California’s Bonus ADU Program Allows Apartment Buildings in Backyards | Geoff Hueter | Danna Givot | Dennis Robinson

California Insider Show
1.9K followers
268 Video Views·Jun 11, 2025
California is expanding a policy that lets homeowners build multiple ADUs on single-family lots, in some cases adding dozens of units where one home once stood. Officials say it’s a step toward easing the housing shortage. Others worry about what it means for infrastructure, privacy, and neighborhood character. This episode breaks down how the policy works and what’s unfolding on the ground.
In California, there is a trend now,
a lot of people are building housing units
in their backyards called ADUs
because the housing costs are so much,
a lot of younger people don't afford housing.
So family members are building and investors are building.
But San Diego, which was ranked
one of the most expensive places in the country,
comparing the housing costs to the income,
now has a new program that allows a lot of ADUs,
if some of them are affordable, in one lot.
In some cases, over 100 units in one lot.
Our guests today are Dana Givitt and Jeff Huber,
who are San Diego residents
that have been following this closely.
They're here to tell us how this bonus ADU program works
and the impacts of it on the community.
We also have Dennis Robinson, who's an ADU developer.
He's gonna tell us his perspective
on what's happening there and across the state.
I'm Siamak Korami, welcome to California Insider.
Dana, Jeff, great to have you on, welcome.
Thank you.
There's something going on in San Diego.
You guys are seeing a lot of ADUs getting developed,
but these are not the ADUs like single and multiple ones.
In late 2020, during the pandemic,
the city passed what they called the bonus ADU program,
which instead of just allowing one or two ADUs,
you know, with a so-called granny flats or general density,
they said you can build as many ADUs
as you can fit on your lot.
And so it's gone from the initial projects
of three or four ADUs to five ADUs to 10 ADUs,
20, 30, 40, and now we're up to over 180 ADUs
being proposed on a single project.
And I think everybody can agree
that that doesn't really fit what everybody thinks about
when they think about so-called granny flats.
So how do they work?
Like 180 ADUs, does the land have to be really big?
Is it going up tall?
It mostly works by, you get,
there's something called a floor area ratio.
And one of the things that really makes it hard
for the public to understand and react to
is there's a lot of technical jargon.
So there's something called a floor area ratio,
which says that if you have a typical single family parcel
that you're allowed 60% of the area of the lot
can be turned in, can be allocated to ADUs.
And so you start doing these spreadsheet types formulas
that if you have a two or three acre lot
that you can get up to 180 ADUs.
On a typical lot in a city
that might be five, 6,000 square feet,
your typical sort of 50 wide by 100 feet deep,
a typical neighborhood lot,
you can still get four or five ADUs on that property.
And right now the city law says
that you can build them 30 feet high.
They can be three stories high
and they can go, depending on how tall they are,
they can go all the way to the side yard lot line
and the rear yard lot line right up to your neighbors.
Or if they're above 16 feet or one story,
they can only be set back by four feet
and you can have neighbors' ADUs
peering into your backyard up to three stories high.
So privacy is lost.
The mature tree canopy is gone.
Heat islands are created.
The amount of permeable space
where stormwater can be dissipated is gone.
And in its place, we have unlimited density,
not the gentle density that people were promised,
but unlimited bonus ADUs that are no longer granny flats.
Instead, what you have are literally apartment complexes
in the backyards of single family homes.
How big is each unit?
So it's very variable, right?
The minimum size can be 150 square feet
and they can go up to 1,200 square feet.
So one of the things that makes it unpredictable
is if you have 3,000 square feet of development,
that can either be 20 ADUs that are 150 square feet
or it could be three units that are 1,000 square feet.
And so it's just kind of all over the map.
But the typical size is about 450 square feet.
And the reason that's a sweet spot
is because you get the most amount of units
that somebody usually is willing to rent,
which is a studio apartment.
And the fees are structured in a certain way
to make that attractive.
So they've really incentivized the production
of a lot of units in California, generally,
and for ADUs specifically,
rather than thinking about whether we need
family-sized housing or other typologies
that would meet our needs better.
This is specifically right now in San Diego, right?
In California, San Diego was the only city
that adopted this bonus ADU program.
Every other city has other kinds of incentives,
you know, like discounting the fees or providing plans,
but nobody says you can build as many ADUs as you want.
