BERKELEY INNOVATES WITH PREVIOUSLY UNPERMITTED HOUSING

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“BERKELEY INNOVATES WITH PREVIOUSLY UNPERMITTED HOUSING”

 

Progress in solving California’s unquestioned housing shortage can often be measured by the number of permits issued for new construction or conversions of existing office towers.

 

But Berkeley, a college town that rarely fears trying approaches different from most other cities, now has a new wrinkle that might add as many as 4,000 new units to its housing stock: providing ways for owners of unpermitted secondary housing units to get them certified for the rental or sales market.

 

Many of these units were built to house adult children and other family members with a bit of separation from the property-owning families. Some have previously been rented out, but owners felt they were “burned” by irresponsible tenants. Many of these units have not been rented recently, some for many years.

 

Similar units exist in varying numbers in most California cities, which may watch Berkeley closely to see if its planned amnesty for owners will work. Essentially, many of these are “granny flats” dating to before California began easing construction of ADU’s (accessory dwelling units) with a series of laws passed starting in 2016.

 

Since then, about 80,000 permits have been issued for building ADUs behind or beside existing homes. Many newly-built homes come with ADUs, which owners can rent out to raise money for use toward mortgage payments.

 

A law passed last year will also allow ADU owners to sell them off, essentially subdividing their property even where local laws previously forbade it. The law was passed to provide a way for first-time buyers to begin gathering equity from their homes, even if they are small.

 

 

In many cases, owners have long felt they might be assessed heavy fines for building without permits or renting units not formally certified as up to current building standards.

 

Now Berkeley has activated an amnesty program due to last about four years, until early 2029. Owners will be encouraged to contact city planners and building inspectors to get their units legalized, if they meet today’s standards, or to learn what they might have to do to get them to that point and how much it might cost.

 

Berkeley will offer both certificates of occupancy, which tell renters or buyers that a unit is up to code, and certificates of compliance, which establish that a unit meets minimum fire and other life safety standards, even if it might not have sufficient insulation, central heating or other features required in new housing.

 

City officials, who sorely want more affordable housing both for students at UC Berkeley and others, insist their new program will not allow unsafe housing. So expect that some owners will have to eliminate exposed electric wiring and other fire hazards before they can legally rent their extra units.

 

But those expenses would almost always be made up for by rents received in the first few months of occupancy. So this is a way for longtime homeowners to gain income after getting little or nothing from extra units while keeping them off the rental market.

 

It's also a way for Berkeley and maybe other cities to help meet their state-mandated obligations to allow more affordable housing.

 

Knowing some longtime owners will be hesitant to come forward for fear of incurring large new expenses, Berkeley says it will aim to “make it easy” for them by having a staff of building officials available to work with anyone who who applies to get a unit legalized.

 

If the city lives up to its stated aims and other follow up, too, this could be a way to add thousands of units to a housing market that desperately needs them. It’s also a way to create housing without disrupting anyone’s environment or the character of any locale. The only real surprise here is that cities did not long ago jump to do something like this.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net