The ADU Hour

Accessory Dwelling Strategies LLC
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  • HOME & GARDEN
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The ADU Hour is a podcast that probes deep into ADUs and other small alternative infill housing. Kol Peterson, a nationally known ADU subject matter expert, interviews experts in the ADU space and then we have the guest take some questions from our live audience.

  1. The ADU Hour w/guest Ethan Stuckmayer

    08/25/2021

    The ADU Hour w/guest Ethan Stuckmayer

    [00:02:18] Kol Peterson: Welcome, Ethan, good morning. [00:02:22] Ethan Stuckmayer: Thanks for having me. [00:02:23] Kol Peterson: Yeah. I'm excited for this, I was bantering with Ethan before this and I was kinda thinking what is exactly is the professional experience that you need to have to do this job that nobody else in the country has ever done before? What an interesting position you've been put in. For people's benefit, could you describe kind of your particular role within DLCD as far as your relationship to House Bill 2001, which we will describe in a minute? [00:02:47] Ethan Stuckmayer: Yeah. So I'm the Senior Housing Planner at the Department of Land Conservation and evelopment, which is really state of Oregon's land use department. We regulate what are called the Statewide [00:03:00] Planning Goals, and there's 19 of them, one of those is Goal 10. Goal 10: Housing, which is my domain, I guess, and this is the area which we implement the intent and the purpose of Goal 10. House Bill 2001 in 2003 are two pieces of legislation that advance DLCD's work in housing. And prior to House Bill 2001 and 2003, really, the 2019 session DLCD did not have a housing team, which we do have now, which is really exciting. [00:03:30] Kol Peterson: Do other states have a Goal 10 equivalent that is like a statewide housing goal mandate or is that unique to the state of Oregon? [00:03:39] Ethan Stuckmayer: I don't think it's unique to the state of Oregon. What is unique about the state of Oregon is just the context within which that sits. The state of Oregon is one of the few growth management states, Washington, there's others, that have high preference on preserving forest and farm lands and regulating the development [00:04:00] within a certain geographic boundary, urban growth boundary or, or similar. So I know that the state of California has things like The Housing Element that their Housing Community Services Division at the state level manages. But from my understanding, the state of Oregon is, is really quite unique in that. [00:04:17] Kol Peterson: All right. So let's describe House Bill 2001 in two minutes for a random Planner in N ew Hampshire, who's never heard of it. What is House Bill 2001? [00:04:26] Ethan Stuckmayer: Sure, so House Bill 2001, really pretty simply end s exclusive single family zoning in big and medium sized cities and the state of Oregon. So as a requirement to House Bill 2001, cities must basically update their development codes to allow certain middle housing types, which I'll define in just a bit, but those need to be allowed in every residential zone that also allows for the development of a single family detached home. So, converting those lower densities zones into a little bit higher density zones. Cities are still [00:05:00] allowed to regulate the citing and design and the look and the feel of middle housing, as long as those standards don't cause what's called unreasonable cost and delay. So basically those cities can apply only standards that they might only apply to single family detached homes, previously, things like building height, setbacks, lot coverage, all of those standards can't place an undue burden on the development of middle housing.  That's pretty short version of House Bill 2001. [00:05:25] Kol Peterson: And describe for us this term, middle housing you're using that term that most people have been familiar with was coined by Daniel Parolek, "Missing Middle"housing. What is it? Are those the same thing? Why, why are we using the term "middle housing"? [00:05:38] Ethan Stuckmayer: Yeah. So middle housing, for the state of Oregon is a well-defined term.  It's a collection of missing middle housing types that Perolek talks about. For the Oregon context, there is five: duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhomes, and cottage clusters. And the reason why Oregon's not using "missing middle" housing is because it's [00:06:00] a long-term policy. We're hoping that in 20, 50 years, we're not missing those middle housing types anymore. It's just called middle housing. It's just part of our housing continuum. [00:06:10] Kol Peterson: Now House Bill 2001, unfortunately did not capture ADUs within this middle housing definition, which has some weird administrative history that we don't need to go into, but can you describe what House Bill 2001 did for ADUs, explicitly? [00:06:26] Ethan Stuckmayer: Yeah, I think the beauty of House Bill 2001 is that it's got so many different layers. For ADUs House Bill 2001 followed up the previous bill that you were just talking about, Senate Bill 1051, that required cities to allow ADUS in conjunction with a single family detached home. And city could