Accessory Dwelling Units: What are They and Who are They For?

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani. Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to the Living to 100 Club, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. Before we introduce our guests, I'd like to remind everyone that I'm available for public speaking events, particularly to community organizations and senior groups. I love to talk to others about aging well and making it over those hurdles. There's an option on my website to book a call to discuss a presentation for your group. I also offer one-on-one coaching for help bouncing back from struggles and setbacks. You can see this option as well on my website. And one last item of self-promotion, if you're looking for a consultant or trainer on clinical topics like dementia or depression, this is my wheelhouse. So feel free to contact me if there's any need in your group or organization. Contact options are on my website again, livingto100.club. Now, on to our podcast. In today's podcast, we explore the topic of accessory dwelling units, commonly called ADUs. Our guest for this podcast is Lisa DeJesus, a leading authority on planning, permitting, and building these secondary living units on your property. Sometimes referred to as granny flats, casitas, and even garage conversions, the accessory in the ADU term refers to an accessory to an existing home on a single or multifamily lot. This is a timely topic with a big spotlight on housing shortages across the US. Before we begin, let me give you a little background on our guest. Lisa DeJesus is the owner of ADU Gurus, LLC, located in Vista, California. Her company understands everything needed to build an accessory dwelling unit on a single-family parcel or a multi-family lot. Her practice offers an understanding of ADU feasibility, parameters for local government acceptance, development impact fee waivers, financing, architectural design, and construction management. She provides property owners with structural plans and Title 24 documentation to obtain permits to build ADUs in any local municipality. Lisa is a native San Diegan, a former City of La Mesa Planning Commissioner who currently sits as a Vista City Council appointed commissioner on local review board. Her key strength is helping to navigate the complexities of a city's planning and building departments. Lisa earned an Associate of Arts in Spanish from Grossmont College and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration from San Diego State University. She has a 20-year interest in and involvement with local government, specifically in density and infill. Lisa, welcome to our podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. What a, what a nice introduction. Thank you.

Yeah, well, you've accomplished a lot. I'm happy to share that with our listeners.

Great.

I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today, to what you're doing today?

Sure. I've been involved in local government in some way or another for the last 26, 27 years, and understanding Smart Growth and looking at how local government can increase density, especially along transit corridors, larger transit corridors. And it always has been interesting to me how that works. Fast forward to today, I'm a licensed California real estate broker in California, and land use has always been on my mind in the back burner, and I can help people understand what they, you know, what they're looking at and how they can maximize their properties. And then the ADU phenomenon, if you will, came down the pipe in California in 2017. And at that time I was looking to build my own granny flat, as most people have called them throughout time before ADUs were— the acronym was coined. And in that journey I really understood what the city was talking about. More than ever what came to my mind was that I could speak city fluently. And in doing that and in building my own, it has evolved into ADU Gurus, and I try to serve my clients well with what I know and how I can help them get their projects on paper all the way to permit and construction.

So you've been involved with local government and especially interested in appropriate land use, especially here in Southern California.

Right.

Plus your personal experience going through the steps to build a granny flat or an ADU on your property. Did you get that completed, by the way?

I did. And as a matter of fact, it is the same size that the state of California allows to be— or mandated that if it's built 750 square feet or less, that impact fees are waived. And that's— impact fees are the fees that a local government charges a developer to add housing to an area, so how you're going to impact streets and other taxpayer-supported parts of a city. In my city, those were $15,000, those impact fees, and I did not have to pay them because I built it under 750 square feet. And I use it today for a model home for people to understand what that looks like and how it feels. It helps people see that it's not a closet. It actually is a nice living space.

Yeah, yeah, so that's a big savings to have those fees waived as long as you're within that size.

That's correct.

You don't exceed the maximum. Yeah, and it sounds like a great, great opportunity to show prospective builders or homeowners what it actually could look like at that size. Yeah, and 750 feet is good. I mean, that's more than a studio, right? I mean, you probably have one bedroom, one bath?

It is. It's actually a 2-bedroom, 1-bath, and the bedrooms are 10 by 11, so they're perfectly livable spaces. The bedrooms could each hold a king-size bed. So, I mean, I think it has to do with layout as well. You don't have to use my layout, but I think it either satisfies people's curiosity to know that this is a livable space, but also if they don't have any design— in mind, this provides them one or it makes whatever they were thinking about maybe become more feasible for them in their project.

