What Would Granny Say?
First, she’d say, “Stop calling them granny flats! They’re ADUs!”
Accessory Dwelling Units are those spaces created inside our houses, converted garages, bump-out additions, or pint-sized backyards. And they aren’t just for Granny. They’re for young homeowners raising families and pinching pennies, empty-nesters with homes bigger than they need, and seniors who are “house rich/cash poor” or want to put in a caretaker unit to help them “age in place.” On the rental side, ADUs are for seniors, LCAD students, artists, city staffers, and others who are happy to “live small” so they can afford to stay in the town they love too.
One of the attractions of ADUs is that they require no public funding and will even result in a small bump in property tax revenues. And because ADUs are barely noticeable and primarily intended for one person, they create what housing wonks call “gentle density.” In development-averse towns like ours, that makes ADUs an ideal way to do our bit to address California’s staggering housing crisis. No wonder the state has passed new laws designed to jump-start the creation of ADUs.
The City Council’s reaction, however, boils down to: “How dare the state require us to do something we wouldn’t do unless the state required us to do it!” At its direction, the city recently sent notices to owners of 1,263 single-family homes to tell them it may forbid them from building an ADU. The reason: they live in “impaired access neighborhoods.” Since many of the remaining 1,330 single-family homes in these neighborhoods could develop ADUs under new state guidelines, we could be talking about 47 percent of the single-family homes in Laguna.
Let’s think about what this means.
Public safety is any city’s top priority, and Laguna’s topography, many narrow streets, and neighborhoods with single points of entry like Bluebird Canyon and Canyon Acres, are all causes for concern. That’s a compelling reason to restrict parking on narrow streets, which we already do, and make neighborhood access points less vulnerable, which we hope to do with undergrounding. It’s also a valid argument for requiring onsite parking when property owners on narrow streets want to develop an ADU.
Although our best public safety efforts will never make Laguna as safe as, say, Irvine—a perfectly nice city where we don’t want to live— we can be proud of everything that’s been done since the Great Fire to make our town safer. And the city does not want us to think that “impaired access” is a code word for “unsafe.” (Imagine the liability!) Nor does the city want to ban all development in impaired access neighborhoods. (Imagine the lawsuits!) Just ADUs.
So here’s my question: What data do we have that ADUs pose a unique threat to the safety of people in impaired access neighborhoods? Can we even assume that more ADUs will increase neighborhood density? Imagine an LCAD student renting an ADU from a senior living on the worst street in town. Is that any riskier than the family of five who buys that home because the city wouldn’t let our senior put in an ADU?
Unless the Council plans to cap the number of people who can live in impaired access neighborhoods, outlawing one form of development sounds like an arbitrary “taking” of property rights and a lawsuit waiting to happen. The city has a long track record of losing these kinds of cases, and at great expense. Imagine where we’d be today if we’d spent all that money on sidewalks, bike lanes, street improvements, and an amnesty program for unpermitted ADUs, and not on lawyers.
As a newly-minted member of the city’s Affordable Housing Task Force, I find it downright demoralizing that the Council is trying to restrict ADUs rather than embrace them. ADUs are one of the few ways, and certainly the simplest way, we can hang onto more of those longtime locals who have blessed us with their diversity—and kept us from turning into South Newport Beach.
Just ask Granny.
Chris Quilter is past-president of Laguna Beach Seniors and a writer for No Square Theatre’s “Lagunatics.” The Council is scheduled to discuss the ADU ordinance Tuesday, May 8.
