How California Set Off a Backyard Apartment Boom

[M II A II R II K]

How California Set Off a Backyard Apartment Boom


March 25, 2021

By Kriston Capps

Read More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-s-housing-gap

With a state law easing restrictions on accessory dwelling units, granny flats are proliferating in L.A. and other cities and pre-fab options may make these tiny houses even more common.

- ADUs account for a growing share of homes built across the state. California homeowners built some 12,000 backyard flats in 2019 more than double the number permitted just two years earlier and a ten-fold increase since the state passed its preemption laws. Unlike other categories of housing in California, the numbers for new permits for ADUs are rising with growth likely to continue thanks in part to efforts by local governments to help them go up quickly. In some cases, very quickly. — One Bay Area company, Abodu, boasts that it can deliver a backyard flat in a month’s time. Abodu builds pre-fabricated ADUs that are assembled on site, an approach that the company says brings down both the cost and time for construction. Its smallest offering, a 340-square-foot studio, starts at $189,000 significantly cheaper than a similar stick-built house.

- The streamlined process stands in stark relief with building full-sized housing in the Bay Area. While Northern California remains the most expensive and unpredictable place to build new housing in the world, California homeowners are themselves erecting backyard homes by the thousands, and at a brisk clip. Californians are really comfortable with incremental change to the West Coast suburban form. — A forthcoming report by Chapple based on a survey of 800 California homeowners who built ADUs finds that about half (51%) serve as income-generating rental units. Just a fraction (16%) went to a relative of the homeowner. Only a few backyard apartments (8%) wind up being used for short-term rentals such as Airbnb. Singles and couples account for most ADU occupants in California (86% in the survey); school-aged children (11%) and senior citizens (15%) represent fairly small slices of this population.

- Beyond backyard construction, California earns few accolades for its new housing numbers. Just more than 110,000 housing units were permitted across the state in 2019, a 7% decrease from the prior year. — Can a backyard revolution serve as a backdoor solution to California’s housing shortage? Not exactly. The McKinsey Global Institute estimated in 2016 that California could add up to 790,000 housing units through ADUs. That would make up a decent chunk of the 3.5 million housing units that McKinsey says California needs to build by 2025. But a statewide survey conducted in October by the Center for Community Innovation couldn’t find evidence that this many homeowners actually want to build ADUs. Barriers to ADUs include financial concerns (reported by 27% of respondents), lack of interest (16%), lack of awareness (16%), physical site limitations (14%) and disinterest in being a landlord (12%).

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Abodu’s one-bedroom option features Scandinavian-inspired design by the U.K.–based studio Koto.
Photographer: Adam Rouse/courtesy of Abodu






Backyard apartments by Abodu arrive by delivery to be assembled on site in San Jose. Photographer: Adam Rouse/courtesy of Abodu

[sopas ej]

I posted this in another thread some time ago but I really like this ADU in Los Angeles' Echo Park neighborhood:

• Video Link

[kingkirbythe....]

[/QUOTE]

This is amazing.

[jd3189]

Stack them up and we might end up with a better, cleaner version of this:

Favela de Rocinha by Valdimiro Ragazzini (Valdy), on Flickr