Sure, sure. Yeah, a model unit.

Yeah.

That's good. So, yeah, we hear a lot about ADUs and especially here in Southern California with— we have a shortage of housing and we're all familiar with that, but what's the— What's the driver? What's driving homeowners to add these? Is it really more for the extra income or more space for family members, parents, aging parents, relatives? What's the driver?

I think the driver— and this isn't just in Southern California. This is across the United States from Austin, Texas to Denver, Colorado, Connecticut, the state of Connecticut and Florida. All of those— just dabbling in looking at it nationwide, Oregon. There's a lot of opportunity for building an accessory dwelling unit. In Florida, for example, the housing coalition there, the Florida Housing Coalition, looks at affordability. And that, again, that's a common theme across the board to answer your question specifically is affordable housing and housing stock in general, right? There's just not enough of it. But in Florida and Connecticut, they're looking, they call them med cottages or granny pods.— and those are for— to help care for the elderly or to provide a caretaker a place to live. It's always more attractive to have somebody on site, and if they don't have the space in the home or they want the privacy but they want the convenience of the caregiver being nearby, there's so many reasons for that— the flexibility, that family flexibility that it provides. Is one of the reasons that it's necessary in certain areas or that it's allowed in certain areas. Local governments, though, in every state may be able to change the certain requirements that the states are saying, "Hey, listen, these should be allowed. We need more housing stock. We need more housing affordability." And local governments have a little bit of leeway with how they implement it, but most of the bigger cities are really looking at ADUs as a solution to housing, housing problem, housing scarcity, and housing affordability.

Mm-hmm. So, but it sounds like the homeowners are really doing this more for family, extended family, maybe some rentals, but more for just taking some preparation for aging relative or for their own need for smaller space and then renting it out. So really a lot of different reasons for doing this. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't hear income is at the top. It sounds like it's not at the top.

Well, income, you mean like for rental revenue?

Yeah, yeah, uh-huh.

Sure. I think that really— I think that can be isolated to age groups. Younger people and professionals that are trying to get into a market price in Southern California, they're looking for property where they can build an ADUs so they can help with that rental revenue generation helps them offset their mortgage. In other states, housing— well, housing across the board, you know, look at the National Association of Realtors have been reporting the increase in property values is just exponential. And in a lot of markets, people made more money on the equity they earned last year than they earned at their job. So there's money.— in the market in equity and people are using that equity to bring a child closer to home that can't really afford to be out on their own in this rental market or for an aging parent who wants to be closer to the family. It's just a great opportunity with the government minimizing the— or mandating that the costs be less to a single-family property owner to build an ADU and the reasons with the market going up for rentals, there's— and having parents out of state, especially with COVID people staying home to work from home, making a home office. There's just a lot of reasons for building these, and there's a lot of financial incentives to do so.

Yeah, that's a good explanation. Thanks for that, because there are a lot of upsides to doing this and a lot of good reasons, a lot of advantages for the homeowner. Do you think there's any typical homeowner that's making this decision to add the ADU? Is there, is there a model homeowner type that wants to do this? You mentioned different, different groups, but what's the typical one?

I think the typical one, at least in my experience, is the people that have a little bit of equity in the— even that it was bought in 2018 and 2019, they've just made enough money to get the equity out of the house to build one. You see that a lot of people paying cash for these now. And they're not cheap to build, but they're putting them in their backyards because the opportunity is cheap. Money is cheap to borrow. The interest rates, even as they're going up, are still very low for borrowing. And the equity is there in the house. So they're using that equity to build something. And whether it's short-term is for the kids that are going to college locally or rental revenue generation or for an aging parent, whatever the purpose is, whether that's short-term, there's still a plan for long-term, right? You can— when you sell the property, you've increased the value quite a bit and you've added a value add to the property to sell in the future if you're somebody that wanted to, decide to move on after 7 years or so and sell the property, it's actually valuable to have a second living space so that the person that comes in can use it for whatever reason they want to. And maybe because that price point is higher, they now have a built-in rental revenue generator for them to help offset that mortgage. So there's just a whole lot of interconnected reasons why it's a good time to do it and why people are doing it.

