that the single-story 1920s bungalows of Laurel Park are quite small.)
This neighborhood is not expensive because it’s the kind of place that’s expensive to build—it isn’t! It’s wholly about the scarcity of this kind of place, and the desirability of the location.
And the answer to that problem is simple, in principle: more Laurel Parks. This place shouldn’t be the rarity it is. It’s a demonstrated huge success: there should be a dozen neighborhoods like it in Sarasota alone.
There aren’t. In fact, it’s illegal to make any other neighborhood here more like Laurel Park. Virtually every lot in Laurel Park violates some combination of the density, parking, and setback restrictions that apply to every other neighborhood in the city. (In fact, many of them violate the restrictions that apply to Laurel Park, itself—they just had the good fortune to have been developed before the modern zoning code was in place.)
We could make it so that just about any residential neighborhood could evolve to look more like Laurel Park. Not just here, but in almost any American city that shares the basic DNA of single-family detached homes on lots of modest size. It just requires some key policy changes to make the historic pattern already visible in Laurel Park legal to reproduce without a costly and uncertain variance process:
In neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes, allow buildings at the missing-middle level of intensity—certainly up to a fourplex or cottage court, but I would suggest up to the kind of small-scale apartment buildings that exist here.
Allow accessory dwelling units without onerous restrictions, like owner-occupancy on site or a separate sewer and water hookup.
Eliminate parking mandates.
Make setback requirements small to zero.
Eliminate minimum lot size requirements.
Allow lots to be split and subdivided with few restrictions, only those needed for basic access and safety.
There is some momentum in this direction. Parking mandates have begun to fall like dominoes across the North American continent. And advocates for the reform of rigid single-family zoning have caught on to the idea of lot splits, in California and elsewhere.
It’s important to recognize that a neighborhood like Laurel Park is itself the result of ad-hoc evolution and reinvention over time. It wasn’t planned to be the eclectic mix that exists today. Here is an aerial photo from 1948, showing ample lawns and still large vacant tracts:
(Source: Sarasota County.)
Here’s 1986:
(Source: Sarasota County.)
Redevelopment continues on a modest, scattered basis, as individual houses are torn down and replaced. Some of the recent redevelopment in Laurel Park itself has taken the form of large, single-family homes, but other new construction replicates the fine-grained historic pattern of the neighborhood. In the latter case, the key is splitting up lots to build on very small chunks of land. Here’s an aerial view of a cluster of new townhomes built around an alley interior to a Laurel Park block. These tiny lots were created by subdividing larger ones; the neighborhood wasn’t originally platted with them.
There’s not much but regulation and our entrenched building culture keeping the average American neighborhood from beginning to fill in with something similar to this.
It’s not a master planning process, or a coercive one. Nobody is coming for anybody’s home or yard. This is an evolutionary process that can unfold, if allowed to, as individual homeowners make a range of choices for individual reasons.
Some people will always want their privacy and their yard and their elbow room. But lots of people would take this trade-off. And some of those “lots of people” own the suburban-style lots that comprise 75% and up of urban residential land in most U.S. cities. Those people can start filling in backyards—not all of them, of course, but a fraction of them, as the owners desire—with ADUs. We can start allowing owners to split up lots, or small developers to build cottage courts where in a previous era you’d have had one or two “McMansions,” simply because that was the only thing allowed.
Laurel Park demonstrates the kind of place that would result from that evolution. Far from feeling chaotic or crowded, it can be lovable, beautiful, and a boon to your city.
I try to be cognizant that I’m writing for an international audience here at Strong Towns. A lot of my idea fodder comes from walks around the city I’ve lived in for the last 11 years, but I fear I can only write so much about Sarasota, Florida, and have it be relevant and interesting to people who don’t live here.
I’ve always wanted to write about Laurel Park, a Sarasota neighborhood which I lived in from 2014 to 2016 and have admired for longer than that. Now that my family and I are moving away from Florida, it feels like the right time to pay a bit of tribute. (We are relocating to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up and where my parents and some of my extended family still live. It’ll be good to be close to family and (more) friends, and to raise the kids amid that “village.”)
This isn’t an exercise in mere nostalgia. The built form of Laurel Park actually provides some excellent insight into what the next incremental stage of growth could look like for the over 75% of America’s residential landscape that is currently mostly (or wholly) occupied by single-family homes with yards. Good urbanism doesn’t have to mean large apartment buildings or some immaculate row of brownstones; the ad-hoc version on display in a neighborhood like Laurel Park is more relevant as a model of adaptation for, well, “the rest of us.”
Meet the Eclectic NeighborhoodLaurel Park is located just southeast of and adjacent to downtown Sarasota. The neighborhood is roughly 100 years old. Many homes and apartment buildings showcase the telltale Mediterranean Revival style of the city’s first big development boom in the 1920s, while others were built later. Today it’s a historic district and something of a relic: restrictive zoning and fierce (one could, not inaccurately, say NIMBY) advocacy by longtime residents has preserved Laurel Park’s lush greenery and its built form of mostly one- and two-story buildings in the shadow of downtown’s modern high-rises. What you see is a time capsule of the development pattern that evolved in the pre-suburban era. And the best word for that pattern is “eclectic.”