The state law requires that you do something
to incentivize the building of affordable ADUs.
It doesn't say they have to be deed-restricted.
It doesn't say how you have to do this.
So most cities, and now it's state law,
require that you have to produce
pre-approved plans for the ADUs.
So now everybody in California
is producing these pre-approved plans.
But in addition to that, they want you to do other things.
So many cities are promoting low-interest loans.
They're providing one-stop shops
where they'll help you expedite the production of your ADUs.
They're helping to guide you through the process.
But as far as we know, over the last four and a half years,
no one is giving you bonus ADUs.
The way the project and the policy works in San Diego
is if you produce a deed-restricted ADU,
and they're calling it an affordable ADU,
then you get a bonus ADU.
So it's a pair, generally.
And so if you produce an ADU that is deed-restricted
at 110% of the area median income,
right now in San Diego for a family of four,
that is $130,800 a year,
then you get a market rate ADU
for which you can charge whatever rent you want.
And so they build them in pairs.
And right now, the biggest project
is somewhere between 116 and 126 ADUs.
On one lot?
On one lot.
And what's the process to get this approved?
It's a ministerial process.
And by that, I mean they submit it
to the Development Services Department,
and the neighbors don't have to be made aware of it.
The plans don't have to be made public.
You can, the public, when they hear about it,
which is generally when some kind of offense
goes up around the property,
the public can go in and make an appointment for 30 minutes
to go in and take a look at the plan
through a Plexiglas window.
They can't take any pictures.
They don't have access to the plans in the flesh
to be able to roll them out, take a look at them,
actually check the measurements.
And they have 30 minutes in that appointment,
and they may have to wait a month
to be able to get in to that.
And that is the only input that the public has
to be able to look at the plans.
They can't say no.
They have no vote.
They have no voice.
It doesn't go through the community planning groups.
The community has nothing to say about it.
The project just proceeds,
assuming that it meets the criteria
that are established by the city.
What about parking?
Because a lot of people have told us
parking is an issue with ADUs in general,
but these are essentially a lot of them in one lot.
So currently there's no requirement
to provide parking for a single unit.
So basically, and it's been sold on the idea
that these are being located near public transit,
and therefore the residents won't need cars.
But in San Diego, you can build as far away
as a mile away from a transit line,
and it doesn't even have to be an existing transit line.
It can be some future imagined transit line.
And as we always say, it's one thing
to ask somebody to walk a mile to a bus.
It's another thing to ask them to wait 20 years
for the bus to arrive.
How much do the rents go for these units?
So a studio apartment rents for over $2,500 a month
in the deed-restricted ones.
And then a, let's say a two-bedroom for a family of three
would rent for $3,500.
And so if you think about that,
I mean, most people don't recognize that
as an affordable rent.
And in fact, it's really not.
A lot of times the so-called market rate ADUs
rent for the same or more than the so-called deed-restricted.
In fairness, there is the option for someone,
a builder or developer to deed-restrict these units
for 60% AMI or 50% AMI
instead of the moderate rate 110% AMI
that we're quoting to you.
But to date, nobody has done that
because given the opportunity to rent them
for 110% AMI for 15 years
or 60% AMI for 10 years, it's a no-brainer.
You'll rent them for 110% AMI,
which is market rate or higher,
and you'll make more money.
So no one is taking advantage of the opportunity
to rent them for a lot less
for a slightly shorter period of time.
So there is no bonus essentially for these
to actually go at a lower,
that kind of like on an affordable side
being the 60% affordability.
No, they just shorten the deed time.
But as Dana said, if you run a calculation on it,
it's a no-brainer to rent it for longer
because you just make more money.
See, one of the things that's sort of subtle about it
is the deed-restricted rate.
So those rents we quoted you, they still go up every year.
It's not rent-capped.
And so just this last year,
the rents even for these affordable ADUs
went up 9% between 24 and 25.
Well, that's a huge rent increase
that would challenge a lot of families.
And how much of this has been developed
in San Diego right now?
The total number of ADUs since this program started
in the first four years,
the total number of ADUs was 5,720 ADUs.
But 98% of the projects were for one to three ADUs.
These outlier projects we're talking about,
they're only 2%, but they're huge projects
and they instantly come in and destroy neighborhoods.