Yeah, so especially people that have that equity in their home and their property and they can borrow against that to construct one of these units. Are you aware of— is this taking place around the country? I know— It is. —we have this outside of the US, but for the US, you mentioned several states where they're doing some really strong proposals. So we're facing a housing shortage around the country?

Well, I mean, California— Well, let's take for example Austin, Texas. It started this in 2015, started their ADU legislation. And California's was in 2017, so 2 years after. So everybody— it's been on everybody's plate for a while. And I think— I mean, my own personal philosophy is that we've been talking about— those of us that like land use and understand local government have been looking at how to increase density versus urban sprawl as part of a smart growth measure back in the '90s. So this isn't a surprise to us that this kind of a solution has come forward. It's very forward-thinking. But for those people that aren't— had no ideas about an accessory dwelling unit, it seems like density is, you know, might be a bad word. But the— I think the fear or the concern about ADUs going up like, what is the saying, like going up like hotcakes, or, you know, it's going so fast, is in reality the number of permits actually issued to build them is not huge. So this is just an opportunity for everybody to do this, but not everybody's taking advantage of it because it is priced, it is a high-ticket item, and it does take a process of plans being prepared and submitted to a city government and understanding how that process works. Finding a contractor to do the build. It's not a— it's not a plug-and-play sort of solution. It's a solution that requires a lot of attention and a high dollar amount and a process. So it's not just going to spill into every backyard without regard. It's going to be a well-thought-out— and it has been a well-thought-out, at least for my clients, to do this without any pushback.

Yeah, yeah, well, thanks for that clarification. So it's not really mushrooming all over in major metropolitan areas and even some lesser metro areas. It's slow, and when it's done properly and all of the requirements are followed, then it's an addition to the neighborhood, it sounds like.

Right, and it's a model of density and infill for housing affordability. They're pushing— they, the states are pushing local governments to make the opportunity to build them more streamlined. And they're also, as of January 1, 2022, in the state of California, they're looking at being allowed to split their lots. The people that own a single-family lot can build a duplex on the back of their property, and then they can split the lot and actually sell that. So it makes that more available. And the same in Austin, Texas. They can split their lots and sell the place in the back, sell the home in the back. But again, this isn't something everybody's going up to the planning counter with because things like if you decide to split your lot in a particular neighborhood where this is now available to you to do, it's cumbersome and costly. It could cost a homeowner up to $80,000 initially to build to split a lot because the subdivision— I don't want to get technical, but the subdivision map has to be changed. And until that first person does it and then makes the change, that making it easier for subsequent people to do it, it's a, it's a big deal. It's a, it's a costly opportunity. But some people are thinking that, and it may allow people to sell a second unit to make it more affordable for first-time buyers to buy a house even if the lot's a bit smaller, there's an actual property to buy.

So that amount you quoted, that's pre-construction fees?

That's just changing the parcel map, right? I mean, that's not even getting to the house yet. Yeah. And it's an estimate, but these are numbers that float around, you know, $50,000 to $80,000 or— and some of the regulations are trying to make that less costly, so we still have to see where that's going, but— But the point I'm trying to make along those lines is that the government's trying to make things— allow single-family homeowners to actually be somewhat of property developers so that they can add housing stock to what we desperately need in every city across— every large city across the nation. Needs increased housing stock, not just California.

Yeah, well, that's good to know. That's very helpful. So you're very much aware of California and even Southern California and maybe San Diego County regulations. Can you walk us through what are the major steps that we need to take to get all the necessary permits and—

agreements? Sure. What I'd like to share with, with anybody listening is whatever state or local government you're living in, whatever property, wherever your property is located, there is a governing body that will look at building and have to approve your building project. So no matter where you live, if you take a piece of paper, maybe a ledger-size, 11 by 17 size piece of paper, and draw your property out on that the best you can with where you'd like to build something you can always take that to your local planning counter— there's always a counter there— and ask them if you can do that, if this meets the ADU requirements. And it doesn't have to be a professionally drawn drawing, but try to get as, as much information on there as you can— measurements and whatnot— for the lot and show it to them. If you go to a counter at any local government and ask them what you should do, they're not in the business of providing advice. They can't do that, but what they can do is answer yes and no. So this looks— yes, you're within 4 feet of your rear setback and the side, you know, so all of whatever regulations that are pertinent to that local government, you can actually find out that information when you share that piece of paper with the counter. So it's someplace to start, and then you can go from there. So feasibility.

