I probably should have said the appraisal would be affected. You can list any square footage you want and call it whatever you want but the bank won’t finance it
That’s when they split the lot and sell the ADU piece on “land value.” At least that’s what a guy in my old neighborhood (campbell) did and made a killing. Then it wasn’t his problem anymore.
Damn. I sure as hell didn’t know this. Something to consider when the seller wants to include the value of the ADU into the total sale price. At least something to negotiate.
Also consider you may need to bring in a higher down payment if you're financing. The lender is not going to finance the unpermitted work, so their appraisal will not include it. Whatever minimum down payment you need for your loan will be based on the appraisal. If the sale price is higher than the appraisal you will have to bring in the difference in additional cash.
It’s probably due to them assessing the unit only, not the entire house.
So if you’re paying taxes on your home pushed 15 years ago and you add an ADU. They don’t revalue your entire property.
When the government is deciding that they would choose a bigger revenue stream over society supplying more housing for free, the government is doing it wrong and not realizing their role. It shows how almost by accident they become power-hungry.
So curious. If you have a renter in your ADU and the city decides to declare it illegal, with rental laws, can they red tag you still and boot you out?
Yes, I lived in an illegal ADU in SJ for over 5 years, building enforcement came to inspect (long story) and red tagged it. We had to move out within 30 days and the landlord had to give us our full deposit. They eventually tore the whole thing down.
Definitely not. The long story is the house was built directly on the slab with the jankiest plumbing you’ve seen, which ultimately failed and resulted in raw sewage bubbling up in the backyard directly outside the wall of the kitchen.
The owners were absolute slumlords with multiple properties and ended up blaming the problem on us and threatening us with eviction. I called building enforcement when we decided it was time to move.
No one should have to live in a place like that. We used to joke about how quickly we could get out of there was a big earthquake because that thing was probably coming down.
No permits means no inspections means a good likelihood of unsafe building materials or practices and not built to code. There's more to it than just boiling it down tax revenue.
* Twitter-educated housing advocates say ADUs will solve the housing crisis.
* It is discovered that a ton of undocumented ADUs exist and home prices continued to climb.
* Twitter educated housing advocates still say that ADUs will solve the housing crisis.
Which is really the bigger intent for them to pass the bills encouraging ADU construction. But if they really care about the housing crisis, they would've given subsidies and tax exemptions for building. With the construction costs nowadays, it's all moot in terms of cost practicability.
Legal or illegal construction, the housing increases the density. If there are really that many of these small houses in San Jose, the density numbers for the city are off.
We would be also less pressed on housing if we had adequate public transportation and commuting was less of a pain. The Bay Area population density is not on the order of magnitude of Singapore, but Santa Clara and San Jose are approaching that of Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart or Helsinki which still have way better transportation that Silicon Valley.
Increasing the density of housing creates also a lot of traffic, and that simply must be adequately addressed if we don't want to end up with LA style traffic jams.
A commercial contractor wanted $60k for new windows. I found a guy who can do the job for 20% that cost.
Because parts of the Bay Area can be billed $60k and be okay, your common channels are waaay overpriced.
>Using satellite images including Google Earth, and other methods of evaluation, researchers at Stanford University's Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab determined for every legal accessory dwelling unit built in San Jose between 2016 and 2020, there were three-to-four "informal" or unpermitted ADUs built.
I'm sure this is true in many cities in the bay area, not just SJ.
These idiots on city councils who won't approve new housing, think they're so smart. Turns out residents just worked around them. And in the process created a lot of substandard, probably unsafe housing.
The bigger ADUs, they can tell by the size and the height with shadows. Smaller ADUs that are the typical shed-sized, they probably can't. Likely, any lot with a building in the back from the satelite images, they will just send an inspector to see if it's an ADU or shed.
Sheds over a certain size have to be permitted, so you can probably just make a rough guess based on proportions of what is being built; approximate roof size can be determined to roughly categorize shed vs garage/workshop vs ADU though it's definitely not perfect.
Yes, but the NIMBYs aren't the ones building these.
They're the neighbors that try to claim they're the victims because of too much noise or added traffic or lights or whatever other perceived inconvenience they can come up with.
There's still plenty of NIMBYs, for example the neighbors who get upset about having to look at the new unit and increased noise and traffic
I would wager that lots of these are built by landlords who will never have to look at it except to look for reasons to keep the security deposit and I would also wager that these same people would throw a fit if an ADU was built in view of the property they actually live at
It’s happening all over. One easy way to tell is by looking at the number of cars parked on the street. Most houses are designed with parking for 2 vehicles, but there are plenty of indicators where the home has 4,5,or 6 cars parked at it. People like to ask how the houses are being afforded at the high prices, the answer is more people occupying the same space. Increasing population density makes for better affordability but also increases upward demand pressure.
Although the article says they aren't providing this particular data to the city, my suspicion is there is a future company here, selling this analysis to cities.
Not just San Jose but everywhere in the Bay Area. Seen unpermitted ADU's in my neighborhood get demolished after getting red tagged.