So are there that many of them?
No, but they are growing exponentially.
They are every year becoming more and more
a part of the program.
So say we started out and we had a couple
that were 10 or more ADUs.
Now we have many, especially in certain communities,
that are 20, 30, 40 or more ADUs on a single lot.
And over the past four years,
seven or eight communities out of 40 or 50 total communities
in San Diego have accounted for approximately 70%
of the total ADUs built.
So certain communities are getting hit hardest
by this program.
When you're putting these many units inside a street,
so let's say some that have 10 units,
what about the water and the infrastructure side of things?
Well, the problem is that San Diego's doing nothing
to upgrade the infrastructure.
The units aren't paying for any infrastructure upgrades
because the city's not charging
any kind of development impact fees
or community enhancement fees.
They're considering that now.
So when they do replacement of our 70, 80, 90 year old
sewer and water pipes,
at the moment on these residential streets,
they are literally doing in-kind replacement.
They are replacing the same size pipes, water and sewer
as what they're taking out.
They are not sized for developments of 10 or 20 ADUs,
let alone sizing them for what the state requires,
which is up to two state mandated ADUs and a junior ADU,
which quadruples the number of units
on any single family residential street.
There are 24 homes on both sides of my street
and the state requires that the city allow
a total of 96 additional total units on that
with the three additional units on each one.
Two years ago, the city replaced the 80 year old pipes
on my street, water and sewer.
They replaced them with exactly the same size pipes
that they took out.
So there was no accommodating infrastructure
for the growth they want to put in the backyards.
I think the arguments that are always made is,
you know, if we let all this development happen,
then we'll get more property tax revenue
and then maybe we'll have revenue
for infrastructure upgrades and parks.
But frankly, we never see those upgrades happening.
Now let's go to Dennis Robinson.
He's an ADU builder in the LA and Orange County area.
He has a different perspective.
I do develop ADUs, although my market isn't San Diego.
Orange County and Los Angeles,
they don't allow that kind of numbers.
However, I do have friends that are in the area.
I have developer friends, builder friends,
you know, and then just people that live
in the neighborhood.
So I get a little bit of perspective from each of them.
So I'm very split internally on all of that.
Yes, obviously everybody knows California needs housing.
We're out of land to just build,
so it has to come somewhere.
On the other hand, you know, taking over full streets,
neighborhoods may not be the best situation
for people living on that street.
You know, but again, we got to have housing.
So a lot of different thoughts go into it.
Personally, as far as where I've focused my business
is responsible building.
And so seeing 10 to 12 just in the middle of a neighborhood
is kind of against what I personally believe in
or focus on.
People have to live.
I mean, there's nowhere to live.
A lot of my customers start because their children
can't afford a house.
They can't even afford rent,
but they could afford a payment on a loan to build an ADU.
It's a lot cheaper.
They already own the land.
You know, they're increasing their property value
by doing it there.
It's kind of a win-win situation for everybody.
In recent times, because of the way that they've tweaked
the SB9 law, we're able to build two or three ADUs
on properties locally, Orange County and Los Angeles,
in my market.
Which is the normal California law, right?
That is correct, yeah, for SB9.
Now, I am currently a part of about four different projects
that they're building two ADUs on their properties.
And in those ones, I don't think it's gonna negatively
affect the neighborhood.
First of all, two of them, they're already
in very close proximity to large apartment buildings.
So, you know, it's a larger lot.
We're able to, we added a little driveway.
We did the things that we could do,
but realistically, there's already cars in the parking lot
from the neighboring apartment buildings.
And the other two, they're just two small one-bedroom ADUs,
450 square feet on the bottom, 450 square feet on the top.
The homeowner, they still plan on living there.
Maybe short-term, I'm not exactly sure.
But they're gonna rent out those two units,
and it's gonna more than pay their mortgage.
So, you know, those, I stand behind.
I do think there possibly should either be a limit
or maybe certain zones, as opposed to San Diego
saying anywhere in San Diego, if that is the case.
But I definitely think something has to happen
because although ADUs obviously are extremely popular,
doing one or two at a time isn't really gonna solve
any real problems, in my opinion.
You mentioned you're focused on responsible building.
How do you go about that?