Yeah, so any local planning— Mm-hmm, county. County, the city or county or— Well, it depends.

Everybody has a jurisdiction that they live in. Everybody. Wherever your house is, wherever you've bought a piece of land that has a parcel number associated with it, there is an overseeing body. So let's say you live in Austin, Texas, and you are in the city's limit, the city's oversight. You just go to the City of Austin and to their planning department, and you can go to their counter. If you live in San Diego, but you live in one of the bedroom communities that's incorporated, say a city like La Mesa, then you would go to the City of La Mesa's planning counter. Wherever your parcel is located within that jurisdiction, and that's something you can just do on a Google search, or you can go to wherever your local government is that you think is yours, And they should tell you if that's where your property is located, or they will direct you to whom— to where they think it is or where they know it's located. So if you had to go somewhere else.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So is that going to give the prospective builder all of the necessary requirements, or are there other maybe state requirements that supersede the local requirements, or is it all contained within that jurisdiction?

That's a great question. So what happened— what's been happening across the United States is that state governments are mandating zoning rules to local governments, and that kind of has local governments up in arms, like, why is the state telling us what to do? We're the local government. We decide what the zoning is and what we're allowing. The problem is, is that's become very cumbersome and very expensive to a property owner, not necessarily— and even to a developer. Developers pay tons of money to build new houses, and that's why the houses cost so much. So in order to, in order to try to curb that, the state mandated these new ADU laws. So there are certain, there are certain mandates, and in California that's Anything— ADUs can be built 4 feet from the rear property line and the side property line, the side of the house property line, and local governments have to allow that. But local governments can also make it easier, like they can say, well, you can do it within 3 feet, we don't care, but nobody can say less than 4 feet. So it's kind of just a hard and fast rule, 4 feet from your side and rear setbacks. So states are mandating these local governments to do this. So the state has the— had the initial kind of law, and then local governments have to follow that. So the local government, that's why going there with that piece of paper with your house drawn on there and asking if this is something you can do. From there, they're going to say— let's say they say, "Yes, this looks good to us. So far, so good." You still have several steps to go through, and that is to get a floor plan that works for you and then to have the planning and the structural documents that you need, which is usually done by an architect or a structural engineer and/or. And then those are submitted to the cities and to the building departments and they go through them all the way to issuing you a permit to build it.

But there still may be some state requirements that also have to be met. Possibly.

No, states don't have— the state won't— the state's not involved at this point. The state is just telling the local government what to do. You don't do any— you don't have any communication with the state. They have no jurisdiction over the process of you individually on your property. They've got, they've got a stake in the local government, how they treat you and what they tell you you can do. That's kind of— that's— I want to make that clarification. The state is telling the— your jurisdiction what they can do, and then that local government talks to you about it. So you never have a dialogue with the state, only with your building and planning department that oversees your particular property.

Okay, I see. Yeah, so the clarification there is that once you— once you meet the local jurisdiction, you will automatically— that's right— following the state because the state has dictated their regs to the local Sure, sure. That's exactly right. Okay, all right. So thanks, that's really helpful information. I always hear about concerns of parking when you add all this extra housing space and increase the density. What about local parking? What are the concerns there?

Well, that varies across the board, but in the state of California, of course, as I'm very familiar with their rules, as long as the property lies within a certain distance of public transportation, then there is no parking— replacement parking required. So if you do a garage conversion in a neighborhood with a bus line that's somewhere down the street or a trolley nearby, then you don't have to replace the parking. So what's nearby?

