The San Diego City Council on Tuesday backed off an earlier effort to repeal the city's accessory dwelling unit (ADU) bonus program, instead opting to work with Mayor Todd Gloria to limit the program's applicability and tighten its regulations.
The marathon meeting saw dozens of homeowners in single-family neighborhoods urge the council to repeal the program, citing concerns about traffic congestion, parking, fire safety and more. Daniel Horton, chief of staff for Councilmember Henry Foster III, said projects built under the program "resemble slave quarters or camps."
"There are 12 units back there, one on top of another in rows, in what used to be a backyard," Councilmember Jen Campbell told her colleagues as she projected a picture of an ADU development in Clairemont. "This is ridiculous and it's got to end."
Those remarks came as a surprise to Sarah Agudo, a graduate student who lives in one of the homes Campbell was holding up as an example of bad design. Agudo loves her apartment, which came with a parking space, a dishwasher, in-unit laundry, abundant natural light, a small private backyard and a common area with shared barbeque grills.
"I know it was a good team that executed this, like a good architect, a good interior designer, because everything is well thought (out)," Agudo told KPBS in an interview. "It's small, but it works."
For more than four years, the ADU bonus program has been adding more housing density to San Diego's single-family neighborhoods, which make up roughly 80% of San Diego's residentially zoned land. For decades those neighborhoods have been virtually off limits to new development. On Jan. 28 the council voted to request the program's repeal.
The ADU bonus program allows at least five units on most single-family lots, as long as a portion of the homes are set aside as low- or moderate-income affordable housing. If a lot is within walking distance to public transit, the program has no cap on the number of ADUs that can be built — though regulations on height and floor area limit most lots to 10 units or fewer.
On lots that are especially large, however, the city has received a handful of applications for projects with as many as 43 ADUs. The council's action on Tuesday aims to eliminate those outliers while preserving the program for smaller projects.
Agudo, who lives in an ADU in Clairemont, said she was unaware of the bonus program and the controversy that surrounds it. When she moved to San Diego with her boyfriend last August, the couple struggled to find housing that was both affordable and a reasonable driving distance to Agudo’s college.
Their one-bedroom apartment is too small for families with children, Agudo acknowledged, but it's great for students, young professionals or new San Diegans looking for a place to land.
“This is a very convenient and strategic location because you have both main highways that connect to the north and south,” Agudo said. “We really feel glad that this housing, or this project, was built.”
Even smaller projects of 10 units are too big for many ADU opponents — a fact known well by Daniel Shkolnik, CEO of Atlas West Group. The company built the city's first ADU bonus project in Talmadge, which led to the formation of Neighbors for a Better San Diego, the main group opposing the program.
Shkolnik said in the past, his company has focused more on commercial properties and renovations. Now it's investing more in new home construction, he said, because the ADU bonus program made it possible.
"It's really moved the needle in creating missing middle housing with zero public subsidy," Shkolnik said.
"Missing middle housing" refers to lower-cost homes like duplexes, townhomes and bungalows that were commonplace in San Diego before they were outlawed through the proliferation of single-family zoning in the mid-20th Century.
Shkolnik said the ADU bonus program has also been giving more local architects and contractors a chance to compete with larger out-of-town developers who have the time and money to build megaprojects of 50 units or more.
"The timelines (for large projects) are four to five years, the balance sheet requirements are $40 to $80 million, so you're forcing outside influences to help shape the growth of the city," Shkolnik said. "Now here comes the ADU density bonus, where now you can build these smaller projects that are from $2 to $5 million to create. It creates a whole new opportunity for San Diegans to now shape and build San Diego."
San Diego Planning Director Heidi Vonblum released a memo last week outlining potential changes to the city's ADU bonus program to address concerns from its opponents. Among the proposals are limits or exclusions for properties on cul-de-sacs or canyons to ease concerns about fire evacuations.
Those changes are expected to be presented to the City Council before the end of the year alongside other amendments to the city's Land Development Code. Vonblum also offered to return to the council in the next three months with an action item to exclude certain zones with large minimum lot sizes.
Shkolnik said he agrees the ADU bonus program could use an update, but that the total repeal contemplated by the City Council in January would only exacerbate the city's housing shortage.
"I think that if we weren't in a housing crisis, or the housing crisis was solved, we could probably have a different conversation," Shkolnik said. "But we're very much still in one."