If your neighborhood is already in an area
that has a lot of cars on there, we can put a few more on.
It's not gonna negatively impact the neighborhood.
You know, if we're in a very, like, small cul-de-sac area,
we're gonna do our best to try to get parking
on their property.
It's a little difficult, and I had said it,
mentioned it before, but I think the cities need
to do a better job to allow homeowners
to put more parking on their property.
You know-
To bring the cars inside-
That's right.
In the, right by the ADUs.
Yeah, they're very restrictive as far as what they allow.
I understand we can't just pave full, dry, you know,
full front yards and just let, you know,
12 cars be on their front yard,
but what me and my homeowners are asking,
let's widen our driveway a little bit and let us fit two.
One or two cars.
From what I'm seeing, when it's a parent
and their child and maybe their wife are moving in,
a lot of them only have one car that they share between them.
So that may not even make an impact on the neighborhood
to begin with just one car, but having one extra space
probably wouldn't negatively affect the aesthetics
of having a little eight foot or nine foot wider driveway.
So I think that's something that the city can do
that would mitigate a lot of the people's complaints
saying it's gonna cause all this parking.
Well, work with us.
Let us figure it out.
You know, the other thing they say
is about the infrastructure.
I hear that a lot.
All these houses, infrastructure.
The water and the pipes.
Yeah, water, sewer.
I mean, we all pay a lot of money in property taxes.
Like, fix the sewers if that's a problem.
I'm not the expert on it, but so far what I've seen
is it's not negatively impacting it.
And the cities that are trying to add,
they are upgrading all their systems.
So you'll see giant trenches
and they're upgrading what they have to do
because they're making an effort to add it.
So I know it's possible.
And now people can do, you said, two to three
if they have the space.
It's very, very simple now to do two to three additional
on your property.
There are different requirements for sizes and lot sizes.
And you can't just build like three 1,500 square foot
on your land.
But in general, you could build one larger size
and then a couple like smaller ADU style.
But that's if you have a big property.
A normal size property, 7,500 square feet,
7,000 square feet, adding two,
two bedroom, two bath units is a pretty common thing now
in order to do.
So we can get it passed.
It's not easy and quick to get passed through the cities.
They take about six, seven months now,
but we get them passed.
And the amount of rent that these homeowners are collecting
from adding that is, you know,
it's just so great for the families.
In my experience, they're charging less rent
because they're looking for good quality tenants
as opposed to who's paying the highest amount.
So in my personal experience,
those homeowners are the ones that are lowering rent prices.
Who are the type of people that are building these ADUs now?
A lot of my clients are homeowners,
either looking for their children or their parents.
To live on their property because they can't afford,
you know, rent or to purchase their own house
at the current time.
Or it just makes more financial sense
or they want them closer.
I have been on this television show twice before.
I've had several of your viewers reach out to me saying,
hey, you know, we saw you on California Insider.
We really like that you guys are focused
on responsible building.
You know, we're aligned in very similar ways.
So I did want to thank you for that,
aligning me with customers that I prefer to deal with.
You know, that we have the same sort of values.
We can kind of design things with the same things in mind.
So I did want to offer some sort of incentive
to some of your viewers that if they did reach out
and wanted to get a consultation,
I do have some special incentives for them.
And thank you for that.
The San Diego residents that we interviewed
are concerned about this program, the bonus ADU program.
People are building so many
and one of their concerns they have
that this is gonna be a statewide.
What are your thoughts on that?
It's a very, very real concern.
I think that just like even at the smaller scale
of being able to add two or three to certain neighborhoods,
I think it should be very selective
when you get beyond that.
Adding 10, 12, personally,
I believe could be destructive in certain areas,
but I do think it's needed.
Some of my first thoughts when I see the photos of that
is as a developer, all the neighboring houses,
yes, I know it's very unfortunate
for the people that live in those houses,
but as a developer, my first thought is
their property probably just doubled in value
because other developers can see
the potential of what's allowed.
So that is one side of it.
But again, I think it goes back
to just responsible building.
I'm not too much into the regulation of cities
telling me you can do this or you can do that,
but if they're gonna allow it to get to a certain extent,
I think zones and very specific zones
could be very helpful to that
and say you're allowed to do it,
but you're gonna be here
and it can't just be the entire state.
