_{This is an image of an ADU I designed for a family in Fountain Hills a few years back. Mom and Dad wanted to build a casita to provide a first home for their daughter and her fiancée.}

A couple of years ago a friend asked me to come over to her house in the Coronado Historic District and see if she could convert the detached garage into an accessory dwelling unit so she could rent it out and get some passive income to help pay her mortgage. I looked up the zoning and it turns out that she wasn’t allowed to have a second dwelling on the property.

Not being my first rodeo, I knew a work around. What makes something a dwelling is if it has a stove. If a little building has a bedroom, living room and a kitchen counter but no stove, it is not considered a dwelling. You can call it a “detached bedroom”. I gave my friend this option and she was disappointed that she couldn’t include a full kitchen in the accessory dwelling unit.

Last year the Arizona State Legislature passed a sweeping law allowing ADUs on every single-family lot, bypassing citys’ zoning laws. This means you no longer have to do gymnastics and employ workarounds to get an accessory dwelling unit on your single-family property. Woohoo! The legislature gave all cities with a  population over 75,000 until January 1, 2025 to adopt their zoning ordinances to reflect the state law. Most cities were none to happy to have the reigns taken out of their hands on this matter but most have reluctantly complied. From a quick search these are the cities that have modified their zoning laws to reflect the allowances of the state law regarding accessory dwelling units:

Phoenix

Scottsdale

Tempe

Mesa

Chandler

Peoria

Surprise

Tucson

Sedona

Cottonwood

Yuma

This is by no means an all-inclusive list. Chances are if you live Arizona, your city has loosened its laws around ADUs too. This is really GOOD news for our state and our cities despite the hemming and hawing that has occurred because of this law. We need more affordable housing and ADUs are the perfect way to add gentle density to our neighborhoods.

Watch our Tea with Taz episode discussing the state ADU law with State Representative and proponent, Sarah Liguori.

If you are thinking about adding a ground-up accessory dwelling unit or want to convert an existing accessory building into a second dwelling, please reach out to us. We would love to help!