ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT
GARDEN HOUSE
Portland, Oregon
2015
Waechter Architecture
Piggybacking Tactic
Inhabit a Niche
While the primary need for shelter endures, much else about the idea of home today is diversifying. Social, cultural, and economic changes are rapidly transforming housing needs as young people increasingly flock to dense urban areas (and confront high real-estate costs) in search of good jobs. Young adults, older adults, and multigenerational and “non-traditional” families confront what is increasingly understood as a misfit between their needs and the opportunities afforded by an existing housing stock designed primarily around the “nuclear” single-family residence. The challenges of climate change and crippling traffic are also prompting many municipalities to reconsider the wisdom of low-density development models (e.g., continued suburbanization), and some have begun to view increases in allowable housing density as both a socially and ecologically sound response. In addition, many American cities are beginning to confront the social, economic, and institutional legacies of discrimination and segregation that undergird certain patterns of housing development and finance. They have, for instance, begun to diversify zoning policies in an effort to build more inclusive and equitable neighborhoods.
For an increasing number of cities, ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS (ADUs) constitute one such policy innovation. The City of Portland (illustrated here) was an early pioneer in this space, but the passage of California Assembly Bill 2299 (Bloom) represents what is perhaps the largest and most radical measure to date. The bill, which grew out of the research and advocacy of cityLAB at UCLA and became law in 2017, allows every single-family-residential property in the state (more than 8 million of them) to add an ADU by right. In one instant, an “internal frontier” of housing expansion has opened, unleashing the potential of small-scale, niche-inhabiting piggybackings to radically transform housing accessibility in the state, one home at a time.