Things are cozy and close together here. You won’t have a grassy lawn to toss a football around. But what you sacrifice in elbow room, you gain in the benefits of compactness: a walkable, lively neighborhood with the population to support local businesses in close proximity.
You also gain a different kind of beauty. The buildings aren’t huge and monolithic. There are lots of little passages. The patios and modest yards and gardens of Laurel Park are high in delight per acre: lavish attention is paid to small landscaping and aesthetic details in a way that I’ve never experienced to be the case in a neighborhood where the lots are large.
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And there is green space: the eponymous neighborhood park is a delight. A collection of communal children’s toys—tricycles, scooters, little play houses—resides permanently on and around the playground. People are almost always in the park chatting in mid-afternoon on a nice day.
There are plenty of single-family homes:
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Many of these homes have accessory dwelling units (ADUs), guest houses, or carriage houses:
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There are duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes scattered throughout nearly every block:
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There are cottage courts (tight clusters of small homes around a shared space):
There are apartment buildings, mostly from the 1920s Mediterranean Revival:
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All of this coexists easily. Not one of these things is a nuisance, or out of character. There are simply no discernible negative effects caused by this mixing of built form. There are no traffic problems or parking problems here.
And there are beneficial effects. One obvious effect of a diverse mix of housing types is that the neighborhood is home to a diversity of residents: old and young, renter and homeowner, “snowbirds” and year-round locals, married with children, single with roommates. For many younger renters, it’s virtually the only opportunity to live a walkable, urban lifestyle in Sarasota on the kind of income you have early in your career. This was what drew my wife and me to the neighborhood nine years ago.
(Source: Laurel Park Neighborhood Association.)
When we moved to Laurel Park as newlyweds, it was into an accessory dwelling unit tucked behind a small dingbat apartment building and a duplex on a corner lot. Our apartment was on the fence line with a single-family home: we were friendly with the homeowner and got to know the stray cats he would feed daily. (One of those cats we ended up adopting.)
The ADU we used to live in.
We were also friendly with our landlord, a Canadian who came down a few times a year. The rent was a bargain for anywhere in town, let alone a five-minute walk from Main Street’s shops and restaurants. Nothing remotely comparable exists in the larger, newer buildings nearby.
Our region is in a dire housing affordability crisis: from 2021 to 2022, rent growth here was a mind-boggling 47% (compared to 18% nationally). The crunch is especially acute in and near the downtown core; in Florida, we’re good at building subdivisions in cattle pastures but not so much at handling a surge of unmet demand for walkable urban living. Affordable housing for a downtown workforce is a constant topic of conversation in city hall; new construction is too costly and too slow to be the answer in and of itself. In this context, I find it beyond obvious that the eclectic mix of ADUs and other modest housing options already available in a neighborhood like Laurel Park is a crucial source of relatively inexpensive housing.
Another beneficial effect of this neighborhood’s built form is financial productivity. This is a place that is paying its freight. Its public infrastructure is modest (streets, for example, are narrow) while the concentration of private investment is significant, a direct consequence of the variety and compact arrangement of housing in Laurel Park. To see this, we need only compare a block of Laurel Park with a much more conventional block of single-family homes in nearby Hudson Bayou, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city.
The Laurel Park block accommodates roughly triple the number of homes in about the same land area. These are, on average, much smaller homes, and less expensive overall, even as the total assessed value per acre of the real estate is 39% higher in Laurel Park.
Creating More of a Good ThingThe actual market values of property here tend to be higher than the tax-assessed value by a significant margin. Real estate in Laurel Park has become tremendously expensive—in fact, prices here are just about the highest in the city when measured on a per-square-foot basis. (Keep in mind that the single-story 1920s bungalows of Laurel Park are quite small.)
This neighborhood is not expensive because it’s the kind of place that’s expensive to build—it isn’t! It’s wholly about the scarcity of this kind of place, and the desirability of the location.
And the answer to that problem is simple, in principle: more Laurel Parks. This place shouldn’t be the rarity it is. It’s a demonstrated huge success: there should be a dozen neighborhoods like it in Sarasota alone.
There aren’t. In fact, it’s illegal to make any other neighborhood here more like Laurel Park. Virtually every lot in Laurel Park violates some combination of the density, parking, and setback restrictions that apply to every other neighborhood in the city. (In fact, many of them violate the restrictions that apply to Laurel Park, itself—they just had the good fortune to have been developed before the modern zoning code was in place.)
We could make it so that just about any residential neighborhood could evolve to look more like Laurel Park. Not just here, but in almost any American city that shares the basic DNA of single-family detached homes on lots of modest size. It just requires some key policy changes to make the historic pattern already visible in Laurel Park legal to reproduce without a costly and uncertain variance process:
In neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes, allow buildings at the missing-middle level of intensity—certainly up to a fourplex or cottage court, but I would suggest up to the kind of small-scale apartment buildings that exist here.