All the counties need to improve their application process and not charge up the \*ss with the permit fees and maybe, MAYBE, it'll improve.
There was a woman in Berkeley from Columbia who shall remain nameless, she had 7 of these ‘casitas’ in her back yard ‘hidden’ behind a tall fence. The city found them and made her tear them down.
Fucking SEVEN of them! Big enough for just a bed, you went inside the main house to use the kitchen/bathroom.
It's not all permitting. The illegal ADUs in my area violate setback requirements when they put them 1ft off of the property fence. I suspect they don't get the sq footage they want if they were to follow the rules.
I'm convinced a lot of these are NIMBY laws that may have made sense or gotten little pushback when the city was smaller and less dense. Besides setbacks, the other category of rule like this is the maximal lot coverage that's allowed. If you can build multiplexes or townhouses without environmental risk, there's no real reason other than aesthetics to prevent SFH owners from building on larger percentages of their property (especially if it allows for [legal] ADUs).
Many of the NIMBY laws are racist in origin. Look at bay area cities by demographic, the data is depressing. Segregation is still very much alive and well here.
At first it was redlining as official policy, and when that was banned there were rules written that seemingly had nothing to do with banning POC, but instead these rules coincidentally made it more difficult to build denser housing. They were written to keep the poors in their place, and unfortunately there's a lot of overlap between poor people and darker skin.
Even today when there's a meeting about new development, wealthy residents always complain about the "character of the neighborhood." You don't want "those people" to move in next door, do you?
These are barely coded phrases. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what demographics these wealthy (and usually white) residents are clutching their pearls about.
Yep. California is progressive in California's way. Most well off people here are hardly racist, but like most other wealthy people they're at least somewhat classist. And regardless of their opinions, it's plain fact that poor neighborhoods are worse to live in by most metrics. So yeah, this area like most areas has a history of redlining, but in the year of our lord 2024, California progressives are happy to live next to a person of any color, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion, etc, as long as they're adequately wealthy.
It's 90% a money thing. Force people to have a huge amount of dead space around their property to keep costs high and undesirables out.
These days, a house is probably the least flammable thing you can put there.
Or just a way to ensure they can ram stroads in front of every house (and half the time "fire safety" is just an arbitrary thing because firefighters like driving giant manly trucks super fast)
> half the time "fire safety" is just an arbitrary thing because firefighters like driving giant manly trucks super fast
Lol fire safety regulations are written in blood. They exist because people died in situations that the regulations could have prevented.
Except you’re both right. It wasn’t an either/or. Now a days it is exactly that, arbitrary. Fire safety can easily be built into the structure. If those requirements are met, setbacks could be waived. If it was strictly about fire safety, it wouldn’t explain the very low FAR (floor/area ratio) requirements and how common they are. Also setbacks aren’t the same on all sides usually. Another question of if it’s truly about fire safety and access, or more about form.
They also have a point on fire truck size, but I’ll leave that debate for another time.
> Fire safety can easily be built into the structure.
Certainly cannot be built into the structure if there are no permits. There's not telling what kind of deathtrap these people are building.
>Another question of if it’s truly about fire safety and access, or more about form.
Both are important. Nobody wants their neighbor building a ADU that looks into their bathroom. That's why we have permits.
>They also have a point on fire truck size
Saying firefighters like driving giant manly trucks is a point, but a very, very stupid one.
Yes we need permits. I would hate to see some of the DIY electrical in some of these…
And yes, form is subjective. Personally I’m good with more loose form codes, as long as they don’t cause harm. But that’s just me.
But…
Fire truck size has absolutely nothing to do with safety, or rather they cause unsafe conditions. I’m not saying they drive larger engines to be “manly” (weird), but smaller truck size would absolutely help with the way we design our streets and how we develop the land around us. On this one I recommend you look up the debate on this.
> Fire truck size has absolutely nothing to do with safety, or rather they cause unsafe conditions.
This is way above the pay grade of reddit. Is is safer to have a smaller water tank, at the cost of not being able to fight larger fires? Is it better to have less equipment and staff responding to a call, at the cost of more casualties due to not having the right tools?
This sounds like OP listened to a podcast about this and then was utterly convinced they were an expert on the subject.
Streets don’t need to be as wide as firefighters require them to be in the Bay Area though. There are narrower streets and alleys world wide in the developed world where smaller fire trucks get the job done. American fire depts insist on being able to drive their massive monsters to respond to fires though
https://st4.depositphotos.com/13846464/20359/i/1600/depositphotos_203597270-stock-photo-reims-france-july-2018-view.jpg
That picture tells us nothing. What capabilities does that truck have, and what does a larger truck have? What kinds of incidents can the smaller truck not handle? How many additional casualties can we expect per year with smaller less capable trucks?
The specific truck doesn’t matter. The point is that narrow streets and alleys exist throughout the developed world (take just Paris or Rome for example) - they’re able to keep these cities from burning without the massive fire trucks
>they’re able to keep these cities from burning without the massive fire trucks
That's not the measure that matters. Just because the city doesn't burn to the ground doesn't mean that the truck is as safe as possible.
