Accessory Dwelling Units

[apl68]

I've noticed a good deal of talk now and then in recent years about accessory dwelling units--backyard/basement/garage apartments attached to what are otherwise single-family dwelling lots.  I've seen them touted a good bit as a way of relieving housing shortages in popular cities where most of the available land is already covered by neighborhoods zoned for single-family dwellings.  The people making these suggestions seem to be trying to squeeze in more housing without making the people in the low-density neighborhoods nervous about their neighborhoods being busted open by big apartment buildings.  Which, given the massive proliferation in recent years of dreary, cookie-cutter apartment blocks, all obviously built by the same handful of Wall Street corporations, wherever they are permitted, I can see why they'd be nervous.

I rented for many years, but never lived in an ADU.  Does anybody here have any experience with them?  As either tenant or landlord?

[Parasaurolophus]

No direct experience, but I can tell you that they're super common here, as "laneway houses" (often just an apartment above the two-car garage). I've certainly looked at my fair share while apartment hunting. They tend to be more expensive to rent than an apartment, and here, that's saying a lot. They're also usually tucked in behind an absolute monstrosity of a house (i.e. newly built, costing millions, and looking like it was designed by ArchitectureGPT, with the crappiest-looking finish money could buy). I gather the primary reason for having one is that renting out is pretty much the only way to get approved for a mortgage, and everybody quite reasonably prefers to have the renters be somewhere where you can't hear them/they can't hear you. But, frankly, it doesn't look very nice when your single-family home neighbourhood is filled with entirely paved over lots and crammed with laneway houses.

I'd take streets of low-rise apartments (viz. ~3 floors) any day, like in Montréal's Plateau neighbourhood.

[apl68]

What got me curious about ADUs is the fact that a couple of generations ago there was evidently a real boom in building them in the small town where I live.  Ever since I moved here some years back, I've noticed dozens of (mostly) derelict backyard apartments all over the older part of town.  Most of them are little one- or two-room wooden structures.  You can tell from the way they're configured, and the remnants of utility connections on many of them, that they were meant as living space.  They tend to have a home-made look about them.  However, many share enough of a family resemblance that I wonder whether perhaps some enterprising local contractor used to specialize in them.

This past Saturday afternoon I finally did an informal survey by riding my bike up and down the alleys and trying to get a count of them.  I counted eighty-two of them, plus another eighteen backyard structures that I'm not sure about  (I think the latter are probably mostly backyard workshops).  This is in an area of about sixty blocks or so.  I probably missed at least a couple, and there were likely some that have vanished without a trace.  It seems extraordinary to have so many in such a limited area.  Most have obviously long been derelict.  A few are still inhabited.  Several more look like they're still potentially usable.  I've seen two extensively remodeled quite recently.

I really don't know anything about their history.  They seem to have been mainly rental units, and not "mother-in-law flats" for family members.  Most look to have been built during the postwar era.  That would put them being constructed within a few years after the company that founded the town sold their company houses to private owners.  It's hard to see the company permitting construction of them during the company ownership era.  Unless perhaps they had some built during World War II to deal with a wartime housing crunch?  I really need to try picking the brains of some of our remaining local amateur historians.

[apl68]

No direct experience, but I can tell you that they're super common here, as "laneway houses" (often just an apartment above the two-car garage). I've certainly looked at my fair share while apartment hunting. They tend to be more expensive to rent than an apartment, and here, that's saying a lot. They're also usually tucked in behind an absolute monstrosity of a house (i.e. newly built, costing millions, and looking like it was designed by ArchitectureGPT, with the crappiest-looking finish money could buy). I gather the primary reason for having one is that renting out is pretty much the only way to get approved for a mortgage, and everybody quite reasonably prefers to have the renters be somewhere where you can't hear them/they can't hear you. But, frankly, it doesn't look very nice when your single-family home neighbourhood is filled with entirely paved over lots and crammed with laneway houses.

I'd take streets of low-rise apartments (viz. ~3 floors) any day, like in Montréal's Plateau neighbourhood.

Sounds like you're talking about what I've seen called "McMansion" neighborhoods--big houses that are supposed to be impressive, but were obviously built in tracts and on the cheap.  Historic low-rise apartments do indeed look much nicer.  Unfortunately most of the apartments now being built are as architecturally lamentable as the McMansions are.

[Parasaurolophus]

Yeah, they're McMansions. It seems to be more or less the only thing going for new houses here.

Now that you mention it, I recall that the snazzier neighbourhoods in Memphis are full of laneway houses from the postwar decades. It looks okay there, though I still prefer low-rise apartment buildings!