Allow accessory dwelling units without onerous restrictions, like owner-occupancy on site or a separate sewer and water hookup.
Eliminate parking mandates.
Make setback requirements small to zero.
Eliminate minimum lot size requirements.
Allow lots to be split and subdivided with few restrictions, only those needed for basic access and safety.
There is some momentum in this direction. Parking mandates have begun to fall like dominoes across the North American continent. And advocates for the reform of rigid single-family zoning have caught on to the idea of lot splits, in California and elsewhere.
An Evolutionary PatternIt’s important to recognize that a neighborhood like Laurel Park is itself the result of ad-hoc evolution and reinvention over time. It wasn’t planned to be the eclectic mix that exists today. Here is an aerial photo from 1948, showing ample lawns and still large vacant tracts:
(Source: Sarasota County.)
Here’s 1986:
(Source: Sarasota County.)
Redevelopment continues on a modest, scattered basis, as individual houses are torn down and replaced. Some of the recent redevelopment in Laurel Park itself has taken the form of large, single-family homes, but other new construction replicates the fine-grained historic pattern of the neighborhood. In the latter case, the key is splitting up lots to build on very small chunks of land. Here’s an aerial view of a cluster of new townhomes built around an alley interior to a Laurel Park block. These tiny lots were created by subdividing larger ones; the neighborhood wasn’t originally platted with them.
There’s not much but regulation and our entrenched building culture keeping the average American neighborhood from beginning to fill in with something similar to this.
It’s not a master planning process, or a coercive one. Nobody is coming for anybody’s home or yard. This is an evolutionary process that can unfold, if allowed to, as individual homeowners make a range of choices for individual reasons.
Some people will always want their privacy and their yard and their elbow room. But lots of people would take this trade-off. And some of those “lots of people” own the suburban-style lots that comprise 75% and up of urban residential land in most U.S. cities. Those people can start filling in backyards—not all of them, of course, but a fraction of them, as the owners desire—with ADUs. We can start allowing owners to split up lots, or small developers to build cottage courts where in a previous era you’d have had one or two “McMansions,” simply because that was the only thing allowed.
Laurel Park demonstrates the kind of place that would result from that evolution. Far from feeling chaotic or crowded, it can be lovable, beautiful, and a boon to your city.
Good urbanism doesn’t have to mean large apartment buildings or an immaculate row of brownstones; the ad-hoc version on display in this Florida neighborhood is more relevant as a model of adaptation for the rest of us.
Shawn Mizrachi, owner of West L.A.-based MDM Customer Remodeling, has seen his accessory dwelling unit business spike since 2017, when state laws began to favor the building types.
Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs — also known colloquially as granny flats — were seen by some as a way of addressing the affordable housing crisis. Their creation accelerated during the pandemic and is continuing to grow, according to experts and a new report. Among the reasons why ADUs are increasing in popularity now is an easier regulatory process to get the units approved.
ADUs, secondary housing units with independent living facilities on a residential lot in addition to the main house, are typically converted garages or freestanding units in the backyard.
Mizrachi said that 60% of his ADU projects are garage conversions and 40% are ground up projects.
According to Mizrachi, there are three scenarios behind the build of an ADU: moving a relative onto the property; needing more space to work from home — an event that accelerated during the pandemic; and rental income.
“Those are the three types of customers,” he said.
San Francisco-based ADU builder Cottage — which has offices in Los Angeles and San Diego — recently released its 2022 ADU Impact Report looking at the rising demand for ADUs in California. The report found that Southern California remains the hottest ADU market in the country and demand outpaces actual builds: For every three ADU permits submitted in 2021, only one had resulted in a completed dwelling by the end of last year.
Alex Czarnecki, founder and chief executive of Cottage, said “60% of ADU permits from California were in L.A. in 2022.”
But while California has made it easier to get ADUs approved, it is still a difficult process to navigate, said Czarnecki, as to why only one ADU for every three permits sought results in a build. Czarnecki, who comes from a tech background, formed Cottage after his own experience creating an ADU in 2020.
“I was building an ADU for my parents to help them age in place and fell into all of the traps that a homeowner falls into: feasibility, understanding what’s possible on your property, architectural design, navigating city permitting and finding and working with the right general contractor,” Czarnecki said.
He formed Cottage at the height of the pandemic.
“People stuck at home (were) thinking about, ‘What if I had a little bit of extra space?’” Czarnecki said. “The longer you spend at home, the longer you think of improving it. We saw this interesting dynamic of during the pandemic a lot of families looking to bring their elderly parents out of the senior living center to be closer together.”
Czarnecki believes the pandemic was only one factor boosting the ADU space.
“The other boost which happened on pretty similar timing was regulatory,” Czarnecki said. “Across California, the state has continued to pass, year by year, additional legislation that makes it easier for homeowners to build ADUs. The ADU space has been doubling year over year since 2018 in a lot of these markets.”
