Affordable Housing Institute : US

 

“When in-law apartments are outlawed, only outlaw in-laws will have apartments.”

– Bumper sticker from the National Relatives Accommodation Association (NRAA)

 

Despite all the emphasis we bestow on the visible and regulated forms of affordable housing – LIHTC, HUD Section 8, even inclusionary zoning – there are more forms of invisible affordable housing than are dreamt of in the typical policy maker’s philosophy. 

 

Spot the affordable housing?

 

To mobile homes and triple-deckers we must add the modest creature with the unlovely name of accessory dwelling unit (ADU), more commonly known as the ‘in-law apartment,’ and featured in a bland but nevertheless thought-provoking little briefing primer, Accessory Dwelling Units: Case Study, prepared for HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research by Sage Computing [Why them? No particular expertise in housing. – Ed.].

 

Let’s introduce our protagonist, the ADU:

 

Here’s what you get when you Google Adu

 

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — also referred to as accessory apartments, second units, or granny flats — are additional living quarters on single-family lots that are independent of the primary dwelling unit.

 

I always heard them referred to as ‘in-law’ apartments.

 

“Shouldn’t you call them ‘parental’ apartments?”

 

The sepa­rate living spaces are equipped with kitchen and bath­room facilities, and can be either attached or detached from the main residence.

 

Like mushrooms on trees, in-law apartments sprout in the best and most well-spaced, orthogonally planned neighborhoods, and for many of the reasons that mushrooms find trees such compatible hosts.

 

Just consider me an arboreal accessory?

 

Being a responsible landlord is work (being a slumlord is a different and dishonorable work).  You have to rent the apartment, and collect the rent.  You are on-call to your residents all the time (broken pipes, no heat).  You have to maintain the apartment, and renovate it.  Meanwhile, you must monitor your residents, who may be up to no good, damaging the apartment, or skipping without paying. 

 

It’s no business for amateurs, yet amateurs are often the earliest small-scale landlords, and without small-scale landlords we would have little if any successful scattered-site housing.  For the smaller landlord, proximity is thus a management asset even as it’s a personal-life headache.

 

The in-law apartment solves these problems by adding the common wrinkle that the tenant is a member of the extended family; someone we want close but not too close.  It could be aging parent(s), or indigent wastrel offspring, or even a close friend or someone whom we want under our financial care.

 

This case study explores how the adoption of ordinances, with reduced regulatory restrictions to encourage ADUs, can be advantageous for communities.

 

When the additional tenant is part of the extended family, the in-law apartment serves simply as a suite of rooms on a smaller scale than those kings used to stash their mistresses out of sight of their wives. 

 

Yes, dear, you can have this whole wing

 

When the tenant is a stranger, or at any rate not legally part of our family, then the evolving modern house has divided, via construction mitosis, into two homes, subverting the snob zoning that our carefully pristine community sought to impose to keep ‘those people’ out. 

 

Like mushrooms, then, in-law apartments pop up unnoticed, cluttering the nurtured uniformity of our subdivision.  They are frequently illegal, and being illegal, they pose an administrative and enforcement challenge – which makes them very interesting from a policy and real-estate development standpoint.

 

Following an explanation of the various types of ADUs and their benefits, this case study provides examples of municipalities with successful ADU legislation and programs.

 

Let us begin at the beginning:

 

History of ADUs

 

Development of accessory dwelling units can be traced back to the early twentieth century, when they were a common feature in single-family housing.

 

The Postwar dream: one family, one house, one car, one garage

 

So used have we as Americans become to the conceptual of the canonical single-family home that we’ve forgotten that multi-family housing – many families sharing one kitchen and one bathroom – used to be the norm, and that as recently as sixty years ago, rooming houses were a common and accepted form of long-term lodging for single individuals.

 

Man’s bedroom, Wichita Kansas rooming house, circa 1940

 

As we moved to the suburbs, our need for single-room occupancy or smaller proximate apartments moved with us:

 

After World War II, an increased demand for housing led to a boom­ing suburban population.