How do you— is there a—

Well, you would just say within a half mile, a half mile of the property that you have a bus line or some sort of mass transportation. I mean, in a perfect world, what the local governments are trying trying to do, and this is across the board, increase density, try to make people use mass transportation, lower the road usage, try to get alternative forms of transportation to be used. This is the ideal world, you know, probably in any sort of housing coalition or housing affordability group or environmental folks. You know, ideally we'd all live really close to each other. Have to go very short distances to work or not at all, at least work from home, so that we just don't have such an impact on our planet. And this is— if you drill down now into how this works with ADUs, it's, hey, you don't have to replace the parking. You're adding housing, but if you're close to a mass transportation center, then you can actually avoid having to replace the parking.

Yeah, so in the process of rolling out these new opportunities, there are wrinkles. And the wrinkles— Wrinkles. —you know, get ironed out eventually, but meanwhile people are still adjusting to this. So what happens if the mass transit is not within that required distance? So say there's no bus or trolley or subway lines.

Well, I mean, then you— I guess you wouldn't have to— you wouldn't have to— you'd have to replace it according to that local government, but in California you'd under certain square footage, you don't have to replace the parking. So, this is really up to every— if the state mandates it that you don't have to replace parking, then you don't have to replace parking. But most of that is within a half-mile radius. And other— then there's a— so that's the minimum, right? But it's discretionary to that local government, except for up to a half-mile, right? So, if it's within a half-mile, you don't have to replace the parking at all. And if you— if the local government says, you know, they want— if it's up to after half mile, then you have to replace the parking. And some can say it doesn't matter to us at all, right? I mean, we can— you can build something if you're 2 miles away from— and not have to replace the parking. So it just depends how it goes from city to city, but the minimum is half mile.

So when you say replace the parking, does that mean you have to add off-street parking to your property or—

Well, it could, right? So this is why one of the reasons why garage conversions were never— people did a lot of garage conversions without the local government knowing about it, right? They built onto— they built a family room in the garage or they did something that kept the facade of the garage so that code compliance or nobody knew about it because they couldn't replace the parking. Maybe they didn't have much of a driveway or whatnot and people parked on the streets depending on the size of their lots. Then when garage conversions were allowed, but they had to replace the parking, yes, they had to carve out someplace in their yard for an extra space so that they could meet the parking requirements. That's why these difficult barriers, or the barriers to building, are becoming things of the past. Now you don't have to have replacement parking, or you don't have to add a spot for it, right? If you build in the backyard and you're adding a an occupant or the ability to have an occupant or two, you don't have to provide parking for them. Whereas you did a few years ago, but now you don't.

Well, I like your description that, you know, the ultimate goal or destination is that we can increase this density without imposing on other people's property. And we can increase the density as long as we're near mass transit. And that— I mean, I can appreciate that being the— the goal. We're just not there yet. I mean, it's going to take some time. But as I said, these are the wrinkles. Yeah. So what— without getting into the specific costs, how long does it take a homeowner to recoup their investment? I mean, are we talking about 30-year mortgage terms or less than that? Well, that depends.

So if somebody— If somebody took out a $250,000 loan and they have a $500,000 mortgage and now they have a $700,000— what's equivalent to a $700,000— they have a $500,000 primary mortgage or the first mortgage and then they have a HELOC, let's say a home equity line of credit on the second. And the second is always going to have a higher interest rate, right? So you take out that money. And when you're done with the construction, you can actually refinance the whole property into one mortgage if you'd like, and that would lower that, that second. But you may— so there's a lot of what-ifs and variables, right? If you're enjoying a very low primary mortgage rate, then why would you do that? So, I mean, there's a lot of talk that would need to be done about what you currently have, where you're going with it, how would a refinance look at the end of it. But let's say you maintain that HELOC, that home equity line of credit rate that's now 5.5%. I don't know for sure, but let's say it's 5.5% and your payment on that is $1,600 a month over, you know, over a certain amount of time, however much of the rent, but you're renting it now for $2,800 a month or $2,500 a month and you can put that whole amount towards the payment. Your ROI is there in less than 10 years. You pay the whole thing off. I mean, it's, it's totally feasible to be— to pay this thing off and be in the black every month. And if you want to use the 100% of your revenue, then you would be able to do that. That's in a rental situation, right? But if you build it to provide housing for an aging parent, a lot of times what I see is the parents being out of town and selling their home and then paying cash for the build from the proceeds of their home so that it benefits families in a couple of ways. One, the parent or the— gets to be closer to the kids. The second is that the kids have to come out of pocket $0 because the proceeds from the parent's house go to the build. And then finally, that the overall property value is going up quite a bit, exponentially I'd say, that the children now have a property that's increased in value, that they have their parent close to them. Their parent has no bills every month for a mortgage or whatnot because they paid for this thing in full. And the only difference would probably be an increase in utility fees, but that's it. So it's kind of a big win in that situation. For folks that are building to generate revenue, rental prices are out of the— are skyrocketing right now. Rental— if you even tried to be less than market value, you're still getting a great rental rate and it would still be greater than the cost per month of a loan. So it's just a good time to be building these if you're looking at a home equity line or somebody coming up with cash in the sale of their home. It's a good opportunity to do this.

