Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)

Homeowners should be free to add a small home on land they already own. For decades, local rules made that nearly impossible: cities demanded extra parking, forced owners to live on site, or made people sit through slow, costly hearings. One free-market analysis argues that legalizing ADUs simply "increases their property rights." State ADU laws swept those barriers away, and the results were dramatic -- the number of ADUs permitted each year rose by more than 15,000% between 2016 and 2022, making them one of the fastest-growing pieces of the state's new housing supply. Backers call the reform a big success and a model for fixing the housing shortage. This is gentle density: no high-rise towers, just cottages and converted garages tucked into existing blocks, built at a fraction of the cost of a normal house. That gives homeowners extra income, or a place for aging parents or grown kids. Supporters argue that "local control" really meant the power to say no. When cities held that power, almost nothing got built. Clear statewide rules finally let the homes go up.

Communities, not the state in Sacramento, should decide how their own neighborhoods grow. State ADU mandates take that choice away. As one local official put it, the rules are "a perfect example of how local control is taken away by the state." Because approval is now fast and hard to refuse, cities have little room to hold a hearing or ask for changes, even when they see a real problem. Neighbors raise practical worries too: more units mean more cars, so streets fill up with parked vehicles and roads built for fewer people get crowded, while water, sewer, and power systems must handle more demand than they were built for. Safety is a bigger fear in some places. Critics worry the rules limit local safety checks -- in canyon and wildfire areas, they warn that adding more people and cars to narrow roads could make it harder to escape a fire. They also say cities now have less power to require fire or environmental review, even in high fire-risk areas. Then there is neighborhood character. Many families chose quiet, single-family areas on purpose, and critics warn the new rules bring "a substantial increase in population density in areas originally designed for single-family living." To these residents, that feels like change forced on them from the top down.