By Macy Meinhardt, V&V Staff Writer, CA Local News Fellow
After a long and heated council meeting last Tuesday, San Diego City Council voted 6-3 to revise the city’s Bonus ADU Program by restricting its application in neighborhoods deemed incompatible, such as single-family zoning.
Hours of public comment revealed the community’s mixed reactions on how the city has used the program as a tool to address the regional affordable housing shortage.
While the program helps increase housing supply for low to medium-income renters, it has also drawn strong opposition from residents in areas experiencing the greatest increase in housing developments, such as College Area, Clairemont, North Park, and Southeastern.
“Our community has been marginalized for decades and developers are salivating at the chance to reap their profits at our expense. To allow hundreds of ADU’s to be dumped into our neighborhood is disrespectful and demoralizing,” said Encanto resident John Alexander.
An accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is a secondary housing unit on a single-family residential lot, commonly known as a granny flat. Under the Bonus ADU program, for each ADU an owner builds and marks as affordable they earn the right to construct an additional ADU. In areas near transit, this process can be repeated, giving no limit to the amount of units that can be built, so long as it fits on the lot and does not exceed the city’s height restrictions.
In single-family zoned neighborhoods like Encanto, the larger lot sizes have made the area vulnerable to developers looking to build the maximum amount of units that space will allow, resulting in ADU complexes. Recently, Encanto residents have come across permits for up to 18 projects in their neighborhood, including one with up to 43 units on a single lot.
“These projects are not your average 2- 4 bonus ADUs, they are mostly 8+ unit projects per single family lot,” said Neighbors for Encanto in a statement on their website.
District 4 Councilmember Henry Foster brought forward the motion to remove the program citing the impact caused by outlier projects like the ones presented in Encanto.
In his staff presentation, he also raised concerns about fire safety and evacuation risks, insufficient parking, and the lack of fees to cover the community impact of these projects.
However, not all were in favor of a complete erasure of the program, especially in the midst of a homeless and housing crisis.
One speaker, San Diego resident CJ Cashman, pointed out how the affordability of renting an ADU has been critical in helping San Diegans stay in the region and raise their family.
“My sister is a school teacher and is a single mom living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. Unable to afford rent for a home in her district, “she recently moved into an eight-unit ADU complex that is newly built. Her kids are now able to play in the neighborhood with kids, they ride their bikes, they have friends. She has the American Dream experience for her kids, which she wouldn’t have been able to have if these ADU’s weren’t built.”
As of December 2024, the median rent for all bedroom counts and property types in San Diego is $2,900, a 53% higher rate than the national average.
Under state law, cities are required to develop a program that incentivizes and promotes the creation of ADU homes offered at an affordable rate. In addition, state law also requires that up to 3 ADU homes be permitted in single family zones and 8 in multifamily zones.
The bonus program exceeds state law requirements and was deemed as a revolutionary tool to address the city’s housing crisis. San Diego is the only city in the state to have such a program. In 2023, over 239 ADU’s were built, with less than half of those marked as affordable, according to a memorandum by the city’s planning director, Heidi Vonblum.
District 7 Councilmember Raul Campillo voted no on the motion out of caution for not violating state housing laws.
“I am happy that the Council is making progress on improving this program. However, I ultimately voted no on the motion because I wanted to be sure whatever the city does meets legal requirements imposed by the State,” said Campillo in a statement.
City staff will have 90 days to draft an ordinance to change the ADU program.