So that's my opinion.
Now we go back to Dana and Jeff to hear more
of what's happening on the ground in San Diego.
What are your concerns about these developments?
These developments are too big
for where they want to put them.
We are very willing to accept four units
on a single family lot.
Four units is consistent with what HUD,
the Federal Housing and Urban Development Department
defines as a single family lot.
That would be the house, two state mandated ADUs
and one bonus city ADU, which could be deed restricted.
That would be gentle density.
That's what the state talks about,
gentle density for us to absorb.
We have about a half a million
single family lots in San Diego.
That would fulfill our RHNA requirements.
We would meet what we have to provide for the state.
We're willing to accept that.
And the bonus ADU program can live on
in the multifamily zones and San Diego
can continue to produce the housing
that it needs for the residents.
But right now what we're seeing
is the affordable homes, the smaller homes,
the starter homes are being bought up by developers.
They're paying more than market rate.
They're coming in, they're outbidding
the would-be homeowners and they're driving up
the price of single family homes.
And then they're building these, you know,
20, 10, 20 unit apartment complexes.
Those starter homes are taken off the market.
They will never be for sale units anytime soon.
And the market is just disappearing for those people.
And I think the other part of it is
we're not asking the question of what kind of housing
do we want to be building where, right?
We just say, we have a housing crisis.
We need as many units as possible, no matter where they are.
So let's put extremely dense 450 square foot studios
in the middle of automobile dependent,
you know, residential neighborhoods,
as opposed to taking a step back and saying,
what's the biggest deed we have in San Diego?
And there was a study that was done
by a consultant called London Motor,
who does a lot of work for the city
as part of their community plan updates.
And they said, look, what we really need
is we need family sized housing.
We need two, three bedroom apartments
because what's happening today is we're flooding the market
with all these 450 square foot,
one bedroom studio apartments.
Now, you know, those single people say,
I want to form a family and they look around,
there's no place for them to live.
And so that's really where we're losing population.
And the thing they emphasize is
we shouldn't just be asking for how many units we need,
we should be asking what type of units we need.
And our way of thinking, and we've gone through it,
where we live in single family neighborhoods
and we've got that generational wealth
and we've got the environment
that's conducive to raising families,
this should really be a family oriented program.
And the way they've structured the fees,
the way they've given them the incentives,
even something, we talk a lot about
the regional housing needs allocation
and it's just total units, but not what type of units.
And, you know, I think our position would be
that we're just trying to get people to think
about putting the family back
in single family neighborhoods.
You guys brought some photos for us
to see what these look like.
Can you show us?
Yeah, I think because it's hard to visualize sometimes,
we did bring a couple of photos.
Here's a...
So this looks like it's two stories, 10 units, right?
In just somebody's backyard.
Yeah, there's 10 units.
There's also another ADU in the house.
So altogether there's 11 ADUs plus the house.
So 12 units where there used to be one.
It's on a cul-de-sac
in a very high fire hazard severity zone.
And there's supposed to be a 20 foot road access,
20 feet wide for a fire truck to come.
We've actually measured this one
with two cars parked on either side.
There's actually only 16 feet and nine inches
for a fire truck to get in there.
So it's a very dangerous situation
and we're trying to get the code changed
so that this would not be allowed in the future.
And you have another one you brought us, right?
Yes, that one's even bigger.
That one sits on a canyon.
And this is again, two stories.
It looks like this is like 16, right?
That's 16.
There's a 17th unit you can't see in front of it
plus the house.
So there's 18 units.
It's on a canyon under a San Diego Gas
and Electric line easement.
And once again, totally legal.
People didn't know it was being built
until somebody put a fence around it.
Yeah, and then again-
And this is essentially more than the number of homes
that are probably on this street, right?
Yes, so yeah, they've probably virtually doubled
the number of homes on the street.
And that's a big part of this,
with the fires that we saw in Southern California.
And in fact, even in the neighborhood I live in,
there's requirements that people
haven't been paying attention to
in terms of the evacuation routes, evacuation planning,
just something like how far apart are your fire hydrants
has a different requirement in a multifamily zone
versus a single family zone.
And it gets back to the infrastructure consideration
and what does it mean to be multifamily housing
that none of these things are really being considered
with these projects.