only subject those ADUs to what are called reasonable standards. So basically House Bill 2001, with some years of experience of implementing Senate Bill 1051, the legislature identified a couple standards that cities were using that were maybe more unreasonable than reasonable. So [00:07:00] basically House Bill 2001 clarified that off-street parking requirements and owner occupancy of either the primary or accessory dwelling were quote unquote unreasonable for ADUs specifically. Yeah. [00:07:11] Kol Peterson: Right. For those who are on the call, it's the opinion of many people, including myself, that owner occupancy and off-street parking requirements are the two most common largest poison pills for ADUs that you will see prominently throughout regulations across most of the country. If you look at cities that actually do allow ADUs, they are oftentimes have those provisions in effect, so this is a really good example of a very simple one line legislative effort that effectively changes the course of the potential for ADUs to happen. Not that not to say that they will happen in great numbers, but that they can now potentially happen in Oregon cities. So how many cities does House Bill 2001 impact in the state of Oregon? And what does the total population that House Bill 2001 effects compared to the [00:08:00] overall state policy? [00:08:02] Ethan Stuckmayer: Yeah. So House Bill 2001, applies to cities and counties, but cities outside of the Portland Metro with a population of 10,000 or greater, and then cities within the Portland Metro of 1000 or greater. And there's different thresholds within those broad categories, but in total that's 56 cities across the state and three metropolitan counties. And then there's quite a few cities who are just under those thresholds. There's maybe about five or six cities that are definitely coming online in the next couple of years, but that's pretty close to two and a half million people in the state of Oregon.  In the whole state, that's about 60% of the population. [00:08:43] Kol Peterson: Yeah. So 60% of the population is captured by hospital 2001. Okay. You know, and, and that's we have, I guess it's a fairly small population relative to a lot of us states. But th but the majority of the population is covered by this.[00:09:00] All right. So tell us about the history of house bill 2001 came into being. [00:09:03] Ethan Stuckmayer: Yeah, well that's tough, because there's a lot of history, there's kind of like two major history threads here. The first is the long-term history of race and income segregation in America. And then that plays into the short-term history of just rising home prices brought on by housing market that's really failed to keep up with the number and the capacity of the units that we've really needed over the past decade or so.  Naturally that short term history is influenced by that long-term history and the conversation about middle housing is is important because it used to be part of our housing market, right? It used to be these row houses, multiplexes kind of all over our, our state and our country. And they're even referenced as kind of like traditional housing types because that's traditionally what we've seen built across the country. But I think in [00:10:00] the even shorter term, House Bill 2001 came into being as part of a follow-up to what the city of Minneapolis did in 2018, which was the first kind of city-wide elimination of exclusive single family zoning. And Oregon kind of took that a step further and did that on a statewide level, but really it learned from the success of Minneapolis, where they will able to create these coalitions of, of, of interest groups or advocates that don't usually play on the kind of same team and brought them together for this, this greater purpose of creating more housing, housing choice, housing options, and then leading to more affordable housing. And I think the lead up to House Bill 2001 saw a lot of housing advocates teaming up with the home builders association and Realtors teaming up with their housing advocates.  Some of those things you just don't really see on a regular basis legislative session to session. So House Bill 2001 really I think, learned and was successful in [00:11:00] part because of City of Minneapolis. [00:11:02] Kol Peterson: Yeah. I think one of the themes this week has been the impact of this coalition building at a local, regional, and now a state level and the importance that that's had in terms of this general movement towards small infill housing or middle housing or whatever we're going to call it. So, what is your role and DLCD's role, more broadly, in developing regulations for House Bill 2001. For those who aren't familiar with the general rule making process, there's the law, the legislation, then there's the rulemaking process. So what is DLC D's role within the rulemaking or regulatory development process? [00:11:37] Ethan Stuckmayer: Yeah. So DLCD has got a very singular role in the state process. Like I mentioned, there's these 19 statewide planning goals and we're kind of like the protector of those statewide the Oregon statewide land use system. I say protector. I think some others would probably say more like passive

