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Comment by mikeryan | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to note that California has some incentives in place to help increase housing and Accessory Dwellings are one that frequently are easy to get permission to build. I know here in Berkeley we have new laws in place making this process way easier.

https://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/03/20/new-laws-make-even-e...

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While the state of California and some cities have been making it legal to construct accessory dwelling units, cities commonly prohibit short-term rentals in these accessory dwelling units. (Reference: Berkeley’s BMC 23C.22.020.D [1], and San Francisco’s Planning Code 207(c)(4)(D) [2]). In such cities, it seems that the law discourages you from adding an ADU with kitchen if you want to rent it out on Airbnb (or if you want to rent it out long-term, for that matter, if rent control would apply). It’s less restrictive to add bedrooms without the kitchen. I don’t think Airbnb will be able to build test homes in these restrictive cities either.

[1]: https://www.codepublishing.com/CA/Berkeley/html/Berkeley23C/...

[2]: http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/planni...

That's good to hear. In my town (Grand Rapids, MI) they've been on the radar for a few years, but some NIMBY neighborhood organizations keep killing reform. While the Grand Rapids housing market is far from the craziness of much of California, we are experiencing a significant housing crunch, and costs are rising rapidly—especially relative to wages.

We're actually in the process of building one right now (detached garage with ADU above), and we had to go through the Special Land Use process, which entailed paying a $2000 fee and presenting at a Planning Commission meeting. Most of the other items on the agenda were for things like a nonprofit building office space in a residential neighborhood, a large proposed housing development, and the like. Our little $185k project required the same paperwork and fee as those multi-million dollar endeavors.

IMHO, ADUs have a ton of upsides for communities with few downsides: they increase density with minimal impact to the character of the neighborhood (while we demolished a 80-year-old garage, our 102-year-old house is being left alone), enable small-scale upper-middle-class landlords, and activate underutilized space (such as replacing old functionally obsolete detached garages).

I wonder if there's a market for investors to fund ADU projects, similar to how Solar City and the like sell PV installations: the investor pays for the construction of an ADU, under the condition that they are entitled (via a deed rider) to the majority of rental earnings until the loan is paid off. This would be more complicated (and probably more risky) than the PV business—with PV you don't have to worry about vacancies, managing tenants, and the like—but I think it could work in certain markets, as long as enlightened municipalities remove unnecessary roadblocks.

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