They just say, it's great to have all this housing,
you've got 18 units there, is that 18 times three,
which is 54 trash cans that are gonna be out on trash day.
We're not thinking of that, the fire gap.
We saw the pictures in LA where people had to bring
forklifts in and throw cars out of the way
in order to serve a fire.
These things are real considerations
that people just aren't thinking about.
And are you supposed to have an onsite manager?
Are you supposed to have offsite trash location?
There's a bunch of requirements that we have
for multifamily housing that are just being ignored here.
And it gets back to that same question of,
well, either we're requiring too much
of our multifamily housing or there's things here
that we should be requiring that we're just not requiring.
Well, California state law says that if you have 16 units
or more in an apartment building,
you have to have an onsite manager.
There are gonna be 18 units
on that last project we showed you,
but because they're ADUs, accessory dwelling units,
they're not apartments,
there is no onsite manager required.
The one that's gonna have 116 or 126 units,
they're ADUs, they're not apartments.
So legally, they wouldn't be covered by the law
that says if you have more than 16 or more apartments,
you need an apartment manager.
That one's designed with a built-in swimming pool,
barbecues, but do they need an onsite manager?
Not under the current law.
These projects are skirting all sorts of things
and all sorts of multifamily zoning laws
because they're being built in single-family zones.
There's a problem.
There's a problem when apartment complexes
are being built in single-family zones,
not in multifamily zones.
And this is a San Diego City law.
It doesn't include the county, right?
This is a city ordinance, right?
Yeah, just the San Diego City.
The larger county adheres to the state regulations.
And one thing to point out to people statewide
is we have a department called
Housing and Community Development.
And last year, they decided that everybody was entitled
to a second ADU on their property.
So if you think about the seven million homes
in all of California, by fiat,
they added the capacity to build seven million more ADUs.
You know, that's so much more than we need
just to meet our RENA numbers.
We don't need to keep amplifying and amplifying it.
You know, a lot of solving, addressing our housing needs
is about hitting singles and doubles
as opposed to trying to solve the whole housing crisis
on a single lot.
And that's the whole concept
of what's called missing middle housing.
And infill housing is that you build new structures
that are compatible with the existing neighborhood.
It's just trying to blow up the scale
of individual developments
and getting these things that are vastly out of scale.
Have you guys talked to your city council members
about this?
So we spent a lot of time trying to talk
to the city council.
We show up at public meetings
where they're considering changes to the ADU laws.
And in fact, we're in the middle of something right now.
So as a response to certain neighborhoods
being over-targeted with the bonus ADU projects,
particularly lower income neighborhoods
that have been typically had less investment
in terms of infrastructure and parks.
So that finally awakened the city council
to realize that this was a real issue.
And the city council started a process to make some changes.
It first went to the planning commission
and they recommended some changes.
Then it went to what we call our land use
and housing committee a few weeks ago.
And then they sort of punted it to the full council
because this is the kind of thing
that they know is highly unpopular
and nobody wants to take a vote until they have to.
And as a coming up on June 16,
the full city council is gonna be considering some changes.
The problem is we're going from something that's horrible
and the changes are just bad.
What would the changes do?
Well, instead of allowing,
so the 180 new projects you wouldn't be able
to build more than say 10 to 15,
but that seems like a restriction,
but 10 to 15 units,
that's an apartment building going in next to you.
So it still hasn't addressed the underlying issue
of just what's the right scale for these.
And I think one of the things that's important
is we don't oppose ADUs.
We have a lot of our supporters actually have ADUs,
whether it's a new unit installed in their backyard
or a converted a garage
or something converted in their house.
We have a lot of our supporters do that.
We've had somebody on our board
who was an actual ADU developer
of these single homeowner driven projects.
And again, 98% of all the projects,
the creation of ADUs are within projects
that we think are of appropriate scale.
And so the city has put a lot of political capital
into these outlying projects
with what we consider to be a limited benefit.
I mean, basically it's not near transit,
so we're not addressing climate change.
The rents that they're charging
are effectively above market rate
in a lot of parts of the city.
So if we're just building market rate housing anywhere,
that should be done under a little more consideration
of existing conditions in neighborhoods
as opposed to somehow being something
that should have no regulation whatsoever.
