The Daily Agenda: Tucson's progress with casitas is slow, and typical
Tons of cities are experimenting with ADUs ... Few cities see quick success ... Tough times for saguaros.
Casitas are so easy to hype. They hit all the right notes: Let people build what they want on their own property. Address the racism embedded in housing policies. Give granny a place to stay!
All those are worthwhile goals, but the public needs a clear-eyed view of what to expect when elected officials pitch casitas as a way to deal with the housing crisis, as the Tucson City Council did in 2021 and the Phoenix City Council is doing today.
When we wrote about casitas recently, we were struck by how few had been built in Tucson. Just 61 applications were submitted in all of 2022.
Surely the pace had picked up as Tucsonans got comfortable with the idea of building a casita and city officials streamlined the permitting process?
Nope. We asked the city’s Planning and Development Services Department for updated statistics, and what they sent us was not encouraging. Nearly two years after the city started allowing casitas, just 77 applications have been submitted and only 37 casita projects have completed the permitting process — which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re even built yet.
That’s not going to make a big dent in Tucson’s housing needs any time soon. More than 75,000 Tucson households needed “housing affordability solutions” when Tucson officials adopted their Housing and Affordability Strategy in 2021.
To be fair, city officials said in 2021 that casitas would be just one prong of the city’s overall housing strategy, which also included transforming public housing, rehabilitating multi-family buildings, and updating zoning laws to encourage affordable housing, among other goals.
Ann Chanecka, the deputy director of Housing and Community Development in Tucson, gave a measured response to the Daily Star in November 2021.
“I think that it’s not going to solve our housing crisis in and of itself,” Chanecka said. “I think right now given the incredibly high rising cost of housing and not having the stock to meet the current demand, we need all of the tools we can use.”
But again, casitas are just so easy to hype. Mayor Regina Romero was a little less restrained in her state of the city address in December 2021:
“This is an important step in addressing our affordable housing crisis, disrupting systemic racism, and helping to keep more people in their homes while contributing to building generational wealth and stability for families.”
And Romero highlighted casitas in her July endorsement of Council Member Lane Santa Cruz, who also included casitas in a pitch for re-election. Romero said the ordinance would ensure that “people can build generational wealth and establish multigenerational households while increasing our supply of affordable housing.”
Even Phoenix officials are on the hype train. Phoenix Vice Mayor Yassamin Ansari told the Republic in July that casitas would be a “huge, huge help.”
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The fact is, Tucson isn’t alone in seeing slow progress with casitas, aka accessory dwelling units or ADUs. We looked at how casitas are faring in other cities and, for the most part, they’re having about as much success as Tucson.
The Urban Land Institute boiled down the barriers to the speedy adoption of ADUs in a 2021 report, citing restrictive zoning, red tape, high cost and limited financing options, as well as resistance from neighbors.
“In fact, after legalizing ADUs, many cities have initially seen only a handful of units built. It took strategic changes such as greater flexibility in site development standards, shorter and simpler approval processes, and increased technical support to encourage higher levels of ADU construction,” according to the report.
The most successful example we found was in Los Angeles, where one in four new residential units is an ADU. City officials there aggressively promoted them and the state Legislature swept away constraints that had held back ADUs for years.
But in general, the slow pace for casitas in Tucson is pretty typical.
Spokane is seeing a similar number of ADU permits issued as Tucson.
Denver had just 450 applications from 2010 to 2022, so city officials relaxed the rules in January.
Minneapolis officials legalized ADUs in 2015, but just 232 have been built since then, including 13 in 2022. Interest waned after the city legalized duplexes and triplexes in more areas in 2020.
Albuquerque officials changed zoning rules in June to allow for more ADUs, but pushed back against duplexes.
Anchorage officials loosened rules on ADUs in January after their program got off to a slow start.
It could be that many years from now, casitas will be widespread in Tucson and owners will be making a little extra money renting them out or happy their elderly relatives can live so close.
But so far, it appears the letter the Barrio Neighborhood Coalition sent to city officials in late 2021 was more on the money:
“…this is a drop in the bucket of our city’s affordable housing needs, and we are concerned that focusing on this topic means that serious attention isn’t being paid to other items on the list that could have a great impact.”
Tragic wind: At least 400 saguaros, including some that were about 100 years old, were knocked down in Saguaro National Park-West by a windstorm last month, the Arizona Daily Star’s Tony Davis reports. Wind speeds reached 62 miles per hour during the storm.
Blue light special: The City of Tucson is installing blue lights at certain intersections. The lights are meant to help police officers monitor red-light runners from a safer distance. The city is starting on Thursday at the intersection of Grant Road and Craycroft Road.
“This intersection was selected based on the historically high frequency of left-turn collisions and higher traffic volumes in this area,” according to a news release from the city’s Transportation and Mobility Department.
Whoops: A new state law is raising property taxes in the Continental school district, even though legislators didn’t mean for that to happen, Pima County Treasurer Beth Ford said in a news release. The error also affects the Altar Valley, Empire, Reddington, and San Fernando elementary school districts.
“The Legislature was trying to adjust how school districts with high schools are reimbursed by elementary-only school districts when students in the elementary districts start attending high school,” Ford said. “Unfortunately, based on the state’s complicated method of funding public schools through property taxes, the law of unintended consequences is causing tax increases in some school districts.”
Recall fails: The effort to recall state Sen. Justine Wadsack, a Republican representing Legislative District 17 on Tucson’s north side, has failed. Organizers did not get enough valid signatures to force a special election in the spring, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports.
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1.4 million: The estimated number of accessory dwelling units in the United States in 2020, according to Freddie Mac, the federally chartered housing finance company.
I'm hoping that the design contest will help reduce cost by presenting repeatable designs that builders can build more efficiently! My household is excited about the potential to build an ADU, but there is a lot to think about for early adopters, so we're waiting until the process gets ironed out more. My hope is that there are a lot of homeowners like me who are waiting for costs to come down before they commit!
This is a good update! I hope to hear more about what the current challenges/burdensome requirements/difficulties with ADUs are, and how the city is responding, as well as hearing about how the design competition goes!
I know of at least six properties in the Palo Verde Neighborhood that now have one or two new casitas in back of an existing house. I watched them going up while walking my dog every day. I believe these are investor owned short term rentals and may be on R2 lots. Are they included in the ADU count?