An ADU First in San Jose, Thanks to Bay Area Council Legislation
San Jose last week became the first city in California to approve an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) condominium under legislation (AB 1033, Ting) the Bay Area Council sponsored in 2024 as part of a decades-long initiative to make building ADUs faster, easier and less expensive for homeowners. AB 1033 empowered cities to adopt local ordinances allowing ADUs to be sold separately from a property’s main house, and San Jose in July 2024 became the first large city in the state to enact a local measure.
“San José is creating housing affordability and ownership by thinking differently,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. “ADUs are affordable by design and growing in popularity across the state, and now they can offer the most accessible form of home ownership, too. We are offering a proof of concept for California and hope that other cities follow San José’s lead.”
Recognizing the potential of ADUs to help address California’s housing shortage and affordability crisis, the Council launched it’s ADU initiative in 2015 with landmark legislation (SB 1069, Wieckowski) that removed significant barriers to building lower-cost ADUs. Since that time, ADUs have enjoyed explosive growth statewide and become one of the bright spots in increasing housing supply. The Council has since sponsored a handful of other reforms that have continued to remove permitting and other obstacles and bring down costs for building ADUs.
The project in San Jose was developed by AlphaX RE Capital, a Bay Area real estate firm based in Cupertino and a member of the Bay Area Council’s Board of Directors.
San Jose has been a leader in advancing the construction of ADUs. In the past five years, the city has doubled the number of ADUs permitted. The city tracks its housing data online as part of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) requirements and reports 1,500 ADUs were permitted since 2022 and more than 1,100 final building permits were issued.