Even though California had begun to relax rules and regulations about creating ADUs in 2017, Gov. Gavin Newsom more recently removed other obstacles for Californians interested in building ADUs.
The new laws went into effect in 2020. Among the directives: Californians are now permitted to create two ADUs on a single-family zoned property, one full accessory dwelling unit and one junior accessory dwelling unit, or JADU. A JADU can be a maximum of 500 square feet and is created by converting part of an existing residence.
Beginning in 2020, homeowners could also build a detached ADU spanning 800 square feet and 16 feet tall without any local discretionary approvals. ADUs created by conversions were also granted automatic approval. Many of the requirements regarding parking and setbacks have also been minimized, and ADUs can also be added to multifamily dwellings, either in spaces such as carports and storage rooms, or, in the absence of such spare spaces, two ground-up detached ADUs can be built.
Facilitating ADU building is the mandate that California cities approve or deny ADU projects within 60 days of receipt of application. (Prior to 2020, the window of time edged 120 days.)
The result of the state laws has been reflected in the number of permits issued. From 2017 to 2021, the number of ADU permits issued in the city of Los Angeles increased by 202%. From Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, 2021, a total of 3,371 ADU permits were issued, and by the end of the year, 5,188 permits were given a green light, according to publicly available Department of Building and Safety data. The figure was surpassed last year, as 4,999 permits were issued in the first eight months of 2022.
Ray and Lesley Joelson, who run the architectural firm EZPlans in Woodland Hills, said that one out of every three inquiry calls they receive are regarding ADUs.
The average cost for a garage conversion is $150,000 while new construction could cost between $300,000 and $500,000, depending on the specifics, such as if the ADU is being built on a hillside property.
“The garage conversion is very appealing to so many people because it’s adding value to their house,” Lesley Joelson said. “Garage conversions are the least expensive way for a homeowner to create an ADU. At least 65% of the ADUs we do are garage conversions.”
Ray Joelson said that many clients seek to take advantage of what the law allows.
“If you have a two-car garage, you’re going to capture 400 square feet,” Ray Joelson said. “The typical law allows you about 1,200 square feet. So if people are looking to maximize their return on investment on building an ADU, those clients don’t go for the garage conversions, they tend to go for the new detached two story, 1,200 square foot maximum square footage in the backyard. To maximize the rental square footage and valuation on your property then you’d go for the detached ADU.”
The Joelsons note that despite the state law, the rules for building an ADU may differ depending on the community. For example, Burbank and Pasadena don’t allow ADUs to exceed 800 square feet.
“While the state has very ambitious goals to try to solve the housing crisis, some of these jurisdictions have conflicting requirements,” Ray Joelson said. “Not everybody is fully gung-ho about letting everybody build rental units on their property, but the state wants them to solve the shortage of housing. So they have different strategies of interpreting the law.”
Ray Joelson gives as an example a client he had in Venice.
“Those lots in Venice are very small and parking is an absolute nightmare,” he said. “So while at a state level you’re not required to have additional parking when you build an ADU, if you convert a garage in Venice, they do require you to find substitute parking. We’re doing a project there right now where there’s even conflict within the city’s Building Department versus the Planning Department inside of Venice. The Building Department was quite fine with losing the parking by converting the garage, but the Planning Department said, ‘Sorry, streets are too busy. We can’t figure any more cars here.’ They forced the architect to design an on-property parking space.”
Lesley Joelson explained that there are often discrepancies between the state and individual municipalities.
“The state sets the guidelines for ADUs but the various city jurisdictions often overlay additional restrictions and limitations on elements like the height and size of ADUs, or parking restrictions,” she said. “This is a very contentious issue, and creates a lot of confusion for homeowners. The individual cities are ultimately in control because they approve the building permit.”
Lesley Joelson gives yet another example of a client facing municipal minutiae.
“In Manhattan Beach, he wants to go to a two-story so he could still have some backyard for his children to play in,” she said. “He was very disappointed that he couldn’t go to a two-story ADU.”
Ray Joelson said that complications also arise when dealing with overlay zones.
“If that property falls within a special overlay zone, the rules become even more ridiculous,” he said. “In a historic zone, a whole bunch of different rules have to apply. (Also) if you’re in a coastal commission overlay, if you’re in a hillside property versus a flat lot.”
EZPlans helps clients navigate the nuances of building ADUs in different neighborhoods.
“What we try to do is do our due diligence before we take on a client so we’re very transparent and honest with what we can achieve or can’t achieve,” Ray Joelson said. “We’ve had to make clients aware that your wish list is not going to fly very well with the city.”
Shawn Mizrachi, owner of West L.A.-based MDM Customer Remodeling, has seen his accessory dwelling unit business spike since 2017, when state laws began to favor the building types.
Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs — also known colloquially as granny flats — were seen by some as a way of addressing the affordable housing crisis. Their creation accelerated during the pandemic and is continuing to grow, according to experts and a new report. Among the reasons why ADUs are increasing in popularity now is an easier regulatory process to get the units approved.
ADUs, secondary housing units with independent living facilities on a residential lot in addition to the main house, are typically converted garages or freestanding units in the backyard.
Mizrachi said that 60% of his ADU projects are garage conversions and 40% are ground up projects.
According to Mizrachi, there are three scenarios behind the build of an ADU: moving a relative onto the property; needing more space to work from home — an event that accelerated during the pandemic; and rental income.
“Those are the three types of customers,” he said.
Rising demand
San Francisco-based ADU builder Cottage — which has offices in Los Angeles and San Diego — recently released its 2022 ADU Impact Report looking at the rising demand for ADUs in California. The report found that Southern California remains the hottest ADU market in the country and demand outpaces actual builds: For every three ADU permits submitted in 2021, only one had resulted in a completed dwelling by the end of last year.
Alex Czarnecki, founder and chief executive of Cottage, said “60% of ADU permits from California were in L.A. in 2022.”
A gate at home with an ADU in the background, left. MDM Owner Shawn Mizrachi at an ADU property in Culver City.
But while California has made it easier to get ADUs approved, it is still a difficult process to navigate, said Czarnecki, as to why only one ADU for every three permits sought results in a build. Czarnecki, who comes from a tech background, formed Cottage after his own experience creating an ADU in 2020.
“I was building an ADU for my parents to help them age in place and fell into all of the traps that a homeowner falls into: feasibility, understanding what’s possible on your property, architectural design, navigating city permitting and finding and working with the right general contractor,” Czarnecki said.
He formed Cottage at the height of the pandemic.
“People stuck at home (were) thinking about, ‘What if I had a little bit of extra space?’” Czarnecki said. “The longer you spend at home, the longer you think of improving it. We saw this interesting dynamic of during the pandemic a lot of families looking to bring their elderly parents out of the senior living center to be closer together.”
Czarnecki believes the pandemic was only one factor boosting the ADU space.
“The other boost which happened on pretty similar timing was regulatory,” Czarnecki said. “Across California, the state has continued to pass, year by year, additional legislation that makes it easier for homeowners to build ADUs. The ADU space has been doubling year over year since 2018 in a lot of these markets.”
Rules and regulations
Even though California had begun to relax rules and regulations about creating ADUs in 2017, Gov. Gavin Newsom more recently removed other obstacles for Californians interested in building ADUs.
The new laws went into effect in 2020. Among the directives: Californians are now permitted to create two ADUs on a single-family zoned property, one full accessory dwelling unit and one junior accessory dwelling unit, or JADU. A JADU can be a maximum of 500 square feet and is created by converting part of an existing residence.
Beginning in 2020, homeowners could also build a detached ADU spanning 800 square feet and 16 feet tall without any local discretionary approvals. ADUs created by conversions were also granted automatic approval. Many of the requirements regarding parking and setbacks have also been minimized, and ADUs can also be added to multifamily dwellings, either in spaces such as carports and storage rooms, or, in the absence of such spare spaces, two ground-up detached ADUs can be built.
Facilitating ADU building is the mandate that California cities approve or deny ADU projects within 60 days of receipt of application. (Prior to 2020, the window of time edged 120 days.)
The result of the state laws has been reflected in the number of permits issued. From 2017 to 2021, the number of ADU permits issued in the city of Los Angeles increased by 202%. From Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, 2021, a total of 3,371 ADU permits were issued, and by the end of the year, 5,188 permits were given a green light, according to publicly available Department of Building and Safety data. The figure was surpassed last year, as 4,999 permits were issued in the first eight months of 2022.
Complicated process
Ray and Lesley Joelson, who run the architectural firm EZPlans in Woodland Hills, said that one out of every three inquiry calls they receive are regarding ADUs.
The average cost for a garage conversion is $150,000 while new construction could cost between $300,000 and $500,000, depending on the specifics, such as if the ADU is being built on a hillside property.
“The garage conversion is very appealing to so many people because it’s adding value to their house,” Lesley Joelson said. “Garage conversions are the least expensive way for a homeowner to create an ADU. At least 65% of the ADUs we do are garage conversions.”
Ray Joelson said that many clients seek to take advantage of what the law allows.
“If you have a two-car garage, you’re going to capture 400 square feet,” Ray Joelson said. “The typical law allows you about 1,200 square feet. So if people are looking to maximize their return on investment on building an ADU, those clients don’t go for the garage conversions, they tend to go for the new detached two story, 1,200 square foot maximum square footage in the backyard. To maximize the rental square footage and valuation on your property then you’d go for the detached ADU.”
The Joelsons note that despite the state law, the rules for building an ADU may differ depending on the community. For example, Burbank and Pasadena don’t allow ADUs to exceed 800 square feet.