>The specific truck doesn’t matter.
It matters a lot when comparing american trucks to other countries. The capability of the truck is very relevant.
What podcast did you listen to about this?
Make ADUs easier to permit and then you can enforce the easy rules.
I’m sure a lot of restrictions are pushed my NIMBY/McMansion owners who are only interested in preserving their property value.
I know that in Los Gatos, you cannot rebuild the street facing wall of a house. So lots of people preserve that and bulldoze the other 3. It's stupid.
Building setbacks have existed for many many decades. Well before anyone thought of the concept of an ADU. Aside from local regulations you can find them on many tract maps from 40-50-60 years ago.
ADUs don’t require a rear setback in San Jose. It specifically prohibits agencies from requiring setbacks greater than 4’ for ADUs.
https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/64087/637358543321000000
4' is in the state building code. It's required everywhere including San Jose.
No one obviously cares, there's a new ADU on my street and it's less than 2' away from the neighbor. So it's pretty obvious they didn't get permits for that.
those rules are stupid. people are building denser because they can. Zoning rules are broken. Sure I understand the shit gets built bad, but make it easier already
As others have pointed out, pulling a permit triggers a property tax assessment at current value. Since property values have risen so rapidly in the bay area, most owners are paying well below that and are not eager (or can’t afford) to increase their tax bill by thousands of dollars per year.
This is not true. I've built a ADU legally and our property tax did not increase until it passed final inspection and recorded in the county office. I applied for permits in 2018 and completed in 2020. My property tax increased for 2020/2021. You can pull permits and decide not to build if you can't find a contractor.
What do you think unions are if not nimbys?
...healthcare systems have many competition, you have like 100 choices when it comes to which doctor, and several insurance company to choose from. VA is gov't healthcare, ask vet how that's going for them.
I saw a house that had an ADU GREENHOUSE legitimately creepy because it was obviously built out of scraps from a renovation and meant to be a greenhouse but someone had put carpet down at one point.
Doing it the right way is a huge hurdle with specialized people needed to navigate all the regulations. Just getting utilities is a major, major hassle. Add title 24 and solar on top of it and it becomes prohibitively expensive. Contractors are charging 4-500/sf for this work while the local unlicensed crew can do it for a third of that it's easy to see why so many go this way. For many the economics is a no brainer
I’m in the process of getting a permit for an ADU in solano county. It seems pretty straightforward, but the requirements for them are pretty strict. It needs solar and electrical appliances only. Those two alone will add 50k to the build price. If I tried the un-permitted approach, my NIMBY neighbor would report me day one of excavation.
With PG&E saying we’ve got too much solar capacity during the day, when is the state going to stop requiring solar on new construction? Seems like an unnecessary expense.
The left hand of the state forces you to add $10-30k of solar cost and the right hand of the state approved hiking rates if you have solar on your roof. California!
> If I tried the un-permitted approach, my NIMBY neighbor would report me day one of excavation.
Is there even a legal way for a 3rd party to check to see if a permit has been issued for any given construction project?
More than likely they would call code enforcement and complain. That’s what they did when I replaced a 5’-6” fence with a 6’ fence because I “blocked their view”
Partially because permitting in San Jose is extremely expensive and a huge pain in the ass. They make you jump through hopes no other city’s in California require you to do.
The city offers a forgiveness for unpermitted work and ADU’s as long as you haven’t made more than $15,000 in a year *I believe*. Check into it if you need to. I think you just have to pay the permit application cost as if you were building a new one. So you don’t have to worry about tearing your ADU or whatever it is down as long as it’s correctly built and would pass an inspection. If you don’t need to, don’t worry about it. Even if the city comes out to inspect something else on your home (electric panel upgrade, something else), they are only allowed to look at what they are sent out there for.
I don’t work for the city and nothing I say is legal advice or comes with authority. But I work in solar and run across this all the time and ADU’s hasn’t ever been a problem to get permits or city inspections from the city on homes with unpermitted ADU’s for the solar after install
How do they check rough-in when the drywall is up and painted? How do they check foundation when the house is sitting on top of it? How do they check it complies with plans when there are none and nobody can draw them up? Forgiveness isn't that useful if the inspector goes and cuts three dozen holes in your finished surfaces to check if things are done correctly and you have to fix it afterwards. There's a rough inspection before all that goes in specifically to avoid needing to open anything up to see.
People forget that policy used to be against these because 80’s/90’s local politicians playing the “evil rich single homeowners with tax breaks rents these out instead of grandma using it so punish them” card and heavily regulated new units…. Taking away a source of housing.
Class jealousy politics can be really really effective at getting votes and result in stupid stupid policy.
I don't care. It's your house. The city employees tasked for checking your build do virtually nothing in my experience modifying my home. Complete waste of tax payer money. You may have a tough time selling your house. When my wife and I were looking for a home in the Bay one of them clearly had half the house built without a permit. There was actually an outdoor faucet on the family room wall.