The other thing I wanted to say
is those studies we were referring to
and the city council and the mayor,
they refer to these bonus ADU projects
as missing middle housing.
But if you investigate missing middle housing
and Opticose and Daniel Pirolic,
who's the gentleman that coined the terms,
missing middle, those projects are supposed to fit
literally seamlessly into the neighborhoods.
So when you think about the projects we showed you,
those obviously don't fit seamlessly into the neighborhood.
You're not supposed to be able to look
at one of these missing middle projects
and know whether there is one house there
or whether there are four homes there
that are under one roof.
That's not what the bonus ADU program is.
It is apartment complexes and backyards.
They are not missing middle projects.
They're supposed to be similar in size,
scale, scope, and footprint to a single family home.
And that is not what the bonus ADU program is.
Jeff, do you think this is something
that people may wanna push it across the state?
I think there's been a,
so San Diego has been a big bellwether for this program.
And I think people statewide are hoping
that the backlash that we've seen in San Diego
can be sort of tamped down
so that they can then start to promote this
as a statewide initiative.
I just don't see where that's really gonna happen.
A lot of people look at-
I think at this point, people realize
that what they're getting in return,
and here's a way to think about it.
We tear down more homes in San Diego every year,
existing apartments,
than we build as bonus ADUs in San Diego, right?
The what we're really getting from this specific program
as opposed to the thousands and thousands of ADUs
that get built without the program
is a pretty marginal return.
And like I said, it's a lot of political capital
is at stake on something that isn't a significant return,
particularly if people would start thinking about saying,
what is it that we're really trying to do?
Are we trying to create family housing?
Are we trying to create for sale opportunities?
And just the fact that we have this bonus ADU program
meant that San Diego is derailed
on considering for sale ADUs
because if you don't follow state rules,
then when the state changes and goes a certain path,
then you've deviated and your code is hard to align
with other state initiatives.
We have something else going on.
I think that's kind of a bellwether
for what might happen with trying to go statewide
with the bonus ADU program.
There's something called SB-79,
which would allow up to 65 feet.
A half mile away as a crow flies from any transit stop.
And if that goes through,
then obviously people haven't awoken yet enough
to realize that they should be opposing this.
But if that gets shut down,
I think it kind of tells you where the trend is
in terms of public awareness
of the acceptability of these programs.
There's a certain amount where homeowners have been made
to be the scapegoats
of a lot of other statewide housing issues,
whether it's a construction defect litigation,
which makes it so you can't build condos,
whether it's project labor agreements
would drive up the cost of housing.
And the RAND Institute just did a study
on the cost of housing,
and it costs four times as much
to build an affordable unit in California
as it does to build a market rate unit in Texas.
And they smartly point out
that we're getting four times less housing
for our public housing dollars
than we could be getting if we did that more efficiently.
So there's all these hidden costs that are being put
and just permitting times.
The big thing the Turner Center focused on
is they said, well,
because I just go down to the development services,
the building department,
and I say, I would like a permit for this project.
And they go, okay, that takes 30 days, right?
And it might take you for the same project
to be built in a multifamily zone,
it might take 22 months.
And time is money.
And we have sympathy for developers.
We're not trying to drive up the cost of development.
We're just trying to make sure it gets done
in the places where it makes the most sense.
What we found is very interesting about what we do
is we have no financial incentive in this.
We're people who just see what the city's doing
from a planning standpoint,
and we think they could be doing a lot better.
And I think it provides an interesting dynamic
because people even ask us,
sort of how are you guys getting paid?
We can advocate for what makes the most sense.
And as opposed to saying,
well, I'm a paid transit consultant,
or I'm a paid housing consultant,
or I'm an affordable housing builder.
Everybody's got a certain financial, and we don't.
We're just volunteers.
We do this because we think it's the right thing to do
for San Diego's neighbors and residents.
Dana Givitt and Jeff Huder,
with Neighbors for Better San Diego,
it was great to have you on California Insider.
Great to be here. Thank you for having us.
We appreciate you covering this important issue.
What do you think of the bonus ADU program in San Diego?
Do you think it's excessive, or do you think it's necessary?
You can always email me at ciamacacaliforniansider.com
or comment.
We read all of your emails and comments.
I'm Ciamac Coramie, this is California Insider,
and we'll see you next time.