“While the state has very ambitious goals to try to solve the housing crisis, some of these jurisdictions have conflicting requirements,” Ray Joelson said. “Not everybody is fully gung-ho about letting everybody build rental units on their property, but the state wants them to solve the shortage of housing. So they have different strategies of interpreting the law.”
Ray Joelson gives as an example a client he had in Venice.
“Those lots in Venice are very small and parking is an absolute nightmare,” he said. “So while at a state level you’re not required to have additional parking when you build an ADU, if you convert a garage in Venice, they do require you to find substitute parking. We’re doing a project there right now where there’s even conflict within the city’s Building Department versus the Planning Department inside of Venice. The Building Department was quite fine with losing the parking by converting the garage, but the Planning Department said, ‘Sorry, streets are too busy. We can’t figure any more cars here.’ They forced the architect to design an on-property parking space.”
Lesley Joelson explained that there are often discrepancies between the state and individual municipalities.
“The state sets the guidelines for ADUs but the various city jurisdictions often overlay additional restrictions and limitations on elements like the height and size of ADUs, or parking restrictions,” she said. “This is a very contentious issue, and creates a lot of confusion for homeowners. The individual cities are ultimately in control because they approve the building permit.”
Lesley Joelson gives yet another example of a client facing municipal minutiae.
“In Manhattan Beach, he wants to go to a two-story so he could still have some backyard for his children to play in,” she said. “He was very disappointed that he couldn’t go to a two-story ADU.”
Ray Joelson said that complications also arise when dealing with overlay zones.
“If that property falls within a special overlay zone, the rules become even more ridiculous,” he said. “In a historic zone, a whole bunch of different rules have to apply. (Also) if you’re in a coastal commission overlay, if you’re in a hillside property versus a flat lot.”
EZPlans helps clients navigate the nuances of building ADUs in different neighborhoods.
“What we try to do is do our due diligence before we take on a client so we’re very transparent and honest with what we can achieve or can’t achieve,” Ray Joelson said. “We’ve had to make clients aware that your wish list is not going to fly very well with the city.”
Granny Flat Fever Los Angeles Business Journal
Contractor Cole Kelly is currently building a accessory dwelling unit for the Barrett family in the Lacey area.
Steve Bloom
sbloom@theolympan.com
The Barrett family of Lacey had to make some important decisions about their future housing needs, finally deciding that a family member would downsize into a new accommodation to free up space at an existing residence.
Such a move might sound familiar to many families trying to care for an older parent who still wants to remain nearby.
But for Mary Barrett, who has lived in Lacey’s Brentwood neighborhood for more than 30 years, she isn’t downsizing into a single-family home or an apartment. She will be moving all of 20 feet into an 800-square-foot accessory dwelling unit.
What’s an ADU? An ADU is a tiny home-like structure that exists as an accessory to a primary residence, either attached to the home or detached from it, and is viewed as one of the growing options to address Washington state’s housing shortage. Between 2000 and 2015, the state’s housing supply fell short of growth by 225,000 units, according to Gov. Jay Inslee’s Office.
The result has been a limited supply of single-family homes, a surge in apartment construction, and enough demand to make the cost of buying a home and paying rent increasingly expensive.
The median price of a Thurston County home continues to hover around $500,000, while average rents in the county are just under $1,500 a month, according to Thurston Regional Planning Council data. In a little more than a decade, the cost of buying or renting has just about doubled in expense, the data show.
In response, some local governments have taken steps to encourage what is known as the “missing middle,” the other types of housing that fall somewhere between a house and apartment, such as a duplex, triplex, fourplex or ADU.
Lacey rolled out its ADU program in 2020 and 2021, the two years forever associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2022 the program showed signs of life, with the city issuing four ADU permits, said Ryan Andrews, Lacey’s planning commission manager.
The city is offering four approved design plans: A 480-square-foot studio, a 600-square-foot one bedroom and two 800-square-foot options — a single-story two bedroom and a two-story two bedroom unit.
Why isn’t the city issuing more ADU permits? One reason is much of Lacey’s housing stock was built in the 1990s, Andrews said, when homes were being built on tiny lots. However, many of the city’s older neighborhoods have much larger lots.
Andrews said he thinks it’s just going to take time for people to recognize those reinvestment opportunities.
One such area can be found south of Lacey Boulevard and north of 37th Avenue, between Golf Club Road to the west and Ruddell Road to the east. The Brentwood neighborhood happens to be in this area. It’s also near Wonderwood Park.
That’s where the Barrett family home is, on one-third of an acre, according to Thurston County Assessor’s Office data. That is plenty of room for an ADU. When Lacey officials talk about the program, they typically refer to 10,000-square-foot lots as the appropriate size for ADUs, although lots smaller than that will work, too, Andrews said.
Mary is downsizing into the ADU so that she can age in place and still be close to her sons, who will move into the primary residence.
One of her sons is a longtime renter, she said.
“After a while it just gets old, moving from house to house,” Barrett said.
She considered buying a home and renting it to her sons, but that was too expensive.