Yeah, I can see that. Plus, the states and cities and counties are really making it more conducive, easier for people to add these units to their properties. I can see the real high percentage in doing this. But it makes me wonder, what about neighbors who object? They can do—

so this is what I always find this I don't want to say it's not amusing in any way, but it's— this has been on our table to talk about for, like I said, 25 years. Smart growth, density, and infill. But when it's happening along these, like I said, transportation corridors, and what that means is streets— if you can think of a street in your neighborhood that's used like— that's a long— that used to be a main artery in the city, right? Before freeways they were, and now they're two-lane maybe 4-lane roads that go through your city and traverse from one end of that city all the way to the other, but it's not the freeway. Those are where the bus lines run and everything. People are building— or developers are building condos along the transportation corridors and whatever else they can do, mixed-use, where you have stores on the bottom and condos on top. That sort of thing has been going on now for about 20 years where you have an overlay zone of mixed-use and building up along this so-called transportation corridor. Those neighbors that are directly behind those, those that lie just beyond the transportation corridor, maybe 3 or 4 blocks in, now all of a sudden they're faced with condos that's 3, 4, 5 stories high that used to not be there. So they're complaining about that because they're along that same place, and now their neighbor's building an ADU in the backyard. My goodness, what, you know, what's What's going on with the, you know, the next door— what's going on with the Joneses? You know, it's going crazy. So I can understand the uproar there. Change is hard. Density in their neighborhood, there's a lot of NIMBYism, not in my backyard. But there's a lot of people out here that have been working on this for so long that it seems a natural course for environmental issues, for housing affordability. And those needs seem to be greater than the concerns that are out there. And I'll add to that is during this time of the last 25 years, the people that have been moving this forward are parts of planning commissions and city council people and state officials that are all moving this forward the last 20 years. So I think it's too late to say something about it, for lack of a better explanation. You're really out of luck because This has been in motion for a couple of decades.

So this is the trend, and there have been probably disputes and disagreements and compromises and pushes to keep moving forward.

Well, what about short-term rental? Sorry, I just interject this is that the biggest issue is the short-term rental. When investors come in, buy a property for cash, build an ADU, and then try to do Airbnbs out of them, that's not where this is meant to go. So this has been— they've been putting the kibosh on this. The local governments have— they, they sniffed it out. They're trying to do everything that they can to, to mandate that these are 30 days or more. There's no 30 days or less rentals. And if you're in the business of Airbnbs, that kind of puts that out. So that's, that's— they're trying to be, they're trying to be responsive to those sort of complaints, like And neighborhoods don't want Airbnb rentals. 3 units can be allowed on one property now. They wouldn't want to see those be turned over every day like they were living next door to a hotel. I understand that. And that is really being discouraged now through, through legislation and ordinances.

Yeah. Okay. So there is some kind of a fine-tuning here where— Yes, absolutely. Run abroad. I'm not going to— Yeah, I get that, sure. What about environmental groups that are opposed to this increased density altogether?

Are they out of luck as well? I don't think environmental groups are opposed to it. I think they're encouraging it, right? I mean, you don't have— urban sprawl is the bane of, you know, our existence. You know, the further out you go and build more communities, the more roads that go up. There's not— mass transportation doesn't follow urban sprawl, right? So everybody went out in the '70s. They started to go out, 1970s, they started building out, out, and out. And now the freeways are just log jammed. There wasn't any transportation, mass transportation built with that. So when you can keep— if you can do some infill density and infill and increase the housing stock in neighborhoods where the lots could can handle that, you can actually better the climate, better the— force people to stay close to their jobs. And that is— there's nothing negative— negatively impacting the environment. It's only benefiting it.