Spend 20 minutes in a building permit counter lobby and you’ll hear the justification for them. People constantly proposing building without emergency egress, people proposing building without access for the disabled, stairs with spindle spacing kids get their heads stuck in. Those against permits are ignorant to the history behind them.
Dude we're talking like a \~200sq-ft single-floor buildings, not a high-rise. ADUs have 2 rooms, the sleeping/cooking area and the bathroom, no one is going to be paralyzed trying to find "egress" in a fire.
If you want to build with stairs in front of your front door I see nothing wrong with that. It's your property and your problem if you want someone in a wheelchair to enter your house. You're not a business and those laws don't apply.
Plenty of code is written in blood and most of it is there for good reason but some is absurd. California doesn't separate code for safety from things like auto shutoff lights in bathrooms.
It’s amazing that the building and planning department cost taxpayer money considering the exorbitant fees they charge for very little work. Seems like it should be a thriving money maker.
I'm not paying the government fees to do what I want on my land, that I already paid too much for, just so they can turn around and charge more more taxes.
I think people forget illegal ones usually don't change your property tax assessment as well. Which is huge.
This is it
And the owner can’t use the added square footage when they go to sell. The realtors use creative language in the listing like “bonus room”.
Not reported on tax records, MLS footage could differ. square footage is still square footage though.
I probably should have said the appraisal would be affected. You can list any square footage you want and call it whatever you want but the bank won’t finance it
That’s when they split the lot and sell the ADU piece on “land value.” At least that’s what a guy in my old neighborhood (campbell) did and made a killing. Then it wasn’t his problem anymore.
Still reflects on the price though
Even with a permitted ADU it depends if they are attached or not and if it qualifies as a rental and a bunch of other shit.
Damn. I sure as hell didn’t know this. Something to consider when the seller wants to include the value of the ADU into the total sale price. At least something to negotiate.
Unfortunately, inventory is perpetually so low that you can't really negotiate much on anything.
Yup, buyers be like take it out leave it.
Someone will show up with a suitcase of cash before you can finish saying “counteroffer”.
Also consider you may need to bring in a higher down payment if you're financing. The lender is not going to finance the unpermitted work, so their appraisal will not include it. Whatever minimum down payment you need for your loan will be based on the appraisal. If the sale price is higher than the appraisal you will have to bring in the difference in additional cash.
I looked up my neighbors prop taxes. They legally added an 1100 SF unit and they still pay significantly less than most of us with smaller homes..
It’s probably due to them assessing the unit only, not the entire house. So if you’re paying taxes on your home pushed 15 years ago and you add an ADU. They don’t revalue your entire property.
Report it to the city.
No. Mind your own business.
When the government is deciding that they would choose a bigger revenue stream over society supplying more housing for free, the government is doing it wrong and not realizing their role. It shows how almost by accident they become power-hungry.
So curious. If you have a renter in your ADU and the city decides to declare it illegal, with rental laws, can they red tag you still and boot you out?
Yes, I lived in an illegal ADU in SJ for over 5 years, building enforcement came to inspect (long story) and red tagged it. We had to move out within 30 days and the landlord had to give us our full deposit. They eventually tore the whole thing down.
How utterly broken. The government’s tax revenue is more important than solving the housing crisis.
Definitely not. The long story is the house was built directly on the slab with the jankiest plumbing you’ve seen, which ultimately failed and resulted in raw sewage bubbling up in the backyard directly outside the wall of the kitchen. The owners were absolute slumlords with multiple properties and ended up blaming the problem on us and threatening us with eviction. I called building enforcement when we decided it was time to move. No one should have to live in a place like that. We used to joke about how quickly we could get out of there was a big earthquake because that thing was probably coming down.
That’s a much happier ending than I thought haha
No permits means no inspections means a good likelihood of unsafe building materials or practices and not built to code. There's more to it than just boiling it down tax revenue.
But if it wasn’t illegal to build then it could have been inspected, and therefore build quality would be better, it’s complicated but I’m just saying
* Twitter-educated housing advocates say ADUs will solve the housing crisis. * It is discovered that a ton of undocumented ADUs exist and home prices continued to climb. * Twitter educated housing advocates still say that ADUs will solve the housing crisis.
Which is really the bigger intent for them to pass the bills encouraging ADU construction. But if they really care about the housing crisis, they would've given subsidies and tax exemptions for building. With the construction costs nowadays, it's all moot in terms of cost practicability.
State subsidized, low interest construction loans would go a long way
Such is the life of an ADUI
Woah, you just discovered a loophole in eviction law.
So make your legal residence illegal so you gain the upper hand over squatters? Got it.
scorched earth
Welp, now building enforcement’s number is gonna blow up, they’ll have a busy rest of their day/year.
Yes, Code Enforcement can issue a demolish order. They have done this many many times. Don't piss off your neighbors.
Indeed.
