Over the last few years, there have been significant innovations in terms of ADU financing and more experimentation occurring with enabling ADUs to help address the Affordable housing crisis. 

One of my jobs is doing consulting work on various ADU policies issues. Recently, I got to dig into a topic that has piqued my interest: Mission-Driven Affordable ADU Programs.

This 28-page report is a product of that research.

I’m well aware that many jurisdictions and organizations wish for ADUs to address Affordable housing challenges that they face. Much as my book was an attempt to catalog some best practices regarding zoning regulations for ADUs, as well as designing and building ADUs, this research paper attempts to capture and highlight some of the best contemporary practices for using ADUs to address Affordable housing concerns. 

It is not an exhaustive depiction of all of the mission-driven ADU initiatives underway. Rather, it is a curated analysis of some of the efforts that seem to hold the most promise. I’ve categorized these efforts as follows:

Pioneering ADU Development Models 

• Concierge Service ADU Programs

• 3rd Party ADU Development for Homeowners

• Community Land Trust Developed ADUs

• Bonus Zoning Density for Deed-Restricted Housing

Pioneering ADU Financing

• Municipal Loans for Affordable ADUs

• Standalone 2nd Position ADU Construction Loans 

If you’re an advocate, policy wonk, or policy maker, looking at ADUs to address affordable housing, I hope that my research will give you a leg up. My hope is that well-intentioned initiatives learn from the successes (and failures) of other initiatives, rather than spending resources on efforts that don’t appear to result in much affordable housing production. 

But, part of the introduction addresses another important point about ADUs that I like to always keep in the foreground when addressing these matters. 

ADUs already affordable housing without any governmental intervention. So, whether of not they’re explicitly producing “A”ffordable housing, they are still providing lower cost housing than almost all other housing types. 

Similarly… 

• ADUs are incredibly energy efficient without any governmental intervention. 

• ADUs tend to create accessible housing without any governmental intervention. 

• ADUs tend to be built in areas that help create more walkable, vibrant communities, without any governmental intervention. 

ADUs are a passively virtuous form of housing, and therefore, in my opinion, policy makers should not feel guilt-ridden to try to make ADUs affordable, accessible, or green. 

Rather, policy makers should actually focus those efforts on single family homes, which are not necessarily affordable, accessible, or green, and are vastly more common than ADUs. 

As a basic principle, I believe that until ADUs are as commonplace as single family homes, they should basically get an explicit hall pass on onerous regulatory burdens (eg. deed-restrictions, affordability restrictions, green building standards, off-street parking requirements, etc) due to their critical role at serving a dire market and demographic need. (Unfortunately, most communities outside of the west coast still burden ADUs with onerous off-street parking requirements, owner occupancy requirements, and conditional land use reviews, but I digress).  

On top of that basic regulatory acceptance and adoption of ADUs as a fundamental good for a community, additional tools and interventions can be layered in to foster particular policy goals. And, it is a curated list of these tools and interventions that are the focus of this research.

This report is 28 pages, with 26 pages in the appendix.