    1h 1m
  2. The ADU Hour w/guest Michael Andersen

    08/17/2021

    The ADU Hour w/guest Michael Andersen

    Michael Andersen:  Thanks for the invitation. Kol Peterson:  I'm just gonna start by having you say a few more words about yourself that are not covered by your bio, that you would like for people to know about you. You've done a lot of things over the years that are relevant to the questions we'll be talking about today is so  provide a little context for things about you that we should know. Michael Andersen: Sure. I, I became obsessed with housing policy and transportation sort of in tandem. When I was a reporter in suburban Portland covering Clark county, Washington I was covering county government and like two parts of county government are covering poor people who are interacting with the criminal justice system and covering rich people who are building new homes or even middle class people who are building new homes on the fringe of the urban landscape. And I was seeing all these poor people, but get being screwed by the fact that they were being forced to live in [00:03:00] places without that we're not designed for people without cars. And then they would own a car, but it'd be a crappy car. And then their car would fall apart. Then their life would fall apart. And I was like, there's got to be better. Our solution. Meanwhile, I was spending time with all my 20 something, friends in Portland who didn't have cars and they didn't care. Like, and so I was like, it's not as simple a story as that. Like there's a lot of privileges both ways, but that was sort of what got me thinking about transportation and housing. So since I've been working on public transportation, journalism and biking journalism, and since more recently housing advocacy, I've been sort of  doing content in various ways. Kol Peterson: So tell us a little bit about your own family's experience, living in an ADU. Michael Andersen: Yeah.  It started with just trying to continue to live with our housemates. So I was interested in living with housemates when I started a little business 10 years ago because I was new, I was going to be socially isolated otherwise, and I needed to save money it worked in both dimensions. And then my wife moved in and then  our housemates had a kid and then we were going to have a kid. We [00:04:00] were like, this is too much for this 1942 building. And we're gonna have to figure out some way to do it. And we decided that best way was for us to keep them whole while they built an ADU. And so we lived as tenants for several years. And it was great. It was a perfect setup for both of our kids to grow up together as best friends and the they had to move for a job recently. So we've relocated since, but it was a really rewarding thing. Kol Peterson: All right, so you have some direct personal experience with ADUs  in particular, and we're going to talk about ADUs for sure, but we're also going to focus on this broader conversation of middle  housing today. So let's start off with talking about Sightline Institute first. Tell us a little bit about what Sightline Institute is and  what's the mission of Sightline Institute? How would you describe it to other people for those who are not familiar with it? Michael Andersen: Sure. We're a sustainability think tank founded in 1993 based in Seattle, but covering the Pacific Northwest. So my, my boss's big idea is that you can't get people to care about their planet. The evidence seems to suggest, but maybe you can get people to care about their [00:05:00] ecosystem. And so we focus on the Pacific Northwest as an ecosystem across the border states and nations, and write about the ways that we can make it the best, most welcoming, most sustainable version of itself as a model to other ecosystems. Kol Peterson: Is there any other examples of similar Sightline Institute types of think tanks out there in other regions or comparable institutions that you can think of in the United States. Michael Andersen: We're definitely weird, but Rocky Mountain Institute is a little bit similar. There are a lot bigger now founded in Colorado, I think. And there's my my colleague Eric is trying to working on creating one for Appalachian actually. So there may be more. Kol Peterson:  Cool. All right. So how tell us about the scope of the material that you cover for the  Sightline Institute. Michael Andersen: I write mostly about housing, a little bit about transportation and that overlap, which is parking, which I love talking about parking, in the Portland and Oregon areas. So mostly focusing on the statewide level and regional level and what we can do there, but also a little bit of Portland stuff to the extent that it's [00:06:00] like a model for other cities. Kol Peterson: And how does the material that you cover for  Sightline Institute fit into the institutes larger mission? Michael Andersen: I think one of our niches is that we are a sort of environmental organization that is really into economics and harnessing the power and insights of economics for our progressive sustainability sort of vision. And one of our insights, or one of our decisions, our perspective is that  we desperately need to reduce the need for energy over the longterm without making it feel like we're giving anything up. And the way to do that is to allow urbanization, but we've banned urbanization because of zoning laws that have made it impossible for people to basically choose where they want to live, which is good for lots of reasons. So we try to work to undo that while also not being blind to the other complications that creates for disruption and so on. Kol Peterson: You previously wrote for a bike blog, local [00:07:00] bike blog. That's quite beloved, quite popular called Bike Portland. Can you talk about the material that you wrote for Bike Portland and how it relates to what you covered at the Sightline Institute? Michael Andersen: Yeah. So when I came to Bike Portland, it was just 2013. Portland was sort of swinging into a big boom in home building was coming out of a four year, like plateau, like almost no home building. So like there was, it was obvious that there was going to be some sort of a rent crisis. We already had a rent shortage and then the rents were starting to climb. And I was really interested in like, we should be solving this problem, but we should be solving it in a way that makes things more proximal. Like if you look at the greatest biking cities in Southeast Asia or Northern Europe, they're all full of these little close together homes. And that's the bedrock. People are not biking that many miles, they're just biking a lot because there are a lot of short trips. And the only way we create short trips is by building ADUs  and attached homes and apartment buildings that are all close to jobs and everything [00:08:00] else. So that was the case I was making. And I had a weekly column about that and got more and more obsessed with sort of that side of how to improve biking and  by living in the places where biking is already good. Instead of having to spend all our wheels, trying to make biking great in more and more places, which we should be doing both of. Kol Peterson:  This is off topic, but in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and I would imagine Europe electric, motor scooters are becoming more common, right? That's not really taking off in the US. I mean, those little like ride on hop on scooters are really taking off, but not like the kind of ride on scooters that give you longer distances. And they're electric. What are your thoughts about electric scooters and their potential. Are those as good as bikes or what are the differences? What are the ways in which like electric scooters are? Provided serving the same role that bikes could play. And how does that deal? How do you think about that in terms of urban form? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't really have a strong perspective, I guess. But they're better than cars. They're worse [00:09:00] than bikes. Bikes are better than scooters and worse than skateboards. Michael Andersen: So yeah, I mean, I think it's like if a, if a tool is going to work, you should be able to use it. I'm pro transportation to the extent that it infringes on the other types of trends of more efficient transportation, that's a problem. So like when those, when like a motor vehicle is using a bike lane to the exclusion of it, being comfortable for people to bike or scoot in, then that's a problem. But I don't know exactly where you draw that line. Kol Peterson: Yeah. Okay. I've just been, I have an electric ride on scooter. I love it. And I'm just surprised that it's there's so few of them in the U S wherein, I would imagine they're that they're quite popular now. Michael Andersen: Yeah. I don't know why. I mean, it's taken over in Northern Europe too, I think. Yeah. Not taken over, but there's a lot of it Kol Peterson: Anyway, that was a side topic, but I figured you'd have some thoughts about that. All right. So what sources do you rely upon for staying abreast of the latest legislative policy discourse related to [00:10:00] housing nationally? Michael Andersen: My main filter is Twitter. So I use Tweet Deck as like a Twitter app that lets use like organize it all by, you know, most recent first. And so it takes away some of the poisonous dunking fixation that the Twitter algorithm pushes you towards. So I highly endorsed that. And then it lets you segregate by topic. So I can have a column for housing people and  a column for transportation people. If anybody's interested, you can look at my housing list on Twitter, it's a public list. And I use that to constantly update that. Kol Peterson: I bet you people are interested in that. Cause the fire hose is a real deal.  I guess if you're not a reporter, it's like, it's just overwhelming. So I guess my, I guess my question is like following up on that, is there a primary source of like information source that TweetDeck tends to push you towards, or is it individual D