[financeguy]

In my state which is the bluest of the blue, they are a response to the insane level of regulation of every possible aspect of real estate ownership. Want to do an addition to your property? Good luck. Even the most minor change of any kind will have you filling out permit forms for at least months. Putting an ADU on your land, however, is relatively painless. (Although putting it on land you own that doesn't ALREADY have a single family residence is nearly as impossible as building something from the beginning.)

[ciao_yall]

We have finally raised the height limits on major transit corridors to allow for 4 story buildings. Ground floor retail, with residences above.

The neighbors in the single-family homes were all upset about "preserving the character" of their neighborhood - really? Because the shabby, long-empty strip mall on the corner was so special to you?

[Anselm]

How is an ADU different than a tiny house like the ones they make TV shows about?

[Parasaurolophus]

How is an ADU different than a tiny house like the ones they make TV shows about?

Tiny houses aren't typically moored to a foundation, although they can be (although maybe the ones on TV are?). They're also tiny in terms of square footage (<400sf). Some ADUs are small, but they're all permanently fixed, and they can be fairly large.

You could, of course, install a tiny home as an ADU.

[Puget]

How is an ADU different than a tiny house like the ones they make TV shows about?

Tiny houses aren't typically moored to a foundation, although they can be (although maybe the ones on TV are?). They're also tiny in terms of square footage (<400sf). Some ADUs are small, but they're all permanently fixed, and they can be fairly large.

You could, of course, install a tiny home as an ADU.

One of my parents' friends has a friend living a tiny house ADU in his yard which is just the most beautifully crafted, cozy looking, thing, like a house boat on land-- it even has portholes for windows. I think he uses the shower in the main house, and they share an art/meditation studio on the property. It seems like a good arrangement for the right people.

[larryc]

My city recently legalized ADUs everywhere in response to our housing shortage. I hope it does some good. If our yard was just a little bit larger, I would be building one myself for the rental income.

[apl68]

I've learned a bit more about the alley houses in the older part of our town.  They're older than I had thought.  They date from the company town era.  Before World War II, the company apparently added these little houses in back yards of company houses as a standard feature.  That would explain why most of them have such a standardized look.

They were popularly called "servant houses."  Presumably this was meant in jest--since this was a blue-collar company town, surely nobody actually had servants to house.  They must have been used as additional living space for the household, or as mother-in-law apartments.  And in later years, after the company stopped managing the whole town and sold the houses to the residents, some were used as rental units.

It's an interesting and unusual part of local history.  Some 1940s/1950s sociologist missed out on a chance to do a sociological study of the phenomenon.

[Caracal]

My city recently legalized ADUs everywhere in response to our housing shortage. I hope it does some good. If our yard was just a little bit larger, I would be building one myself for the rental income.

The idea of being a landlord does not appeal to me. Over the years we lived in a number of rentals owned by individuals rather than large companies. They all seemed harassed and grumpy when we had to contact them, which makes sense because we were mostly calling them at what was probably an inconvenient time to tell them about some problem that was probably going to cost them money. What I'm sure you want when you are a landlord is to just have the checks come in every month and you barely see the tenants or think about them, but invariably that probably doesn't work and you're sitting there on the couch at 830 and someone calls to tell you water is pouring down the walls of their closet or something.

I suppose some of the maintenance stuff would be easier to manage if you lived on site, but it would make it worse if you had a  nightmare tenant who caused problems of some kind. 

[SLAC_Prof]

All the ADUs in my area of which I'm aware were built for extended family, most often a single surviving parent. In fact I know two families that are building them currently for that purpose. Considered doing so myself, but my 80-year-old mother does not want to live with us; instead she sold her rural property and moved into town. Fair enough.

My county got into a big policy debate on ADUs during COVID and is still not finished with new regulations. Under existing regs all ADUs require a conditional use permit, which takes months if you're lucky; the only real exception is for temporary use when caring for someone who is ill or otherwise cannot care for themselves and those ADUs must be inside the existing structure (i.e. a basement apartment or an attached mother-in-law suite). Everyone I know who has successfully built an ADU has had to go through the conditional use permitting process and did not enjoy that much.

My plan is to incorporate an ADU for family/guests/possible rental when we build our retirement home. That will be in another state, so different regs, and since we'll be doing it from step one I'm hoping to integrate it into the landscape plan in a way that seems more organic.  I have friends that manage a rental ADU on their property elsewhere and it's a real mixed bag-- with good tenants it's a nice income stream. When the tenents are problematic it's a nightmare since they are living essentially in their backyard. So I doubt I'd rent for more than very short terms if/when we have an ADU at hand.