Maxable Article on SB9

Crosspost from Maxable

If you missed it, check out this article in Maxable highlighting SB9.

Below is an excerpt from the recent article written by Lynette Padwa for Maxable:

As with most new housing legislation, the first version of SB9 has loopholes, built-in inequities, and issues that are not dealt with at all. Clean-up legislation is sure to follow.

The intent of SB9: Increase housing on single-family zoned lots and boost home ownership

SB9 uses two provisions to maximize housing units on a single-family lot: duplex provision, and lot-split provision

The owners of each lot can build a duplex, equaling four units of housing on property that originally had just one house. They can sell the lots separately.

Ideally, the smaller lots and the units on them would sell at a more affordable rate than typical single-family homes.

The SB9 duplex provision

With SB9, a single-family lot can now have two units on it. The second dwelling can be either attached or detached from the primary house.

The addition of the second dwelling must be ministerially approved. “Ministerially” means that cities can’t have subjective style standards such as matching the harmony of the neighborhood or the style of the primary house. Standards must be objective.

Cities can adopt development standards such as maximum height and minimum setbacks, like the standards in ADU legislation.

Parking exemptions are the same as those for ADUs: No parking spaces are required as long as the property is within a half-mile of public transportation.

Can you convert an ADU to a duplex? To be determined

If you intend to eventually split your lot and sell it, it’s best to build a new unit as an SB9 duplex and not an ADU.

The reason? There is nothing in the current bill that addresses converting an ADU to part of an SB9 duplex, or converting an ADU into the primary residence on a split lot.

There’s also nothing in the bill that states whether a second unit that’s an ADU can eventually be sold, or whether it would have to be a rental.

With so many issues up in the air, you’d be taking a risk permitting the unit as an ADU if you plan to someday split your lot and sell it.

A workaround if you want 4 units of housing but don’t want to split your lot

SB9 does open up an interesting opportunity if you want to increase the number of units on a property with a single-family home and you don’t care about splitting and selling the lot.

Under SB9, you can add an attached unit to your primary home and create a duplex. ADU laws consider a duplex to be a multi-family structure, but the units must be attached to each other.

Under ADU laws, a property with an existing multi-family structure may have 2 detached ADUs. So after you have turned your primary home into a duplex, you can add 2 detached ADUs to your property.

It has to be a 2-step process: first build the attached unit to create a duplex out of the primary dwelling. You now have an “existing” multi-family structure. Then you can build 2 ADUs.

Under current laws you won’t be able to split the lot or sell any of the units separately, but you can rent them.

Duplexes, lot splits, and ADUs

You can use the lot-split provision by itself, the duplex provision by itself, or use both of them. If you use both, you are not allowed to build ADUs.

In other words, you can’t split your lot, build a duplex on each lot, and then call both of them multi-family structures and add more detached ADUs on each lot as described in the workaround mentioned earlier.

That could result in 8 units of housing on a single-family lot, and it’s forbidden.

For help thinking through your ADU project from our nonprofit the Napa Sonoma ADU Center, sign up for an ADU Feasibility Consultation today!