    56 min
  3. The ADU Hour -w/guest Morgan Tracy

    08/10/2021

    The ADU Hour -w/guest Morgan Tracy

    This week's guest is Morgan Tracy.   Morgan Tracy, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners has been actively involved in the Oregon land use planning in both long range planning, projects and development review for the last 25 years. He has worked  for the cities of [00:01:00] West Linn, Lake Oswego, Tigard and has been with the City of Portland for the past 15 years in both the Bureau of Development Services and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Currently, he is a staff project manager for Portland's Residential Infill Project, which seeks to increase the range of permitted housing types while lowering housing costs in single dwelling neighborhoods. Kol, what are your thoughts on our interview with Morgan? Morgan has been very deep in the weeds and details of overhauling, a complex residential zoning ordinance for the City of Portland for the last five years. This task was daunting and a journey, not just for him, but for all of the engaged citizens who saw this overhaul as a great opportunity to make a difference in the future of the city that likes to chart new territory nationally in matters, related to urban planning and infill. Capturing his perspective on how this process could be translated to other jurisdictions is hopefully going to be valuable for future research and application of middle housing, zoning, rewrites. Kelcy, what were some of your takeaways? [00:02:00] Morgan gives great examples of how one can participate in city council meetings in an effort to make change in one's local jury state. And why it's crucial that citizens get involved with the process of rulemaking as a planner, as a planner, deeply involved in quite possibly the most progressive zonings shift in the country. Morgan shares his experience as someone on the front lines, as the liaison to the community and rule makers. Let's get to our interview with Morgan.   Kol Peterson: [00:02:25] Good morning, Morgan Tracy: [00:02:26] Morning, morning, Kol and Kelcy, it's great to be here, thanks for having me. Kol Peterson: [00:02:30] Thanks for being here.   Morgan,  the Residential Infill Project is familiar to those of us who are in Portland, obviously, let's assume that people are not familiar with it, but they're fairly sophisticated in this general urban infill topic, very familiar with ADUs. Can you describe for us what RIP is for somebody who might be unfamiliar with it from outside of the city of Portland? Morgan Tracy: [00:02:52] Yeah.  It's a bit, it's a bit challenging to do this in a condensed form cause it took five years of work. So boiling that down, I can [00:03:00] concise. As a big challenge, but here, here we go.  I would say that the Residential Infill Project was the city's first major overhaul of the single dwelling zoning since corner lot duplexes were allowed in 1991. So it had been about 25 years when we got started. Now, these changes expand the types of housing allowed on most lots to include duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and options to create additional ADUs in nearly 90% of the single dwellings zone neighborhoods, simultaneously new tools to limit building sizes will ensure that this development maintains the look and feel of those neighborhoods. And together, these changes allow a broader range of compatible housing types that are comparatively less expensive than new single family homes, making neighborhoods more accessible, more inclusive, and more sustainable over time. Kol Peterson: [00:03:45] All right.  I should have asked you this , but I'm gonna ask you, now, what is a good title for you to give some framework for what your role was within the residential input project? Morgan Tracy: [00:03:56] So my, my official title with the city is  a City Planner II, which [00:04:00] doesn't mean much to many people. So, but extensively, the work that I'm doing is, is managing the project. I coordinate our team, our staff, our consultant work, work on the project timelines and make sure that we deliver a project on schedule when we can. Generally, I go by the title of project manager. Kol Peterson: [00:04:18] So this project running five years,  how did the history of Residential Infill Project come to be and why in the world did it take so long to get there? Morgan Tracy: [00:04:29] Well, as you can imagine, it's a bit of a complicated project, a little bit of, a little bit of controversy involved. But let's, let's start with the history. So the project began in 2015 and in 2015, we are hearing a lot of calls about concerns resulting from outcomes from infill development. So we were seeing lots of small homes being demolished and replaced by big, expensive new homes. We, we're seeing about more than a house per day being demolished on average. And we're also seeing the housing prices in 2015 were beginning to price out families earning a hundred percent of the Median [00:05:00] Family Income. So that essentially translates to about half of the families in Portland would be unable to afford to purchase a house in the city. So recognizing the city could not prohibit tear downs and simply applying stricter limits to new development would tighten the supply of new housing, which exacerbates housing costs. We brought together two objectives, which was addressing the scale of new development and increasing housing options in neighborhoods. And part of the, I think the real challenge in this project were these are two almost at-odd objectives that we had to balance  and bet with the public in multiple scenarios, multiple occasions So you know, you, you asked why it took so long. There were several steps along the way, either fortunate or unfortunate. But first off  we started under a different administration  under Charlie Hale as mayor, and he had decided towards the end of his term that he wasn't gonna run again, but he wanted to see some product. And we weren't at a point where we can deliver a new code and new maps and all that stuff. So, [00:06:00] we 'd agreed to bring forward a concept plan, which  essentially lays out the basic trajectory that the project is going to follow. And the positive side of that is it's good to take the temperature of your decision makers to see if you're going in the right direction before you really invest a lot of time and effort. The downside of that is the project took so long that by the time we got back to city council, four years later, it was an almost entirely new council. We just had one city council left. So that was a bit of a fruitless exercise. We also spent 14 interesting, exhilarating months with the planning and sustainability commission. We went through almost every single detail of that project, point by point by point by point in a series of monthly meetings. And about two thirds through that process, the planning and sustainability commission, after hearing public testimony and considering the objectives, and then the proposals, gave us some rather very different direction, which caused us to go back to the drawing board and start over on our code. [00:07:00] Not entirely, but it really  changed the fundamental building blocks that we  come to them with. So we had to redo our analysis, redo the code, and that took  some more time. Unfortunate outcome of that was we were also about to lose two of our planning commissioners, they were terming out. And so by the time we got back to them, we were really  in a rush to get a decision from them. And so we came back to them with this revised proposal and said, here it is, here are the stats, the data, and the analysis, what do you think? And we'd unveiled a displacement risk report and didn't really spend a lot of time going through that report. Understanding the implications, what the data was really telling us. And so they felt rushed to a decision and they had a rather split decision. It was a five to four decision. And so that created a little uncertainty at city council. We had to take time to work with the council offices, go through these reports, help people understand what they were telling us. We started the city council process and right before we were about to finish, COVID struck and that's through another five months [00:08:00] on the end. So now a little bit of that's me, but a lot of that's just the circumstances of the project. Kol Peterson: [00:08:05] Just as an observer slash public participant, I could tell this was an extreme, highly engaged public process and there was so much commentary from the public on this. And I, I couldn't imagine having to balance all of those different  inputs that you guys had to manage. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that, but just to give people some context for that, how many public comments would you say the City of Portland received on the residential infill project? Morgan Tracy: [00:08:33] Close to 15,000. We also were, at one point we sent out 123,000 notices to property owners. Kol Peterson: [00:08:41] Yeah. So  this would be  on the scale of a very highly, both engaging and engaged topic in terms of the impact that it was going to have on people and the level of input that they wanted to provide, relative to most public processes. Would you say that? Morgan Tracy: [00:08:58] Yeah,  it was [00:09:00] both super engaging, everybody had an opinion, no matter where you were what, what sort of venue you were at.  Just about everybody you talk to either lives in, or has lived in a single family home or single family neighborhood and has opinions about that. So there's that, and then  the geography was city-wide. So that's you know, that's  a lot of area, a  lot of peoples that are involved. Kol Peterson: [00:09:19] Can you talk about  Bureau of Planning and Sustainability's role in developing policies and regulations for RIP, and maybe  talk about, just as a general 101 for those of us who aren't familiar with the process, the Planning and Sustainability Commission's role re