 

Immediately a tension arose between the abstract notions of bedroom communities and the messy reality of people and families:

 

Characterized by large lots and an emphasis on the nuclear family, suburban devel­opment conformed to Euclidean-type zoning codes, a system of land-use regulations that segregate districts according to use.

 

No room for variation … yet

 

Newly constructed suburbs, being designed for that mythical ‘typical American family’ with 2.4 children, made no provision for ADUs, so people installed them anyway, legally or surreptitiously.  Today they come in three main physical types:

 

Depending on their location relative to the primary dwell­ing unit, ADUs can be classified into three categories: in­terior, attached, and detached.

 

It began as an attic, now it’s an apartment

 

Interior ADUs are located within the primary dwelling, and are typically built through conversion of existing space, such as an attic or basement.

 

Might look like a garage, but it’s really an ADU

 

As the picture makes clear, interior ADUs blend in, becoming practically invisible unless they announce their presence. 

 

What moth?  What in-law apartment?

 

[Clandestine rooms are another staple of housing, from Jacobean priest holes to Underground Railroad cellars.  They're a worthy subject for another post. – Ed.]

 

Attached ADUs are living spaces that are added on to the primary dwelling. The additional unit can be located to the side or rear of the primary structure, but can also be con­structed on top of an attached garage.

 

Attached ADU

 

Detached ADUs are structurally separate from the primary dwelling. They can be constructed over existing accessory structures, such as a detached garage, or they can be built as units that are separate from accessory and residential structures.

 

ADU over detached garage

 

The only affordable housing with a Mercedes out front?  ADU over detached garage

 

The law of economic pressure means that ADUs pop up primarily in highly affluent communities, the very ones most righteous about preserving their pristine low density.  This happens because they fill an important housing need:

 

Accessory dwelling units offer a variety of benefits to com­munities.

 

[1] They help increase a community’s housing supply, and since they cost less than a new single-family home on a separate lot, they are an affordable housing option for many low- and moderate-income residents.

 

Many South Africans I know employ a domestic worker to whom they become quite attached.  (So, I understand, do many affluent southern Californians, but I see that only second-hand.)  Offering a few rooms in one’s house to one’s domestic mixes charity with economy.

 

A television show about a lovable live-in maid

 

[2] Elderly and/or disabled persons who may want to live close to family embers or caregivers, empty nesters, and young adults just entering the workforce find ADUs convenient and affordable.  

 

Family polyps – people leaving the nest or people returning to the nest – often find ADUs a convenient halfway house.  Whether we’re trying to give Junior a rent break even while we’d just as soon Junior not flop all over the living room couch, or helping Grandma live comfortably and contentedly even while we have a bit of respite from Grandma, the value of propinquity without omnipresence makes an ADU an inexpensive compromise.

 

[3] In addition to increasing the supply of afford­able housing, ADUs benefit homeowners by providing extra income that can assist in mitigating increases in the cost of living.

 

When Junior moves back home, Junior can be charged rent – or a family that’s fallen on slightly harder times can convert the extra rooms by taking in a lodger. 

 

In prior times, it got a bad name …

 

There’s also the barter-for-benefit symbiosis.  Up and down my street in Cambridge are several really large houses whose owner of record is quite elderly and whose occupants include an extended brood of much younger people, students or friends or a combination of both, who happily live in the big house, providing services to the owner and in turn receiving an unmatchable location.  Driving slowly through the neighborhood, you’d never dream at how many young people in fact dwell within these larger houses.

 

[4] There is no need to develop new infrastruc­ture, since ADUs can be connected to the existing utilities of a primary dwelling.

 

So the same municipal investment yields more people, and potentially more jobs.

 

 [5] They can be designed to blend in with the surrounding architecture, maintaining compatibility with established neighborhoods and preserving community character.

 

What in-law apartment?

 

As we’ll see, that camouflage is a deliberate adaptation which diminishes both the psychology intrusiveness of adding density in the form of ADU, and the risk of being found out.

 

My secret lodging revealed!

 

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

 

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