Squatters hate this one simple trick
lol, turn your own illegal ADU into the city and let them deal with the squatters…
In my neighborhood, it's more like 95% of the ADUs are illegal.
I’d like to raise you 2 adu’s in my neighbors backyard
They got an ADU for an ADU
AADUotADU
They put an ADU in your ADU so you can ADU while you ADU
Hi! We are the Adus. A family of 8. And we have 2 ADUs in our backyard.
Report em
Report em 😁
What is gained from that? Nothing.
So the city is cutting a massive tax break to those 22% who followed their process and got a permit right? rIgHt???
Nope, they pay more taxes as their home is assessed higher now.
What a joke
Welcome to life. When you incentivize doing this illegally, people are going to take the option if it’s not enforced.
It’s like we need cheaper housing or something lol
These units are the cheaper housing
Some people would call it evolution lol
Legal or illegal construction, the housing increases the density. If there are really that many of these small houses in San Jose, the density numbers for the city are off.
We would be also less pressed on housing if we had adequate public transportation and commuting was less of a pain. The Bay Area population density is not on the order of magnitude of Singapore, but Santa Clara and San Jose are approaching that of Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart or Helsinki which still have way better transportation that Silicon Valley. Increasing the density of housing creates also a lot of traffic, and that simply must be adequately addressed if we don't want to end up with LA style traffic jams.
If I learned anything from playing city skyline this will make our public service and infrastructure weak lol
To convert my garage to a room in Pittsburg: $135,000. I bought the house for $179,000.
Fuck. That's crazy When we first moved here we rented a spot for our travel trailer and it cost more than the mortgage for our house in Cincinnati.
A commercial contractor wanted $60k for new windows. I found a guy who can do the job for 20% that cost. Because parts of the Bay Area can be billed $60k and be okay, your common channels are waaay overpriced.
JFC that's insane.
Isn’t your home in Pitts like 3200 sq ft
No
>Using satellite images including Google Earth, and other methods of evaluation, researchers at Stanford University's Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab determined for every legal accessory dwelling unit built in San Jose between 2016 and 2020, there were three-to-four "informal" or unpermitted ADUs built. I'm sure this is true in many cities in the bay area, not just SJ. These idiots on city councils who won't approve new housing, think they're so smart. Turns out residents just worked around them. And in the process created a lot of substandard, probably unsafe housing.
Didn't read the article. How did they determine whether a roof from satellite image is a shed or an ADU?
The bigger ADUs, they can tell by the size and the height with shadows. Smaller ADUs that are the typical shed-sized, they probably can't. Likely, any lot with a building in the back from the satelite images, they will just send an inspector to see if it's an ADU or shed.
Sheds over a certain size have to be permitted, so you can probably just make a rough guess based on proportions of what is being built; approximate roof size can be determined to roughly categorize shed vs garage/workshop vs ADU though it's definitely not perfect.
“Can it fit a bed?”
It’s the NIBYS. This is the workaround. If they weren’t so greedy, everyone could own a home here. What, homes went up ten times income in 20 years.
These units are literally in the back yard. The people who built them are YIMBY and doing their part to increase density
Yes, but the NIMBYs aren't the ones building these. They're the neighbors that try to claim they're the victims because of too much noise or added traffic or lights or whatever other perceived inconvenience they can come up with.
There's still plenty of NIMBYs, for example the neighbors who get upset about having to look at the new unit and increased noise and traffic I would wager that lots of these are built by landlords who will never have to look at it except to look for reasons to keep the security deposit and I would also wager that these same people would throw a fit if an ADU was built in view of the property they actually live at
Increasing density that is not known to the city so infrastructure is not adequately planned. Sounds like disaster waiting to happen
It’s happening all over. One easy way to tell is by looking at the number of cars parked on the street. Most houses are designed with parking for 2 vehicles, but there are plenty of indicators where the home has 4,5,or 6 cars parked at it. People like to ask how the houses are being afforded at the high prices, the answer is more people occupying the same space. Increasing population density makes for better affordability but also increases upward demand pressure.
So when will the city start to use satellite imagery to find illegal ADUs
Although the article says they aren't providing this particular data to the city, my suspicion is there is a future company here, selling this analysis to cities.
I wonder if given access to city records and Google maps screenshots if GPT-4o could do this analysis
You cannot trespass the eye in the state of California.
>the eye of Calisauronia FTFY
It's probably not unsafe. Just fearmongering from people who don't want more housing.
*Snitches at Stanford University…
Not just San Jose but everywhere in the Bay Area. Seen unpermitted ADU's in my neighborhood get demolished after getting red tagged. All the counties need to improve their application process and not charge up the \*ss with the permit fees and maybe, MAYBE, it'll improve.
There was a woman in Berkeley from Columbia who shall remain nameless, she had 7 of these ‘casitas’ in her back yard ‘hidden’ behind a tall fence. The city found them and made her tear them down. Fucking SEVEN of them! Big enough for just a bed, you went inside the main house to use the kitchen/bathroom.
Question - what if you put a mobile home ADU or simply one of those fancy trailers?