Yeah, that's another good clarification. Thanks. So it's the urban sprawl, the continued spreading, and more freeways and higher traffic.

Yeah, more cars. Yeah, just terrible. And the last thing I'll say is, in the building standards, In California, for every set of building documents we submit to a local government for a permit, we have to additionally add Title 24 documents. And Title 24 documents address specifically— specifically address the environmental impact, that the house is being built to environmental standards. You can no longer— in California, as of January 1, you cannot have a gas appliance, only electric. If it's a detached new construction, you have to have solar. So there's all sorts of— there has to be a solar panel either on the main house where you're pulling power or you have to put that on top of the ADU. So it has to be solar, have solar energy. It has to be all electric so that there's no gas emission. So there are— the windows have to be vinyl and they have to be, you know, they have to be environmentally friendly so that the sun doesn't get out. The insulation has to be of a certain standard. So the environmental issues on new construction, whether that's ADU or any sort of developer build, is requiring environmental documents to support the build.

So this Title 24 regulations apply to all areas or just— In the state of California, yes.

So whether it's residential, commercial, or residential or commercial you have to have— you have to meet these environmental standards.

I see, to make sure that the environmental impact is okay. That's correct. Yeah, fascinating. Great conversation here. I've learned a lot. I'm sure our listeners will learn a lot as well. So what would you hope our listeners take away from our conversation today, Lisa?

To not be afraid of a process like this. If it's something interesting to them, don't be afraid to learn more about it because it's a lot easier to do now. Financially, it's more feasible. There's opportunity in everybody's backyard. The process can be a little overwhelming if you're not used to working with any of this, so seek out somebody that can help you with it. There's a lot of us out here. In every city, there's somebody that does ADU consulting. Contractors, this is something I think is good news— or good advice, and that is that contractors, anybody can build a box, and most ADUs look like either a rectangle or a box or whatnot. But it's understanding what your rights are as a property owner, understanding the feasibility under the ADU laws that really is helpful for you to know. So don't miss an advantage in this process. By using somebody that doesn't know how to do an ADU but knows how to build one. So understanding what your local government can allow will make the process a little bit less scary, and they're there to help you. Please remember that. So, and let me know if there's anything I can do. Good advice, good advice.

Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. I just want to wrap up. Sure. We are out of time, but before we wrap up, I just want to remind our listeners about a co-sponsor for our program, A Mighty Good Time. Are you looking for ways to engage and stay active? Check out amightygoodtime.com. It's a one-stop shop for events and activities for those 50 and over. It's free to search and it's free to post. Amightygoodtime.com. And be sure to visit the Living to 100 Club website to sign up for our weekly podcast announcements and monthly newsletters, and while you're there, be sure to download a free copy of my 9 Tips for Living Longer. Lastly, pick up a copy of my book, Living Longer Is the New Normal, all about maintaining a positive mindset in all we do. It's on Amazon as an ebook or hard copy. We've been talking today with Lisa DeJesus. Lisa, for those who might want to contact you, what's the best way to do that?

You can go to my website, www.adugurus.com. There's a place on that website that you can schedule a call with me or email me at lisa@adugurus.com. And I look forward to helping anybody that has a question about it.

Great. Okay, so adugurus.com is the website and people can contact you through that. And your email is lisa@adugurus.com?

Correct.

Well, that's great. Thanks very much for this very educational conversation. I know our audience will appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, you're certainly welcome. Certainly welcome, and keep up the good work. Thanks so much. Yeah, okay. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in today. I hope to see you next time.

It's time to rethink, renew, and reimagine retirement. Hey everybody, Jared Sylvester here, host of Retire Repurposed. Now, this podcast is about the non-financial parts of retirement, which many times can be even more challenging than the financial. We believe retirement is not the end, rather the beginning of what could be the most impactful, purposeful, and fulfilling season of a person's life. So don't retire, become repurposed. To listen now, search Retire Repurposed on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.