    51 min
  4. The ADU Hour -w/guest Alexis Stephens

    08/03/2021

    The ADU Hour -w/guest Alexis Stephens

    Alexis Stevens is the co-founder of tiny house expedition, the DIY tiny house, dweller and advocate. Along with our partner Christian Parsons, they inspire others to rethink housing  through thought, provoking storytelling, educational events, and resource sharing. Their work includes the acclaimed educational documentary [00:01:00] series. Living tiny legally. Living, tiny legally. It was featured on Washington post NPR business, insider parade magazine, curved entry, hugger. Cool. What were some of your takeaways from listening to this episode? Well, I'm in a real kick right now with mobile dwellings. So it's really fun to banter with Alexis who is equally wonky about tiny house on wheels regulations. The tiniest moment is very fractured and stealthy by nature. So it's fun to try to anticipate how the stealthy movement will actually play out. In the future technology has enabled mobile dwellings, like RVs vans, tiny homes, and park model RVs to be far more convenient and practical than they would have been for living 20 years ago. And I expect that we will look back almost consoling only to the days when tiny houses on wheels weren't even legal to live in, in residential zones. And think how weird it was that we didn't allow people to live in mobile dwellings. Kelsey, what were some of your takeaways? Alexis is incredibly personable and we had a great time chatting with her. She has traveled the country in search of knowledge [00:02:00] and experience of how tiny house communities are collecting and advocating to improve local regulations, to make this lifestyle more accessible.       Let's get to our interview with Alexis.   Kol Peterson: As, as Kelcy was introducing you, my Alexa device was responding and I was like,oh shoot, ,that's going to happen this whole episode -got unplug that. That that must be so annoying. It is so annoying. Alexis Stephens: We recently filmed in like three tiny houses with Alexas and they had to turn them off and yeah, it gets old and Alexa got creepy. I don't know if it was because I was there and she felt competition, Kol Peterson: What a bummer, huh? [00:03:00] I mean, you can change for your own self. You can change the name of Alexa to somebody else, but like everybody else is still going to have the default Alexa. So it's going to pester  you for the rest of your life.  Your bio was just read, but let's just hear a little bit about your personal endeavors with living in tiny homes. Some people have a little bit of context for your history, with the you know, living in one. Alexis Stephens: Sure. Back in 2014 Christian and I ordered our, our trailer and built our tiny house over the next nine months. And he was the main builder, but I helped, I learned a lot of new skills and we had a lot of great help for friends and family. And like so many people in tiny houses, we fell pretty hard down the rabbit hole. Before we decided to build and research like crazy for, you know, for personal choice to simplify. It was a time in my life that where that just felt so right, [00:04:00] but I'm just an all or nothing person. And as I was researching, you know, I really fell in love with the movement and how creatively tiny homes are being used to address personal and community needs. And so I got the idea to travel around with our tiny house and document the movement. And so I pitched Christian on both at the same time, I was like, let's build a house. Like I want to build a house and I have this documentary idea. Do you want to do it with me? Because we'd only been dating for a year at that time when I pitched it. Fortunately he was a really good sport and really loved the idea of it. The rest is history. And after we finished our house at 2015, we ended up traveling for about four and a half years zigzagging across the United States, peaking into Canada. And it had just the most wonderful adventure. And most of that was around documenting as much as we could of the tiny house movement, the people, communities legal action that was happening. And then of course we threw in some, some fun stuff [00:05:00] and some family visits, but I'm really happy to say that now we just traveled three months out of the year and have a home base in central Oregon. Kol Peterson: Awesome. So this is not going to be so much focused on your personal experiences but  rather the tiny house movement at large and specifically the regulatory things that are occurring in the U S so, and, you know, tying that into ADUs  to some extent, but just more generally legalization of tiny homes on wheels. We're going to talk about your specific documentary series on that later, but let's talk more about the nuts and bolts of it. So can you attempt to define tiny homes on wheels? Alexis Stephens: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the term tiny  house is a slippery one. That's for sure, especially in the media, but a tiny house on wheels, also known as a movable tiny house is built on a trailer using traditional housing materials and techniques for the most part, but at its core, it's a hybrid [00:06:00] structure that has a lot in common with like a travel trailer, as far as mobility, but with more durable materials construction, more kin to a traditional house than at RV, which makes it more suitable for a year round living, you know, think insulation, you know, is a big one. The difference between an RV and a tiny house is night and day it's, it's a residential house versus a camper. It's,  that's what we're talking about. Kol Peterson:  Would you say that there's a universally agreed upon definition of a tiny house on wheels in terms of size? Obviously it's on wheels. Aside from that, is there any other like core definitions that we should bear in mind or is it kind of all over the map? Alexis Stephens: The term is, is still squishy, so to speak. And, but I will say that in tiny house, on wheels or movable tiny house zoning ordinances it is starting to get a little bit more formalized. And in most of most of those you know, what I, a version of what I said and more formalized language [00:07:00] is, is becoming more widely accepted. Typically they'll say a chassis instead of a trailer. And, and in some areas, particularly California, they do like to distinguish a tiny house from an, a traditional RV, because, well, I'm sure we'll get into this word later. They are trying to discourage, you know, RVs in backyards and, and want something that looks like a cottage that resembles an ADU. Kol Peterson: So what roles do you see tiny homes on wheels playing in housing, a formal legal housing on residential properties? Alexis Stephens: You know, I love a tiny house on a residential property because it's so, so flexible is great as a caretaker unit and not necessarily, you know, it could go either way. It could be like your mom, your mom, you know, comes to live in your backyard. Cause you've had a baby and she just can't stand to be away, but you maybe can't send, have her in the house. You know, or vice versa where you, you or a [00:08:00] nurse comes and lives in a backyard in a temporary fashion to take care of someone. We just visited someone in Eldorado Hills, California doing just that. Her parents health is starting to wane and she lives on their property, but doesn't plan to be there forever. So very, very flexible. Yeah. Besides this, the caretaking idea is just another housing option. A long-term more affordable housing option. That's very mutually beneficial for the homeowner and the tiny dweller. You know, I think sometimes people look down on tiny houses on wheels in this like temporary mobile fashion that they are as, you know, taking advantage not paying their fair share. When in reality, the majority, I mean the majority of tiny houses  in my personal experience on residential property are helping pay the mortgage, the property taxes. We just visited a great situation where a woman was divorced, a single income. [00:09:00] What is she going to do? Her whole life is there. And so she welcomed a couple of tiny houses onto her property to pay her bills. Kol Peterson: So sounds pretty similar to ADUs in that way. How would you differentiate the roles that tiny houses on wheels and ADUs can play in housing on residential properties? Alexis Stephens: You know, it's, there's a lot of similarities, like you said. I think the main difference is the flexibility, you know, it's flexible infill housing that can be removed as needed, which is kind of, kind of great because you know, dedicating to an ADU is a very long-term permanent situation where, you know, this, the cost of it alone, you know, I mean, you're not going to want to take it down once it's up where a tiny house like it, you know, if you need it to back could be gone for when you need to sell the house or if your situation changes. Kol Peterson: And I'll chime in with a couple of responses after my questions, because I have a lot of thoughts about this [00:10:00] too. So forgive me. So I would also say that tiny homes on wheels are vastly less expensive than ADUs in general. And B to your flexibility point. There, this opens up this whole other marketplace of potential things that don't yet exist, but marketplace actors such as third parties that could own the tiny houses and lease it to either the dweller or to the owner of the property could exist. Whereas with with ADUs, you could theoretically come up with some way to do that, but it would be really challenging. Tiny homes on wheels definitely afford some really innovative new business models. Alexis Stephens: Yeah, excellent points. You know, the cost is a big one. You know, it's, it's incredible how much money you can save when you, when you skip the foundation. And the price range of tiny houses. This is so great. I know people complain about that, but you really can get something that's suitable to you. And the loans are just becoming more available all the time. Kol Peterson: T