In this arrangement, her sons have stable housing, and after she passes on, they have other options, she said. They could sell the house and ADU, they could rent the ADU, or one son could live in the ADU while the other lives in the primary residence.
Mary’s 800-square-foot ADU is being built by Cole Kelly of Kelly & Associates LLC, an 18-month-old Olympia-based contractor. This is his first ADU project under his shingle, although he has built them before for other employers, he said.
Kelly began work on the project in January and expects to finish toward the end of April. In addition to the two bedrooms, it has a kitchen, bathroom and a small living area. His budget is around $224,000, although it could be less than that due to some Lacey incentives.
Kelly budgeted $15,000 for building permit fees, but the city is only going to charge him $1,600, he said. The city is also waiving the fees associated with connecting to city water and sewer.
That’s a major savings, he said. Instead of having to run water and sewer connections out to the street, he was able to tie into the home’s existing system.
Still, he acknowledged that even building an ADU comes with its share of costs. He hired subcontractors for the project and Kelly said he is conscientious about the types of building materials he uses, favoring higher quality materials over off-the-shelf materials.
What would he charge in monthly rent for an 800-square-foot ADU? Based on his expenses, Kelly thinks it would still be $1,500 to $2,000 per month, which is right around the average cost of rent in the county.
If he were building Lacey’s 480-square-foot ADU, Kelly said he didn’t think he could do it for less than $100,000, although he is encouraged by Lacey’s steps to streamline the process. That could put rent closer to an affordable range.
Olympia Master Builders supports the ADU.
“As an organization we’ve been working with local jurisdictions to adopt ADU policies for a few years now,” Executive Officer Angela White said. “We feel that ADUs are one more way to increase housing stock in a community. OMB is always a proponent of jurisdictions having a broad range of options when it comes to housing people.”
Rolf has worked at The Olympian since August 2005. He covers breaking news, the city of Lacey and business for the paper. Rolf graduated from The Evergreen State College in 1990.
Contractor Cole Kelly is currently building a accessory dwelling unit for the Barrett family in the Lacey area.
Steve Bloom
sbloom@theolympan.com
The Barrett family of Lacey had to make some important decisions about their future housing needs, finally deciding that a family member would downsize into a new accommodation to free up space at an existing residence.
Such a move might sound familiar to many families trying to care for an older parent who still wants to remain nearby.
But for Mary Barrett, who has lived in Lacey’s Brentwood neighborhood for more than 30 years, she isn’t downsizing into a single-family home or an apartment. She will be moving all of 20 feet into an 800-square-foot accessory dwelling unit.
What’s an ADU? An ADU is a tiny home-like structure that exists as an accessory to a primary residence, either attached to the home or detached from it, and is viewed as one of the growing options to address Washington state’s housing shortage. Between 2000 and 2015, the state’s housing supply fell short of growth by 225,000 units, according to Gov. Jay Inslee’s Office.
The result has been a limited supply of single-family homes, a surge in apartment construction, and enough demand to make the cost of buying a home and paying rent increasingly expensive.
The median price of a Thurston County home continues to hover around $500,000, while average rents in the county are just under $1,500 a month, according to Thurston Regional Planning Council data. In a little more than a decade, the cost of buying or renting has just about doubled in expense, the data show.
In response, some local governments have taken steps to encourage what is known as the “missing middle,” the other types of housing that fall somewhere between a house and apartment, such as a duplex, triplex, fourplex or ADU.
A cold startLacey rolled out its ADU program in 2020 and 2021, the two years forever associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2022 the program showed signs of life, with the city issuing four ADU permits, said Ryan Andrews, Lacey’s planning commission manager.
The city is offering four approved design plans: A 480-square-foot studio, a 600-square-foot one bedroom and two 800-square-foot options — a single-story two bedroom and a two-story two bedroom unit.
Why isn’t the city issuing more ADU permits? One reason is much of Lacey’s housing stock was built in the 1990s, Andrews said, when homes were being built on tiny lots. However, many of the city’s older neighborhoods have much larger lots.
Andrews said he thinks it’s just going to take time for people to recognize those reinvestment opportunities.
One such area can be found south of Lacey Boulevard and north of 37th Avenue, between Golf Club Road to the west and Ruddell Road to the east. The Brentwood neighborhood happens to be in this area. It’s also near Wonderwood Park.
That’s where the Barrett family home is, on one-third of an acre, according to Thurston County Assessor’s Office data. That is plenty of room for an ADU. When Lacey officials talk about the program, they typically refer to 10,000-square-foot lots as the appropriate size for ADUs, although lots smaller than that will work, too, Andrews said.
Mary is downsizing into the ADU so that she can age in place and still be close to her sons, who will move into the primary residence.
One of her sons is a longtime renter, she said.
“After a while it just gets old, moving from house to house,” Barrett said.
She considered buying a home and renting it to her sons, but that was too expensive.
