San Diego City Council Rolled Back Part of Bonus ADU Program

Editordude: The Rag is forced to quote from today’s UT about this important City council hearing yesterday, Tuesday, March 4; we will have some follow-up hopefully in the days ahead.

By David Garret / San Diego Union-Tribune / March 5, 2025

San Diego is substantially rolling back a controversial city incentive that allows the owner of a single-family lot to build potentially dozens of backyard apartments on it.

The City Council voted 6-3 Tuesday to eliminate the program in eight types of single-family neighborhoods where lot sizes tend be larger than other single-family neighborhoods.

The goal is preventing abuse of the program by developers who target what city officials call “outlier” lots: large, unusually shaped lots that allow more backyard apartments than city officials ever intended or imagined.

Council members said the compromise they reached will retain the positive aspects of the program, such as producing more housing relatively quickly, while eliminating some of the biggest negatives.

The council also voted in favor of other significant changes to the controversial incentive, which is formally known as a bonus accessory dwelling unit program. City officials call backyard apartments accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.

Those additional changes, which are still in the planning stages, will likely include new requirements that property owners who take advantage of the bonus ADU program provide parking spots and pay fees for needed infrastructure and community amenities.

Other likely changes include stricter rules on how close bonus ADUs can be to property lines and a ban on property owners building more ADUs by exaggerating the size of their property that can actually be developed.

City officials also announced Tuesday that they will soon propose allowing property owners to put ADUs up for sale, in an effort to make homeownership an option for many more San Diego residents.

The council’s vote came after a contentious seven-hour public hearing where the vast majority of speakers wanted even more dramatic changes to the unpopular incentive program.

Eliminating the incentive in those eight types of single-family neighborhoods will come back to the council for a final vote that city officials said will take place in 60 to 90 days.

The other changes will take longer because the city’s Planning Department wants to get feedback from neighborhood leaders, the Planning Commission and other members of the public.

All of the changes approved Tuesday were suggested by Heidi Vonblum, the city’s planning director, as compromises that stop short of Councilmember Henry Foster’s proposal in January to wipe out the incentive entirely.

Vonblum said she expects the second wave of changes to the bonus ADU program to be presented to the council for final approval in either late July — just before the council’s August recess — or early September.

She issued a memo with a long list of suggested changes and compromises. She told council members Tuesday that the package they are eventually presented with will include those suggestions and possibly many others.

“I’m happy to to have conversations on any suggested reforms to this program,” Vonblum said.

All nine council members expressed support for eliminating the incentive in those eight types of single-family neighborhoods. The three council members who voted against the rollback said they did so because they wanted the incentive eliminated in even more neighborhoods.

The council voted to eliminate it in the following zones: RS 1-1, RS 1-2, RS 1-3, RS 1-4, RS 1-8, RS 1-9, RS 1-10 and RS 1-11. The incentive will remain in effect in all multifamily zones and in the single-family zones RS 1-5, RS 1-6 and RS 1-7.

The council members who voted against Tuesday’s compromise — Raul Campillo, Jennifer Campbell and Marni von Wilpert — were particularly focused on including the RS 1-7 zone in the compromise.

Vonblum said lots are small enough in RS 1-5, RS 1-6 and RS 1-7 that outlier lots are extremely rare — or might not even exist at all.

San Diego’s bonus program is the most aggressive ADU incentive in California and goes far beyond what state law requires cities to allow. The incentive’s most controversial element lets property owners build a potentially unlimited number of such units.

For every ADU a property owner is willing to build that is deed-restricted for low-income or moderate-income tenants, they can build one bonus ADU and charge market-rate rent for it.

The only significant limitation is that property owners can’t exceed the maximum square footage allowed per acre — called the floor-area ratio — for the particular neighborhood. And in general, the incentive applies only to properties within 1 mile of an existing or future transit route.

Most often, the San Diego incentive leads a property owner to build two ADUs — one with rent restrictions for low-income or moderate-income tenants, and one market-rate.

But in some circumstances, particularly on larger lots, property owners are building dozens of ADUs on one property zoned for a single-family home.

“Emotions are high — my emotions would be high if I was presented with a 40-unit proposed project next door to my house,” Foster said Tuesday.

The package of changes approved Tuesday satisfies Foster’s desire to stop massive ADU projects relatively quickly, which the elimination of the single-family zones in 60 to 90 days will accomplish.

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