    56 min
  5. The ADU Hour -w/guest Kol Peterson

    07/27/2021

    The ADU Hour -w/guest Kol Peterson

    Kelcy King: Kol Peterson is an ADU expert based in Portland, Oregon. He has helped catalyze the exponential growth of ADUs in  Portland over the last decade through ADU advocacy, education, consulting, policy work and entrepreneurship. He is the author Backdoor Revolution, The Definitive Guide to ADU Development, and also happens to be the host of this podcast.    For this episode of the ADU [00:02:00] Hour, we decided to shake it up a little bit, and I take on the role of the interviewer. So Kol, what were some of your takeaways from listening to this episode?  Kol Peterson:  In this episode, we talked about building coalitions. Now that ADUs  being folded into broader policy conversations about middle housing, more generally. A conversation that has really taken off in a big way in the last year. I think that this idea of coalition building and meeting regularly with that coalition has even more salience. The power of a disparate group with diverse expertise, but with a common mission of getting more ADUs built cannot be overstated. Groups like this can definitely,  help change regulations, change laws, impact financing opportunities, raise awareness about ADUs and much more. Kelcy, what were some of your takeaways? Kelcy King:  Well, I will second that your interview offers some great nuggets in regard to forming coalitions in an effort to advocate for ADUs as a piece of the puzzle for  building greener, resilient cities, and as affordable housing, you've also built quite a few ADUs on your properties and you offer a few [00:03:00] design tricks that you've used offer highly enjoyable living spaces in a small structure. Let's get to our interview with you.  A quick heads up to our listeners. My audio in this episode is subpar. So sorry about that. We also had some technical issues during the original recording and lost the introduction. So we'll start here with the second question I asked Kol.  For those looking to advocate at their local municipal level. Where would one start to address ordinances that only allow ADUs in certain zones within a city? For example, some residential zones, but not other residential zones.    Kelcy, just to be clear here. So the question is if you're aware of the best practices, as far as what regulation should be,  how should you go about making those changes? Correct, yes. Kol Peterson: So,  this ties into a later point that we'll get into, but I think  there's so many different things that need to be changed in local regulations to make the regulations for ADUs good.  It's not as though, if you are able to [00:04:00] address, say off street parking requirements that you will have a good ADU code. Rather, there's like  20 or 30 different little things that will all significantly impact whether or not a code is good. So let me just pick on one example, California has an incredibly good state code. However, they have one element of their state code that says by right you can build a 16 foot ADU. Well, that is a big poison pill, in my opinion, that isn't a good policy.  They have this incredibly good ADU regulations statewide, except they have this one thing that makes a whole lot of ADUs is not possible, which is you can only build a one story ADU. Which is a killer, that doesn't work. ADUs will not pencil if you have that in place. And that's a minor thing, but that's very major in a lot of ways, like sure. A lot of people will still want to build ADUs in California and some jurisdictions will have liberalized height standards, but statewide, most jurisdictions will not. And therefore they're killing [00:05:00] 20% of their market without one bad regulation.  Having visited several hundred ADUs in Portland, where that isn't in place, most of the ADUs that are built, the majority of them are two story detached ADUs. Why, because they're being built on small lots because they want more square footage in those ADUs. And so if you're requiring people to build an 800 square foot, one story ADU, they're not, they're going to lose their backyard and that isn't going to work for a lot of people. That one little example, it doesn't doesn't really matter that much, but I guess the point is there's so many different things that need to be worked on that. I think there's a need for a group of people to be working collectively. Slowly improve their regulations over time. Kelcy King: Is there a certain place where you would start? Like, would you start with zoning? Would you start with owner occupancy or is it just chisel away as you can? Kol Peterson: Yeah. So I think that depends on what level you're working on. Right? If you're working at the state level, really, if you're working at any level, I think the [00:06:00] way to go about this is understanding from an advocacy point of view. This is a hard one for people to swallow, but your code needs to be A-plus bomber for people to actually want to build an ADU. So if you have the 16 foot poison pill in your regs, it's not good enough. It needs to be much better. And that, and like that doesn't, that means that everywhere in the country has bad codes except for Portland, Seattle, and a few jurisdictions in California. So  there's a lot of room for improvement. And then you can get to these kinds of like next level ADU codes that are like two ADUs and allowing two detached ADUs.  My vantage on this is you have to aim really high, and hopefully they'll get most of that because if you incrementally chip away at these regulations over time, it's going to take a long time.  For example, the entire east coast of the United States doesn't have a single city with what I would classify as a halfway decent set of ADU regulations. I would not build an ADU in any city on the entire east coast. So, a city [00:07:00] could work on chipping away at those regulations over time, but  it's really challenging. It takes decades to pass good code.  Rip off the band-aid and pass a really good code once. That's the approach that  I'm in favor of. And as a result of kind of working on this for the last decade is advocacy changing regulations, because I've now come around to thinking, you know what? This is too painful  at the jurisdictional level there's too much nimbyism too many, too much local politics to deal with. We have to do this at the state level because it's taking too long and we don't have the time to wait,  this is not a tenable approach to improving your ADU regulations,  bit by bit at the local level, across 128,000 jurisdictions and  not at the pace at which we really need this form of housing to actually take hold. Kelcy King: So this is a great segue because I'm moving into the state regulations here. So in order to advocate at the state level and have that be the most effective, first, who are the target legislators and representatives you would target? Kol Peterson: I don't know  the political scene [00:08:00] necessarily at any state let alone every state, but I would say what I've seen, what did a little bit knowledge I have about this as what I've seen as lobbyists, so to speak whether that's the Home Builders Association or AARP or an affordable housing group working with an elected state legislator, House or Senate, putting forward a proposal and then working that through the sausage making process. There's been a couple examples of statewide legislation now in Oregon, in California, in New Hampshire in I'm sure a few other places.  A lot of these have not been particularly effective in the sense that they are not getting rid of any of the poison pills, they're simply enabling ADUs to be built. That's what happened in California prior to the latest two years of legislation. That's what had happened in Oregon. That's what had happened elsewhere. you might as well not allow you to use if you're not going to have really good ADU regulations, it's the same thing. So just saying we allow ADUs,  that's pointless. Don't even bother. Go do something else. [00:09:00] If you're going to get serious about enabling ADUs, you have to have excellent ADU regulations. So. Getting back to this idea of  work with the state legislator, who's going to be open to pushing the envelope really far, making people uncomfortable. And hopefully you'll be able to build a coalition of stakeholders that really support that policy measure. And that's what it's going to take to actually set environment where hopefully at that point, maybe we'll start to see some ADUs built,  don't count on that.  Even if you have the best ADU regulations, it doesn't make it easy to build an ADU at scale. They're not going to just take off overnight. You will get a pathetic, pitiful number, ADUs being built, even in the best conditions. Like what we'll see in California, we'll see many more times ADUs being built, but it's still a very small number of ADUs overall. So I think that's kind of the good and the bad side of this stuff is  it's going to take a long time for ADUs to make a substantive dent and the kind of housing crisis that we have. But we can only start to get there if we have really good ADU regulations.  I would say working [00:10:00] on approaching it really aggressive  ask using a lot of data that I point out in the book and that's available elsewhere. As far as going for the gold standard kind of default model zoning code for your whole state is the way to go. And if you can't get that, work on it on the, at the local level.  The most controversial things to work on are owner-occupancy and off-street parking. I'd say those are the ones that, if anything, I would work on those at the state level, because locally it's really politically challenging to get rid of those two poison pills. Kelcy King: How do you show up as an advocate? You personally, are you showing up in person? Who are you showing up to see? And are you, are you like writing letters, gathering signatures on petition? How do you show up? Kol Peterso

    39 min
  6. The ADU Hour -w/guest Timothy Cocaro

    07/20/2021

    The ADU Hour -w/guest Timothy Cocaro

    Timothy is CEO of RESCON Builders the largest dedicated Granny Flat building company in Australia, and founder of Canibuild, a sales app changing how the world’s builders sell construction.