In this arrangement, her sons have stable housing, and after she passes on, they have other options, she said. They could sell the house and ADU, they could rent the ADU, or one son could live in the ADU while the other lives in the primary residence.
Is it affordable housing?Mary’s 800-square-foot ADU is being built by Cole Kelly of Kelly & Associates LLC, an 18-month-old Olympia-based contractor. This is his first ADU project under his shingle, although he has built them before for other employers, he said.
Kelly began work on the project in January and expects to finish toward the end of April. In addition to the two bedrooms, it has a kitchen, bathroom and a small living area. His budget is around $224,000, although it could be less than that due to some Lacey incentives.
Kelly budgeted $15,000 for building permit fees, but the city is only going to charge him $1,600, he said. The city is also waiving the fees associated with connecting to city water and sewer.
That’s a major savings, he said. Instead of having to run water and sewer connections out to the street, he was able to tie into the home’s existing system.
Still, he acknowledged that even building an ADU comes with its share of costs. He hired subcontractors for the project and Kelly said he is conscientious about the types of building materials he uses, favoring higher quality materials over off-the-shelf materials.
What would he charge in monthly rent for an 800-square-foot ADU? Based on his expenses, Kelly thinks it would still be $1,500 to $2,000 per month, which is right around the average cost of rent in the county.
If he were building Lacey’s 480-square-foot ADU, Kelly said he didn’t think he could do it for less than $100,000, although he is encouraged by Lacey’s steps to streamline the process. That could put rent closer to an affordable range.
Olympia Master Builders supports the ADU.
“As an organization we’ve been working with local jurisdictions to adopt ADU policies for a few years now,” Executive Officer Angela White said. “We feel that ADUs are one more way to increase housing stock in a community. OMB is always a proponent of jurisdictions having a broad range of options when it comes to housing people.”
Rolf has worked at The Olympian since August 2005. He covers breaking news, the city of Lacey and business for the paper. Rolf graduated from The Evergreen State College in 1990.
Ready to live in an 800-square-foot house? Lacey is issuing permits for unique option The Olympian
Thanks to a partnership between Shelter Island Town and the nonprofit Community Development Corporation of Long Island, up to $2 million could be spent over a two-year period in grants to property owners to create affordable accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on their properties.
Chairwoman Elizabeth Hanley of the Community Housing Board announced the grant Feb. 9.
Community Development Corporation (CDC) President and Chief Executive Officer Gwen O’Shea submitted the application and the Island is one of the municipalities that will benefit from a $2 million grant.
“You really have been the driving force,” Supervisor Gerry Siller said to Ms. Hanley.
Grants of up to $125,000 are available to qualifying low and moderate income homeowners to bring the properties up to local and State codes and retrofit them to accommodate renters. Those who qualify for the grants will either add an ADU to their property, or make capital improvements to an existing ADU.
The CDC will work with the Town to coordinate the program, which will be managed by the CDC.
Property owners who want to participate in the program would have to apply for grants administered by the CDC, Ms. Hanley said.
Homeowners who opt to take advantage of a grant have to agree to provide the rental at an affordable rate set by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. Rentals would be available to those who meet income levels set for Suffolk County. Occupants must be annually certified to ensure they continue to qualify for an affordable rental, Ms. Hanley said.
In addition, it’s possible a homeowner could apply for grant money from State, County and/or local municipalities if they need to updgrade their septic systems to state-of-the-art nitrogen-reducing systems.
(Credit: Courtesy photo)
Thanks to a partnership between Shelter Island Town and the nonprofit Community Development Corporation of Long Island, up to $2 million could be spent over a two-year period in grants to property owners to create affordable accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on their properties.
Chairwoman Elizabeth Hanley of the Community Housing Board announced the grant Feb. 9.
Community Development Corporation (CDC) President and Chief Executive Officer Gwen O’Shea submitted the application and the Island is one of the municipalities that will benefit from a $2 million grant.
“You really have been the driving force,” Supervisor Gerry Siller said to Ms. Hanley.
Grants of up to $125,000 are available to qualifying low and moderate income homeowners to bring the properties up to local and State codes and retrofit them to accommodate renters. Those who qualify for the grants will either add an ADU to their property, or make capital improvements to an existing ADU.
The CDC will work with the Town to coordinate the program, which will be managed by the CDC.
Property owners who want to participate in the program would have to apply for grants administered by the CDC, Ms. Hanley said.
Homeowners who opt to take advantage of a grant have to agree to provide the rental at an affordable rate set by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. Rentals would be available to those who meet income levels set for Suffolk County. Occupants must be annually certified to ensure they continue to qualify for an affordable rental, Ms. Hanley said.
In addition, it’s possible a homeowner could apply for grant money from State, County and/or local municipalities if they need to updgrade their septic systems to state-of-the-art nitrogen-reducing systems.
$2 million grant could ready accessory dwelling units for rentals … Shelter Island Reporter
ADU Journal is an advocacy publication. Housing is a human right. Building smaller, more affordable dwellings is one solution to solving our housing problems.
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