SAN DIEGO — With a new year comes new laws and a handful of them deal directly with accessory dwelling units, better known as ADUs.
One new law, AB 1033, gives cities the option to allow homeowners to sell their ADUs separately from the main house. Not surprisingly, there are those who support the idea and others who have serious concerns.
“I think it's a great thing,” said Rafael Perez, Chair of the of Casita Coalition, which encourages the building of more smaller, affordable housing.
He believes ADUs will sell for a lot less than a full house, allowing more people an opportunity to buy a home.
“You're not sharing walls, you get a little bit of a yard, hopefully somewhere to park and that's what we're really hoping for,” Perez said. “People get this opportunity to own a price of San Diego that otherwise may be locked out.”
He also believes it's great for seniors who own a home, but need more income to stay in their house. They can sell an ADU for extra cash.
“Before we add more significant changes to ADUs, we need to go back and re-examine what we're trying to get out of the program,” said Geoff Hueter, Chair of Neighbors for a Better San Diego.
Hueter isn't opposed to AB 1033, but he says the state law assumes one ADU on a property, not several like the City of San Diego currently allows.
“We're way off on some big code branch that the state never intended and we're not doing a good job of figuring out how our branch aligns with state law,” he said.
The concern is that this law encourages outside developers to buy single family homes, build multiple ADUs, and then sell them, congesting neighborhoods with studios and doing nothing to encourage building homes for families.
Working for you, CBS 8 reached out to several cities and so far none have approved the sale of ADUs. San Diego seems to be the closest.
"The mayor supports efforts to increase homeownership opportunities for San Diegans. At this time, City staff is evaluating the law for possible implementation," city officials said in a statement.
Most other responses were similar to Oceanside.
"At this time, the City of Oceanside is not considering any changes to our local laws in response to AB 1033."
Another new law is AB 976 which allows homeowners to rent their ADUs. That was already allowed, but the current law was set to expire and this extends it indefinitely.
And the third new law is AB 434 which forces cities that have been slow to adopt ADUs to have plans in place by next year to accept them.
While ADUs are a polarizing topic around our county, there is one thing everyone agrees on: They are not going to single handedly solve our housing crisis.
“This is just plugging a leak and keeping it from getting worse, but to really fix it, we're going to need all housing types in all types of neighborhoods for all types of people,” Rafael Perez said.
At CBS 8, we are always Working for You and our community. This is a station promise that we will go the extra mile to solve a problem our audience can’t solve themselves. We want to hear your ideas on how we can cover and help our community. If you have a story idea, please email us at workingforyou@cbs8.com.
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