    36 min
  7. The ADU Hour- w/guest Willie Dean

    07/13/2021

    The ADU Hour- w/guest Willie Dean

    Kol Peterson: All right. So this is Willie Dean and Willie Dean is a residential designer working primarily doing ADU design and has worked [00:02:00] quite a bit in both Oregon and now in California.  I thought he would be an appropriate guest to have because yeah his experience in both those states. On top of that, Willie is also an excellent ADU designer. We're going to be talking about ADU design as a general matter. And hopefully everybody can get something out of our conversation. So, Willie why don't I give you a second to introduce yourself in a little bit more detail? Willie Dean: Sure. My name is Willie Dean. I am an architectural designer in Portland, Oregon. My company is called Ground Up Design Works and I specialize in residential design of all types. But I'd say specifically, probably 80% of my work  is accessory dwelling units here in the Portland area. And over the last few years I had a opportunity to work with a company in South bay, San Jose area and with them, we, we executed probably twelve ADUs in the South Bay, Silicon Valley area.  It's a good amount of [00:03:00] work within a short period of time. But I definitely have some observations about differences, good and bad and  in general.  I got my master's degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and that's what got me out to Oregon. I'm originally from Wisconsin. I got my undergrad from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Kol Peterson: So for those who don't know, I actually went to a design school myself and everybody wore black rim glasses. So is it a requirement that you wear a black rim glasses if you're an architect? Willie Dean: You know, some people with other colored glasses but it's a standard. These are actually technically navy blue. Kol Peterson: Navy blue. Okay. I'm color blind. All right. So we're going to dive right into your work in Oregon, California. So which markets specifically have you worked in ? Well, I should say in Oregon you probably just worked in Portland, correct? Willie Dean: For ADUs. Yes. I've only done ADUs in Portland. I've done a couple of remodels in Vancouver, I've done a single family house [00:04:00] out in  rural Wasco county. But as far as ADUs are concerned,  actually only the east side. Kol Peterson: I just point that out to say that I know a lot of people who work in the ADU space in Oregon and when I say Oregon, it's really just Portland because there's not a lot of activity, even  five miles away from where we are in Portland, because the regulations haven't been the same. In any event. So California, which jurisdictions have you worked in? Willie Dean: So San Jose, Campbell,  Mountain View,  Los Gatos. The interesting thing about that environment is that every few miles you're in a new town, right. And that's pretty different than Portland where we at and sort of the urban growth boundary and the rules are pretty similar for miles in any direction. Whereas down there, I mean, it's a way bigger space. There's way, way more people. And there's all of these little enclaves that all have their own specific zoning rules. So, that's one of the huge differences working down there. You have every town you go to, [00:05:00] you have to learn a whole new set of rules. And some of them base their rules on the same stuff. And some of them are just different. And then the way that the permitting offices work is always different, too. Kol Peterson: So tell us about some of the substantial differences between the ADU design work that you've done in these two markets, Portland and the San Jose zone in terms of a number of different things. So process wise, things like Title 24, net zero solar requirements, designing for dry versus wet conditions, culture wise in terms of players, actors and costs. Willie Dean: Yeah.  I know that there's a new set of rules in California in 2020, and I haven't done anything this year within the context of the new rules. So everything that I'm saying is, is a tiny bit dated in that respect. But my experiences was that the rules in that part of California, where I was working were a little bit more restrictive.  In Portland, you're [00:06:00] allowed to do 800 square feet or 75% of the existing house, whichever is smaller. And that's just across the board. Down there the lots are a lot bigger and it's based on a FAR, but a normal lot down there is 7,500 square feet and you can only do a 600 square foot ADU. So, for my experience, we could only do single story  one floor, one bedroom, one bath, which if that's the context or the constraints of the project that you're working in and it simplifies things drastically. So it was, I suppose, easier because you didn't have as many tricks that you could pull out of your hat. But also limiting in that, I felt like it's the most expensive housing market in the country and we're limiting it to these one bedroom apartments that we're building where there really is huge, huge, huge opportunities for infill, and we could be doing bigger projects. From a zoning perspective, it seemed  it was smaller and therefore simpler [00:07:00] projects then into like Title 24, that's just an interesting  different way of doing things. In Oregon, we have the energy code and it's just a part of the design review and there is no third party verification, which I mean on some level is maybe a better thing, that there is third party verification and it makes it, it maybe adds a little bit more rigor to the process, but it also makes it more expensive. You usually have to work with a specific Title 24 consultants and then you become sort of a middleman.  You're asking somebody else to verify your designs. So it's a little different. And then it's also interesting because while we just have the code here, our code is actually stricter in a lot of ways as well. So because it doesn't get cold down there,  you can still just do a two by four wall with R- 21 insulation. You do slab on grade construction, you don't have to insulate under the slab. So these are things that outward just like standard [00:08:00] designs in my kit when I went and  we ended up changing a lot of those things, 'cause when I started two by six walls and under slab insulation and all these things that even with the, the added rigor of T 24, weren't necessary because of the climate. Kol Peterson: What about drive versus wet, that change anything? Willie Dean:  I still designed it as if it was going to get rained on because it does still rain and when it happens, it's the same .  I guess one big difference is up here, we have to mitigate for storm water. And down there you don't,  for the most part. If you're in a  low land area where you're not going to have good drainage, then they might specifically single you out  to do something about it, but we weren't putting in dry wells and every single project.   It rains everywhere, but here because it rains so much, we have these onsite water mitigation systems that you don't have to do that down there. Kol Peterson: Right. Just, as a side note, Portland's  always been a little bit on the bleeding edge of stormwater management and we have a really good  [00:09:00] climate for that. This really light rain that falls a lot of the year, so it can absorb storm water on site. And I've always liked that, but it can't, you can't do that there  as much because of the rainfall patterns.  So costs talk about  cost-wise some of the differences between the Portland market and the San Jose area. Willie Dean: Yeah. It's a lot more expensive, it's most expensive housing market in the country and so that just makes everything more expensive. Because the cost for the people that work down there. It's one of the reasons that I was hired.  I know what I'm doing with ADUs and so the people that I was working with met me, and thought that I was a good fit, but also I didn't live there.  It was it was hard because people that are living there are already busy working in the housing market  and they were having a hard time finding people because of how busy it is. And then in terms of cost for building, it's just a lot more expensive. And you know, being a designer,  I wasn't bidding and building all of the projects, so I don't have the exact number of where and why, but just if a climate's more expensive than it's going to be more expensive to build [00:10:00] down there. Kol Peterson:  Just to dive into that, cause I had to figure this theory out for myself, and I'm sure other like economists have written about this, but if you were to go to a Home Depot, a stick, a lumber down, there would be roughly the same cost as a stick of lumber in Oregon as an Alaska as in Florida. But it's that I'm guessing it's private, primarily the labor costs that escalate significantly.   I would imagine a direct correlation between land values and labor costs and therefore construction costs. How does that mesh with what you had hypothesized about that? Willie Dean: That's right. I think that it's in the building, not in the material. It's possible that there's a slight increase in material and there's a lot of people from California on the chat here, maybe somebody else that has bought material in both places regularly could answer these questions better than me because I'm primarily drawing the designs. But I think that that idea that  the labor is for sure the most expensive part, because those people need to be able [00:11:00] to afford to live at least somewhere near there. And even if you're not living in San Jose, but you're living a half hour away, it's still expensive.  I would assume that it's just a more expensive climate to operate in. Yeah. Kol Peterson:  Let's get into a more nuanced element of that question I posed. You were one part of an ADU development process, so you might not be able to speak to all of this, but can you talk about some of the cultural differences and I'll give some context for

