Our zoning happens to allow a legal second unit, something rather valuable in Santa Barbara.  The legal term for this, as we recently discovered is accessory dwelling unit, or ADU.

Santa Barbara is a pretty expensive place to live, and has been for a long time.  To make ends meet, many people convert part of their house or their garage into a rental unit.  Many, if not most of these separate unit rentals that are carved out of existing houses are illegal, as it is very hard to get permission for a legal rental here, and the zoning rules are very strict around things like sinks, that might be used as part of a separate unit rental.   It isn’t uncommon at open houses to see a self-contained kitchen unit sitting alone in a garage, removed so that a house will pass the zoning inspection, but likely to be put right back in once the sale completes and the new owners want to resume the rental.

In our house, once the basement was finished, we decided that it would be a good idea to take advantage of the ability to have a legal second unit, which our zoning allows.  Having a legal rental as part of a house can increase the property value, as you might imagine, and we thought that perhaps at some point the rules might change and no longer allow us to add a second unit; better act while we can.

The ordinance around second units allowed for a minimum of 400 square feet and a maximum of 600.  To make it so that a tenant would not have to go through the rest of the house to get to their rental, we decide it was best to add a separate entrance off the side yard, which meant excavating one of the light wells all the way down to the basement floor, cutting a full height doorway in the basement wall, and cutting another doorway into the side of the light well wall, and adding descending stairs.  This is not a small undertaking but we figured that in the long run, it would be worth it and better to do it now than later.

As it turns out, in January of this year, a new California state law took effect that drastically changed the rules around accessory dwelling units.  The new state law immediately abolished any local ordinances that did not comply.  The result was that many communities, including ours, were at once left without any ordinance governing ADUs except the new state law.

Most importantly, the new law relaxes rules around

• off street parking
• structure lot coverage (which would allow for the building of a separate structure)
• setbacks, and
• permitting.

It also increases the maximum size of an ADU to 12oo square feet.

We are going to jump on this and get all of our ducks in a row to cement our larger ADU status.