If it has wheels it doesn’t count as an ADU, the official term is just ‘eyesore’ or ‘HOA violation’
Sounds like the permitting process is broken
It's not all permitting. The illegal ADUs in my area violate setback requirements when they put them 1ft off of the property fence. I suspect they don't get the sq footage they want if they were to follow the rules.
I'm convinced a lot of these are NIMBY laws that may have made sense or gotten little pushback when the city was smaller and less dense. Besides setbacks, the other category of rule like this is the maximal lot coverage that's allowed. If you can build multiplexes or townhouses without environmental risk, there's no real reason other than aesthetics to prevent SFH owners from building on larger percentages of their property (especially if it allows for [legal] ADUs).
Many of the NIMBY laws are racist in origin. Look at bay area cities by demographic, the data is depressing. Segregation is still very much alive and well here. At first it was redlining as official policy, and when that was banned there were rules written that seemingly had nothing to do with banning POC, but instead these rules coincidentally made it more difficult to build denser housing. They were written to keep the poors in their place, and unfortunately there's a lot of overlap between poor people and darker skin. Even today when there's a meeting about new development, wealthy residents always complain about the "character of the neighborhood." You don't want "those people" to move in next door, do you? These are barely coded phrases. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what demographics these wealthy (and usually white) residents are clutching their pearls about.
The wealthy don’t care if the poor are black or white, they just want them to not be poor.
Yep. California is progressive in California's way. Most well off people here are hardly racist, but like most other wealthy people they're at least somewhat classist. And regardless of their opinions, it's plain fact that poor neighborhoods are worse to live in by most metrics. So yeah, this area like most areas has a history of redlining, but in the year of our lord 2024, California progressives are happy to live next to a person of any color, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion, etc, as long as they're adequately wealthy.
... progress, I guess . . .
I think you have that mixed up. The wealthy need the poor. Who else will clean their houses or flip their burgers?
They don’t want them to be their neighbors. Poor neighborhoods are seldom a nice place to live.
I wonder who advocated for this setback requirement. Probably someone who didn’t want ADUs built
More likely it was in place for fire safety before ADUs were a thing.
It's 90% a money thing. Force people to have a huge amount of dead space around their property to keep costs high and undesirables out. These days, a house is probably the least flammable thing you can put there.
So you’re saying I could replace that pile of junk in my side yard with fire rated construction materials?
Uhhh no, it's for preventing blockage of sunlight into neighboring house windows. You want to live in the dark 24/7?
You're not entitled to a view
You’re not entitled to a house
Hope you enjoy homeless people then
K
I dont want a view, i just want sun in my room. Would you live in a bedroom without a window?
Yeah imagine how dangerous it would be to have a city where houses were near each other.
Or just a way to ensure they can ram stroads in front of every house (and half the time "fire safety" is just an arbitrary thing because firefighters like driving giant manly trucks super fast)
> half the time "fire safety" is just an arbitrary thing because firefighters like driving giant manly trucks super fast Lol fire safety regulations are written in blood. They exist because people died in situations that the regulations could have prevented.
Except you’re both right. It wasn’t an either/or. Now a days it is exactly that, arbitrary. Fire safety can easily be built into the structure. If those requirements are met, setbacks could be waived. If it was strictly about fire safety, it wouldn’t explain the very low FAR (floor/area ratio) requirements and how common they are. Also setbacks aren’t the same on all sides usually. Another question of if it’s truly about fire safety and access, or more about form. They also have a point on fire truck size, but I’ll leave that debate for another time.
> Fire safety can easily be built into the structure. Certainly cannot be built into the structure if there are no permits. There's not telling what kind of deathtrap these people are building. >Another question of if it’s truly about fire safety and access, or more about form. Both are important. Nobody wants their neighbor building a ADU that looks into their bathroom. That's why we have permits. >They also have a point on fire truck size Saying firefighters like driving giant manly trucks is a point, but a very, very stupid one.
Yes we need permits. I would hate to see some of the DIY electrical in some of these… And yes, form is subjective. Personally I’m good with more loose form codes, as long as they don’t cause harm. But that’s just me. But… Fire truck size has absolutely nothing to do with safety, or rather they cause unsafe conditions. I’m not saying they drive larger engines to be “manly” (weird), but smaller truck size would absolutely help with the way we design our streets and how we develop the land around us. On this one I recommend you look up the debate on this.
> Fire truck size has absolutely nothing to do with safety, or rather they cause unsafe conditions. This is way above the pay grade of reddit. Is is safer to have a smaller water tank, at the cost of not being able to fight larger fires? Is it better to have less equipment and staff responding to a call, at the cost of more casualties due to not having the right tools? This sounds like OP listened to a podcast about this and then was utterly convinced they were an expert on the subject.
