In the minds of most Californians, accessory dwelling units — ADUs, short — bring to mind words like “small,” “subtle” and “cute.”
None of which describe the side-by-side ADU duplexes on E Street.
Perched at the edge of San Diego’s desirable Golden Hill neighborhood, there’s nothing dainty or diminutive about these three-story structures. “Backyard cottage” is another term used to describe accessory dwelling units, but these are out front, practically hiding the five-unit multiplex to which they are technically “accessory.”
Like dozens of small and not-so-small apartment buildings across San Diego, the structures on E Street are ADUs in only one way: They were permitted under the city’s ADU Bonus Program.
The city’s one-of-a-kind ordinance offers landlords a one-for-one deal. If they agree to construct an ADU and keep the rent low enough for San Diegans making under a certain income, they’re automatically permitted to build a second “bonus” unit, which they can rent at whatever price they like.
In parts of the city far from public transit, the 2021 city program offers a one-off: Alongside the main house and the two ADUs already permitted under state law, the city allows for a maximum of five units on one property.
But in bus-and train-adjacent “transit priority” areas — a designation that covers much of San Diego’s urban core — a landlord can alternate affordable and bonus units again and again and again. Technically, there are limits. City zoning set a maximum height on buildings, and a more complicated regulatory formula caps how much built floorspace can dominate a parcel.
But you can squeeze in an awful lot of ADUs within those parameters. Hence, the project on E Street: A single family lot with nine apartment units on it, four of them ADUs, two of them affordable. And that’s not an especially extravagant use of the program.
A typical ADU bonus project application includes between 4 and 7 additional units, according to data provided by San Diego’s Development Services Department. Projects with a dozen or more units are not unheard of. The largest proposed project to date, planned for the city’s gentrifying majority Black and Latino Encanto neighborhood, is 148 units.
David Pearson, whose design shop, PALO, designed the E Street duplexes, said his largest permitted project, located behind an existing 76-unit apartment building, comes with 36 “ADUs.”
There’s a word for 36 units stacked in row on top of one another. Even Pearson can’t help but grin and use scare quotes when he uses the term “ADU.” The city’s “crafty little maneuver” allows developers to “effectively build an apartment building out of ADUs.”
“It’s really ADUs only in name,” he said.
Depending on your perspective, San Diego’s “crafty little maneuver” is either an ingeniously clever use of state law to provide a much needed boost to the local housing supply or a sneak effort to foist an intolerable degree of construction and density upon unsuspecting residents while only providing a token degree of affordability.
The program is just beginning to take off. A total of 159 projects with 1,200 units have been submitted to the city, as of October. Less than half of the projects have actually been permitted. Far fewer have broken ground. Even so, supporters, detractors, researchers and policymakers are sitting up and taking note.
“San Diego may have stumbled on to the quickest solution to producing a lot of ‘missing middle’ housing,” said Andrew Wofford, a graduate student researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Community Innovation who has been evaluating the program for the state’s housing department.
“Missing middle” describes an approachable (and, one hopes, more affordable) scale of development that occupies a middle ground between uber-dense highrises and sprawling single-family homes. Adding an ADU behind an existing home represents the mildest housing of this type. The novelty of San Diego’s program is in redefining “ADU” from a specific building type to a broad privileged regulatory chute into which developers are now encouraged to throw small apartment buildings.
Meanwhile, local critics of the program have already begun to mobilize. Signs inveighing against “granny towers” and “backyard apartments” are common lawn ornaments in many of the city’s residential neighborhoods. The local backlash has already spilled over to other areas of local housing policy and now threatens Mayor Todd Gloria’s broader “Yes In My Backyard” vision.
Even some supporters are surprised by the program’s ambition. Denise Pinkston said her experience with local housing politics would have led her to rule out anything quite so far-reaching. A San Francisco real estate developer and the go-to ADU whisperer for state lawmakers hoping to hop aboard the “backyard revolution,” Pinkston is also founder and board president of the Casita Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for ADU-friendly policy.
But looking at the results so far in San Diego, she paraphrases Shakespeare: “What’s in a name?”
“Actually, it doesn’t really matter what you call it,” said Pinkston. “What you get is more housing.”
San Diego: ‘Above and beyond’
California legislators have spent the last half-decade passing bill after bill to encourage homeowners to build backyard cottages.
Now, anywhere in California, city permit review is limited to 60 days. Development fees and construction-cramping setback requirements are capped. Public hearings and design reviews are banned. In many cases, so are the impositions of costly parking, landscaping and storage requirements.
As a result, California has experienced an ADU boom. While other, more ambitious and controversial pro-housing policies have flamed out in the state Capitol or made it through the legislative gauntlet only to produce less impressive results in the real world, ADUs now make roughly one-in-six of all new units permitted.
Some cities have found ways to quietly obstruct those efforts. Others have rolled along with them. None have gone quite so far as San Diego with its bonus program.
Leaning in on development-friendly housing policy is on brand for San Diego. The city has a history of serving as a laboratory of YIMBYism for California.
Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill ramping up the added density afforded to apartment projects in exchange for additional affordable units. It was modeled on a San Diego ordinance. When state lawmakers passed a law banning local parking requirements for many new housing projects, they were following San Diego’s lead. And as California rolled out its various laws greasing the skids for ADUs, San Diego passed its own rules that greased them further.
“In a lot of cities, the only reforms they’re doing on housing are those that are triggered by the state,” said Colin Parent, a state Assembly candidate and CEO of Circulate San Diego, a nonprofit that advocates for public transit and dense housing. “San Diego has done a bunch of things that go above and beyond what the state reforms require.”
The ADU bonus program is the latest example.
In 2019, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring local governments to “incentivize and promote” the building of more affordable ADUs. City planners in San Diego took this directive to heart in a way that no other city did.
To fans of the program, San Diego offers a policy lesson that goes far beyond backyard cottages. Cities don’t “have to reinvent the wheel to build more housing,” said Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, who wrote an overview on San Diego’s ADU program earlier this year. The promise of nearly unlimited density is an irresistible perk for many developers. Cities that want more of a particular type of housing — or more housing in general — can tack on an uncapped density bonus and watch the permit applications flood in, he said.
“They found the formula.”
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.