    37 min
  8. The ADU Hour- w/guest Ashley Salvador

    07/06/2021

    The ADU Hour- w/guest Ashley Salvador

    Ashley is the founder and president of YEGarden Suites and Calgary Backyard Suites - Alberta’s only education and advocacy-based non-profits dedicated to informing citizens on the benefits, challenges, and regulations surrounding backyard housing. She is also the CEO of Municipaction Inc., a consulting firm that supports Edmontonians in their city-building endeavours. She has experience working across sectors on projects related to affordable housing, climate change, social isolation and inclusion, infill policy, seniors housing, and demographic change. Born and raised in Edmonton, Ashley holds a BA Honours in Sustainability and Sociology from Dalhousie University, and an MA Planning degree from the University of Waterloo. [00:00:00] Kol Peterson: Good morning. Ashley Salvador: Morning, Kol.. Kol Peterson: Thanks so much for coming on today. Ashley Salvador: Thanks for having me. Kol Peterson: And I'm super excited to talk with you about the work that you've done. I've been a fan of your research for a number of years and never had a chance to really talk with you directly.  I've read your work because you put some of that content on AccessoryDwellings.Org initially, and that's kind of how I first learned about it. So let's dive right in. So tell us about yourself and where Edmonton is for those who aren't familiar with Edmonton. Ashley Salvador: Sure. So first of all, I've been tended in Alberta. Some of you may notice the Texas of the north. It's not necessarily that I would say, Hmm. Conservative. We, we actually have a lot of progressive policies here, a lot of really young folks who are looking to push the policies in a really good direction. On the, on the ADU front, things have moved quite quickly over the last couple of years to allow for,  the diversity of sizes, sizes of ADUs basically across the entire [00:01:00] city at this point as a permitted use. Yeah. And. Just for a bit of context, we're looking at getting rid of our parking minimums entirely. So if that gives you a sense of kind of where we sit as a city and where our city councilors are at that's that's Edmonton. Kol Peterson: Yeah. Cool. So how did you get involved in doing ADU research and work? Ashley Salvador: Yeah. So it actually started in my undergrad. I have a degree in sustainability and sociology from Dalhousie University. And I started to get really interested in basically cities as human habitats and the ways that our cities are helping us thrive, but also the ways that they're kind of detrimental to So from a sustainability lens, I was always interested in the ways that we can help our cities grow, grow inward as opposed to outwards forever endlessly. And at some point along the way, I came across ADUs as a way for  everyday homeowners to participate [00:02:00] in kind of the remaking and rebuilding of their cities. So that's, that's where it started. Kol Peterson: And can you tell us about some of the key findings of your undergrad and master's degree research in of garden suites and secondary suites, and actually, maybe take a second to define garden suites  for people since that's a different term. Ashley Salvador: Absolutely. So garden suites would be a detached accessory dwelling unit. Most folks will know them as that. Also known as laneway homes, granny flats. The list goes on in Edmonton attached, ADUs. So ones that are typically located in a basement, those are considered secondary suites. So most of my research focuses on detached accessory dwelling units, so independent from the main house. And I've done two studies at this point. One was in 2016 to 2017 and one I'm currently doing right now. So I, in terms of key findings just reflecting back on the study done in 2016, one of the big findings coming out of [00:03:00] that and Kol,  you know all about this is voluntary, affordable. There was a really good study actually out in Portland that did a full sample or a full survey of owners at that time. And similar findings were, were discovered there around the affordability benefits. Kol Peterson:  Let's just dive into voluntary affordability and then we'll go back to other findings. Ashley Salvador:  Yeah. So basically what I wanted to look at from my research was whether or not it user functioning as a form of affordable housing and what the relationship between the owner and attending. Has to do with that affordability conversation. So in Edmonton, it was found that close to half of the people who are building these gardens suites are doing so for family or friends to live in. The other half are doing it for a traditional rental income. And when you bring affordability into that conversation it was found that the folks who are renting to family and friends are charging ultra low, sometimes zero rent. [00:04:00] And I mean, it, it seems pretty intuitive.  You're not going to charge grandma a bunch of money, the same way you would just a, an unknown tenant. But being able to put that, that finding on paper and actually have similar findings popping up in other cities like Portland, it shows that there is a trend and it shows that ADUs in some capacity are functioning differently in a traditional rental property. And part of that has to do with the fact that these are homeowner developers, right? They're not,  these big wig professional developers who are just trying to do it for a money-making opportunity. There's social reasons in there as well. Kol Peterson: Let's go back to the original research. Aside from the, just generally speaking that voluntary affordability is one of the things that happens with ADUs, what are some other key findings from your original research? Ashley Salvador: Yeah. So from the original study I also looked at barriers to development. And one of the biggest [00:05:00] barriers at that time was cost and financing. So it turns out that around 70% of the folks who were building ADUs had a household income of over a hundred thousand dollars annually. So that also brings into question who is able to even benefit from ADUs.. And it was looking like at that time it was really reserved for folks who are in that higher income bracket.. So that was, that was a big finding. One that I like is folks who are building and living in ADUs  don't own as many cars. So it is just that they are trying to. Either by choice or just by the location they live in, in the city live a more sustainable, less auto dependence lifestyle. Kol Peterson: So regarding voluntary affordability, I think you've found some interesting things. Can you go into a little bit more depth about some of the data that you were able to derive from your research? Ashley Salvador: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll, I'll bring in the current research as well. Cause there was also some findings around [00:06:00] voluntary affordability there. And so if we break down the numbers if you're looking at kind of a typical rent or comparable unit in Edmonton, you'd be looking at around,  $1,100, maybe $1,200. Whereas an ADU who is rented to not a family member---the owner does not know  the tenants. It would be comparable, sometimes slightly higher. Whereas if you renting to a family member you're looking between that $500, maybe $700 range. So there's a pretty significant gap between those two and that's not accounting for the people who are discharging zero rent at all. And I think one of the interesting things is on top of that affordability benefit, there's also some, some sharing of services. So in exchange for,  living rent-free in an ADU, maybe your friends or your grandma is helping with childcare, maybe really helping with yard maintenance, things like that. So there's some kind of informal economies [00:07:00] that are happening around ADUs as well. Kol Peterson:  Can you tell us briefly about the objectives and the model of the Cornerstone Grant Program and what your findings were about that incentive program to induce more deliberately affordable ADUs? Ashley Salvador: Sure. So. First of all the two, the two main objectives of the study were to look at affordability from both the renter's perspective and the owners and the city of Edmonton has a program that is meant to incentivize the development of ADUs. It's called Cornerstones and the Cornerstones Grant basically we'll give up to $20,000 towards the development of an ADU in exchange for renting that ADU for five years, to someone who is within a defined lower income bracket and the city sets that. When Cornerstones first came out, everyone was really excited because they're like, oh my gosh, $20,000. That's awesome. Like, that's a big chunk of change towards a project. And throughout my study, I actually found [00:08:00] that not a lot of people are using Cornerstones. They had the opportunity to apply and 75% of people chose not to. And,  reflecting on that. And crunching the numbers, I think is what makes it seem like a pretty logical choice to step away from Cornerstones. So ADUs in Edmonton due to function as a bit of a luxury rental, so you can pull in a pretty penny on a monthly basis. So if you are locked into a Cornerstones Program for five years, where you are forced to rent for a lower rate, It doesn't actually equal out. So you're actually, you could potentially be losing money in exchange for that about opportunity costs to not rent at typical rates for the five-year period. So we were seeing the cost benefit analysis that people were doing in their heads play out in that research. So Cornerstones isn't that attractive for detached accessory dwelling units. For secondary [00:09:00] suites however, it does make a lot of sense so that it also comes into play the cost of being at your building. So in Edmonton, a detached accessory dwelling unit averages around $180,000 to $200,000. Whereas the secondary suite, typically $60,000 to $80,000 to have a functional secondary suite. So as you can see, even from the sheer cost perspective, $20,000 towards a sec

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The ADU Hour is a podcast that probes deep into ADUs and other small alternative infill housing. Kol Peterson, a nationally known ADU subject matter expert, interviews experts in the ADU space and then we have the guest take some questions from our live audience.

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  • Creator
    Accessory Dwelling Strategies LLC
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    The ADU Hour