By Adam Stewart
Last week I saw the City of Hutchinson was promoting the construction of accessory dwelling units, and it seemed like a subject ripe to write about.
An accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is any separate, smaller residence on the same property as another single-family home. ADUs may be called guest cottages, granny flats, or many other terms.
I didn’t have to look very long to find someone in Hutchinson with experience with an ADU before connecting with Kate Givan, who lives in a cottage in her parents’ back yard. I interviewed the Givans, and it was easy to see why an ADU was a good fit for them. Kate has a disability and chronic illness, and the ADU lets her live conveniently close to her parents without living with them.
But ADUs aren’t just good for letting family members live close together. They can also be a way of gaining rental income, similar to creating an apartment within a house that is bigger than the owners need. Instead of trading space in the house for a rental, an ADU involves trading space in the yard. And unlike a retrofitted apartment, neither the owner nor renter has to hear the other walking around above them.
Depending on the size of the primary house and yard, city regulations allow an ADU to be up to 960 square feet. That’s large enough for a two-bedroom apartment with in-unit laundry. I can say that with confidence because the last three places I rented were all 960 square feet or less, and all three had two bedrooms and in-unit laundry.
The most important thing about ADUs, or rather about the city allowing them in its zoning regulations, is the recognition that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to housing needs in our community. Not everyone needs or wants the same kind of housing, and it would be a mistake to set our zoning rules as if everyone does.
This point isn’t limited to ADUs. Hutchinson’s zoning regulations also allow for loft apartments above businesses, townhouses, and cottage courts, all outside the trilogy of single-family houses, duplexes, and apartment blocks. Just this spring, New Beginnings finished a small cottage court, adding two units of housing to a property that had sat vacant for a decade, and testing new construction methods.
ADUs also serve as a form of infill housing – building where the public streets and utilities are already in place – even in neighborhoods without vacant lots to build on. Infill development is great, both for property owners and city government, both for the same reasons: infill lets you get more use out of things that are already paid for. For property owners, that means new housing without paying hundreds of dollars in special assessments every month. For city government, that means a larger tax base without more infrastructure to maintain and eventually replace. It feels satisfying to get several years of good driving after paying off a car loan before it’s time to replace it, and infill development is like that for communities.
It’s good that the city is allowing and even encouraging property owners to try different approaches. Hutchinson shouldn’t rely solely on development of new subdivisions to meet its housing needs. It’s easy to say, “But that isn’t how we’ve always done it,” but if the way we’ve always done it can solve our housing needs, it would have by now. We will be better off if we encourage people to try new ideas that might be one of the missing puzzle pieces.