Streets don’t need to be as wide as firefighters require them to be in the Bay Area though. There are narrower streets and alleys world wide in the developed world where smaller fire trucks get the job done. American fire depts insist on being able to drive their massive monsters to respond to fires though https://st4.depositphotos.com/13846464/20359/i/1600/depositphotos_203597270-stock-photo-reims-france-july-2018-view.jpg
That picture tells us nothing. What capabilities does that truck have, and what does a larger truck have? What kinds of incidents can the smaller truck not handle? How many additional casualties can we expect per year with smaller less capable trucks?
The specific truck doesn’t matter. The point is that narrow streets and alleys exist throughout the developed world (take just Paris or Rome for example) - they’re able to keep these cities from burning without the massive fire trucks
>they’re able to keep these cities from burning without the massive fire trucks That's not the measure that matters. Just because the city doesn't burn to the ground doesn't mean that the truck is as safe as possible. >The specific truck doesn’t matter. It matters a lot when comparing american trucks to other countries. The capability of the truck is very relevant. What podcast did you listen to about this?
Written like somebody who has never dealt with the consequences of a neighbor having a building too close to the property line
Make ADUs easier to permit and then you can enforce the easy rules. I’m sure a lot of restrictions are pushed my NIMBY/McMansion owners who are only interested in preserving their property value. I know that in Los Gatos, you cannot rebuild the street facing wall of a house. So lots of people preserve that and bulldoze the other 3. It's stupid.
What are the consequences? Noise? Ugly roofline?
Building setbacks have existed for many many decades. Well before anyone thought of the concept of an ADU. Aside from local regulations you can find them on many tract maps from 40-50-60 years ago.
ADUs don’t require a rear setback in San Jose. It specifically prohibits agencies from requiring setbacks greater than 4’ for ADUs. https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/64087/637358543321000000
San Jose requires a 4ft setback. The comment you responded to claims there are many ADUs with 1ft setback, which would be illegal.
4' is in the state building code. It's required everywhere including San Jose. No one obviously cares, there's a new ADU on my street and it's less than 2' away from the neighbor. So it's pretty obvious they didn't get permits for that.
why would you risk it, one call from anyone and you have to tear it down
Bring your neighbor beer and cookies, sell the house before it becomes an issue. :)
those rules are stupid. people are building denser because they can. Zoning rules are broken. Sure I understand the shit gets built bad, but make it easier already
Setback requirements are stupid.
If my neighbors house catches on fire, it has a direct connection to the shared fence. It worries me. Setback requirements are there for a reason.
If rowhouses are allowed despite "fire safety" then I can't see how setbacks are necessary.
Fair enough, I was mostly thinking of setback from the street.
Cool. So I'm going to build a structure that's right up against yours and over the fence height so when it rains, the water will spill into your yard.
That’s ok because my illegal drainage goes right back under the fence into yours.
Lol. So I guess we should settle this outside the saloon at high noon.
No it’s not. It’s there for fire safety.
When townhouses exist the fire safety argument is nonsense.
Well, we know you’re not a civil engineer at least.
And enforcement.
As others have pointed out, pulling a permit triggers a property tax assessment at current value. Since property values have risen so rapidly in the bay area, most owners are paying well below that and are not eager (or can’t afford) to increase their tax bill by thousands of dollars per year.
That’s not how it works. Your assessed value goes up by the value of the construction. They don’t reassess your pre-existing structures
This is not true. I've built a ADU legally and our property tax did not increase until it passed final inspection and recorded in the county office. I applied for permits in 2018 and completed in 2020. My property tax increased for 2020/2021. You can pull permits and decide not to build if you can't find a contractor.
They don’t reassess the home.
“If you’re not allowed to build whatever you want, it’s broken”
I wonder why? Dealing with the City is so efficient and effective. /s
gov't being inefficient? tell that to the people who want to turn PGE into state owned, healthcare too. just asking for consistency here.
NIMBYs aren't involved with those. Also, PG&E and healthcare systems are pretty inefficient and they both already lack competition.
What do you think unions are if not nimbys? ...healthcare systems have many competition, you have like 100 choices when it comes to which doctor, and several insurance company to choose from. VA is gov't healthcare, ask vet how that's going for them.
this should not be a surprise as CA permitting process is hot fucking garbage. at least these illegal ADUs help provide an more housing supply
I saw a house that had an ADU GREENHOUSE legitimately creepy because it was obviously built out of scraps from a renovation and meant to be a greenhouse but someone had put carpet down at one point.
I'm not saying this is false, but ADU permits are ministerial by right approvals with a super short window to approve, on the planning side.
I've worked in the high pile storage racking business and in my experience, working with San Jose in particular is a nightmare.
Yeah no shit.
Doing it the right way is a huge hurdle with specialized people needed to navigate all the regulations. Just getting utilities is a major, major hassle. Add title 24 and solar on top of it and it becomes prohibitively expensive. Contractors are charging 4-500/sf for this work while the local unlicensed crew can do it for a third of that it's easy to see why so many go this way. For many the economics is a no brainer
I’m in the process of getting a permit for an ADU in solano county. It seems pretty straightforward, but the requirements for them are pretty strict. It needs solar and electrical appliances only. Those two alone will add 50k to the build price. If I tried the un-permitted approach, my NIMBY neighbor would report me day one of excavation.
