HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
THE PROMISE AND PITFALLS OF ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS AS AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING PANACEA
homeowners and developers, estimated that about 10 percent of the approximately 762,000 properties his firm has analyzed in the Seattle area are good candidates for streamlined approval of ADUs. “The goal here is to look at every single home … you have homes that have a big back yard and you can put accessory dwelling units in that,” he said, explaining that CityBldr is in the midst of a pilot initiative in Seattle to streamline the creation of ADUs on a larger scale by using data to quickly identify “single family homeowners with a lot that we can automatically approve … we are looking at parcel Copley said the initiative, which he has dubbed Add a Unit, rose out of talks with local governments about how to solve the problem of housing affordability without taxing developers or requiring developers to build a certain amount of affordable units — a policy which often backfires by pushing developers to build elsewhere. “As prices go up and the margins on developable land goes down, we’ve got to create market-based solutions, and I think one of the best market- based solutions are ADUs,” Copley said. “It’s great for the property owner; it’s great for the city because we are creating new homes, and these ADUs are kind of a good bridge to homeownership.” Tachovsky, the Buildfax CEO, said she was part of a housing council in her shapes, topography, distance to transportation, things like that.”
hometown of Austin, Texas tasked with finding solutions to the affordability crisis there. The council landed on ADUs as one of the best solutions. “In order to keep the soul of our city, we had to figure out how to address affordability in our city,” she said, acknowledging that ADUS are a fairly “narrow solution to the affordability crisis. … (but) I think it’s the best solution I’ve heard of out of any of them because it’s a market-based solution which is usually better than government-based solutions.”
visitors to the CityBlder website own properties that don’t have zoning for multi-family, limiting the development options for those properties. But ADUs are one option still available for single family zoning. “(Streamlined ADU development) could drastically increase the housing stock in places like Seattle, Portland, LA, the greater Bay Area … all of those are great areas for creating ADUs,” he said. “I could see this as being the next housing revolution.”
Matthew Gardner, chief economist with Windermere Real Estate in Seattle,
Zoning Roadblocks Copley noted that three of four
“As prices go up and the margins on developable land goes down, we’ve got to create market-based solutions, and I think one of the best market-based solutions are ADUs. It’s great for the property owner; it’s great for the city because we are creating new homes, and these ADUs are kind of a good bridge to homeownership.”
BRYAN COPLEY CEO AND CO-FOUNDER CITYBLDR SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
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MARCH 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS
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