California law relaxes backyard building rules to ease the housing crisis

Marketplace interviews UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Professor Dana Cuff

October 16, 2017

Founded in 2006 and led by Professor Dana Cuff, cityLAB is a think tank in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture committed to bringing design and research together to forge experimental proposals for architecture in the 21st century metropolis. Its projects engage four broad initiatives: the postsuburban city, rethinking green, urban sensing, and new infrastructures. Through cityLAB, faculty, students, designers, and policy makers collaborate on numerous problems at a range of scales, beginning in Los Angeles but extending beyond the region.

"Ira Belgrade had been a Hollywood talent manager for decades when his wife, who was also his business partner, died suddenly from Lyme disease.  

That’s when Belgrade decided to turn his detached home office, which had once been a garage, into a two-bedroom rental apartment known as an "accessory dwelling unit," granny flat or backyard home.

That is, until someone reported him. After an inspection and fine, Belgrade was told to get legal, he’d have to make changes to the tune of $50,000. That left him in limbo until he heard about a state lawmaker pushing reform in Sacramento. Turns out, planners had begun to see backyard structures — from converted garages to full freestanding houses — as a solution to the housing crisis. 

“There’s a lot of free land in the city, and it’s in people’s backyards,” said Dana Cuff, director of UCLA’s CityLab. 

The think tank has been studying the issue for a decade. LA has miles and miles of single-family homes, each with a backyard. By relaxing backyard homebuilding rules, Cuff says cities can boost affordable housing stock without spending any money. And families can turn their garages and backyards into sources of income. 

“Basically, it puts the growth of the city in the hands of individual property owners, so they get the benefits,” Cuff said."— Aaron Shrank, Oct. 16, 2017

Read the full article at the Marketplace website.