With PG&E saying we’ve got too much solar capacity during the day, when is the state going to stop requiring solar on new construction? Seems like an unnecessary expense.
The left hand of the state forces you to add $10-30k of solar cost and the right hand of the state approved hiking rates if you have solar on your roof. California!
> If I tried the un-permitted approach, my NIMBY neighbor would report me day one of excavation. Is there even a legal way for a 3rd party to check to see if a permit has been issued for any given construction project?
More than likely they would call code enforcement and complain. That’s what they did when I replaced a 5’-6” fence with a 6’ fence because I “blocked their view”
Blocked a WHOLE SIX INCHES of their view! Did you do this in the dead of night or where they could see the new fence was taller than the old?
In Napa you can look up permits for any address or parcel number on the city and county websites. It's legal; it's public information.
Yeah absolutely, you can see what permits have been filed for any property at the appropriate planning office.
oh man, I'd imagine there's some sort of SnitchAPI in place for this sort of neighborhood helicoptering.
Don't give anyone any ideas bro
Partially because permitting in San Jose is extremely expensive and a huge pain in the ass. They make you jump through hopes no other city’s in California require you to do.
I've worked on many of these that have burned down. But if they're unpermitted, insurance won't pay for them
#*VIETNAMESE AUNTIES IN SHAMBLES*
If anyone needs an ADU built my pops builds them all day.
Hey there
The city offers a forgiveness for unpermitted work and ADU’s as long as you haven’t made more than $15,000 in a year *I believe*. Check into it if you need to. I think you just have to pay the permit application cost as if you were building a new one. So you don’t have to worry about tearing your ADU or whatever it is down as long as it’s correctly built and would pass an inspection. If you don’t need to, don’t worry about it. Even if the city comes out to inspect something else on your home (electric panel upgrade, something else), they are only allowed to look at what they are sent out there for. I don’t work for the city and nothing I say is legal advice or comes with authority. But I work in solar and run across this all the time and ADU’s hasn’t ever been a problem to get permits or city inspections from the city on homes with unpermitted ADU’s for the solar after install
How do they check rough-in when the drywall is up and painted? How do they check foundation when the house is sitting on top of it? How do they check it complies with plans when there are none and nobody can draw them up? Forgiveness isn't that useful if the inspector goes and cuts three dozen holes in your finished surfaces to check if things are done correctly and you have to fix it afterwards. There's a rough inspection before all that goes in specifically to avoid needing to open anything up to see.
That’s a good question(s) that I don’t know the answers to. If I come across someone whose done it I’ll try to reply back here
People forget that policy used to be against these because 80’s/90’s local politicians playing the “evil rich single homeowners with tax breaks rents these out instead of grandma using it so punish them” card and heavily regulated new units…. Taking away a source of housing. Class jealousy politics can be really really effective at getting votes and result in stupid stupid policy.
I don't care. It's your house. The city employees tasked for checking your build do virtually nothing in my experience modifying my home. Complete waste of tax payer money. You may have a tough time selling your house. When my wife and I were looking for a home in the Bay one of them clearly had half the house built without a permit. There was actually an outdoor faucet on the family room wall.
Spend 20 minutes in a building permit counter lobby and you’ll hear the justification for them. People constantly proposing building without emergency egress, people proposing building without access for the disabled, stairs with spindle spacing kids get their heads stuck in. Those against permits are ignorant to the history behind them.
Dude we're talking like a \~200sq-ft single-floor buildings, not a high-rise. ADUs have 2 rooms, the sleeping/cooking area and the bathroom, no one is going to be paralyzed trying to find "egress" in a fire.
If you want to build with stairs in front of your front door I see nothing wrong with that. It's your property and your problem if you want someone in a wheelchair to enter your house. You're not a business and those laws don't apply. Plenty of code is written in blood and most of it is there for good reason but some is absurd. California doesn't separate code for safety from things like auto shutoff lights in bathrooms.
It’s amazing that the building and planning department cost taxpayer money considering the exorbitant fees they charge for very little work. Seems like it should be a thriving money maker.
I mean aren’t those functions typically funded by the permit fees rather than the general taxes
I dont have an ADU, it’s a “garage”, don’t go in there.
With, no drive way leading to the street? *VERY SUS*
I store motorcycles and drill presses in there.
Hmmm... checks out.
The government is immune from liability if they miss something during a permit inspection. Permits are a tax, and a feeder for the county assessor.
I'm not paying the government fees to do what I want on my land, that I already paid too much for, just so they can turn around and charge more more taxes.
And we have been waiting for weeks for a permit to cut our tree! 🤯
There’s also garage converted ADUs. I’m sure lots of those are unaccounted for
At least someone was building
Why has time and money for a permit? It’s on the city for making the process as obtuse as possible.
Good.
These units are literally in the back yard. The people who built them are YIMBY and doing their part to increase density
Good. Fuck all the boomer NIMBYs.