Architect’s design fits eight units on a single-family lot. It’s coming to this Valley city
Architect Ubaldo Garcia recently finished designing two projects that will add extra homes to single-family lots.
“On one, I was able to fit six,” Garcia told The Bee. “On another one, I was able to fit eight total units.”
He is doing this in the city of Madera with accessory dwelling units, known as ADUs.
ADUs, also referred to as in-law units, are essentially smaller homes other than the primary house on a residential lot. They are often built by homeowners looking to create more living space for their families, or to generate income by renting out extra units on their property.
In recent years, the number of ADUs has skyrocketed across California. About one-fifth of all home building permits issued in 2023 were for this type of home. In the Central Valley, the trend is evident in Clovis and Fresno — two cities that have encouraged ADU construction by providing builders with pre-approved designs and streamlining the permitting process.
That’s not to say these homes are always affordable to working class renters. But local officials are hoping that some ADUs will be affordable in Madera, which is currently experiencing a shortage of proposals for affordable housing projects.
“We have received no applications for a true affordable housing project in the last three years,” Will Tackett, the city’s director of community development, told The Bee in December. “What we’re trying to do is incentivize affordable investments in our city.”
That’s why the Madera City Council approved zoning code changes in January aiming to encourage homeowners to become developers.
Madera’s initiative — a bonus ADU program — intends to do that by allowing single-family lot owners to build two bonus market-rate units, one for each affordable ADU they build. If builders satisfy affordability requirements and a list of ADU standards, those who have the space could fit a total of eight units, including the primary residence, on their single-family lots.
An ADU design fit for Madera
Unlike Madera County, the city of Madera does not currently offer pre-approved ADU designs to prospective builders.
But Garcia, who owns Madera-based Villa Di Ubaldo Architecture, said he has developed a standard plan that will work anywhere in the city. It’s a 750-square-foot structure with three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a dining/living area.
He said he’s often asked how that’s even possible.
“And I always say the same thing: ‘It’s just good design,’” Garcia said. “If you don’t waste space and hallways with awkward shapes, you end up with 750 square feet.”
Garcia has designed a one-acre, 29-apartment project in Madera that he said uses the same concept.
“An ADU is just a Lego,” he said. “It’s a living unit that comes with everything you need. But it’s incentivized for us to keep it at 750 square feet.”
State law mandates that ADUs include bathrooms and kitchens. In the city of Madera, ADUs must be connected to utilities and have permanent foundations, among other requirements.
“Any ADU still has to comply with the city standards, just as if it were a 4000-square-foot house,” Garcia said.
The architect already has a design for eight units on a single-family lot — the first of its kind in Madera, he said — making its way through the city’s permitting process. His design for this lot is proposing two bonus ADUs, meaning that at least two of the other units will have to qualify as affordable.
In order to qualify for a bonus unit in Madera, an ADU on a single-family lot must be reserved through a legal deed as affordable to either “very low-income and low-income households” for no less than 10 years, or “moderate income households” for no less than 15 years.
Could the bonus ADU program work?
Madera modeled its initiative after San Diego’s bonus ADU program, which launched in 2020.
Researchers have found that San Diego’s program produced a substantial amount of new construction proposals: About 1,300 ADUs were proposed under the program by February of last year, with half being pitched as affordable.
“But it’s the depth of affordability that was at issue,” said Karen Chapple, a professor at the University of Toronto. She was part of the UC Berkeley team that in December published a report about California ADUs that analyzed the San Diego’s program.
That program defines affordability as rent costs affordable to households that earn 110% or below of San Diego County’s area median income (AMI). Chapple said the numbers showed the San Diego program hasn’t led to “very deep subsidies for very low income households.”
Instead, most ADUs built under San Diego’s program were concentrated right around the median income level. That doesn’t mean the program is not helpful, she noted.
“That’s still affordability,” Chapple said. “We still we need tons of housing at the median income level because that’s working class housing. If we don’t provide housing for people at middle income, they will take up and gentrify the housing for the lower income.”
Real estate agent Enrique Arias said he is confident the bonus ADU program will create developers out of residents in Madera — where the poverty and Latino population percentages are more than double what they are in San Diego.
“Ninety-nine percent of my clients are Latino,” said Arias, who has also started investing in ADU construction.
Some of those clients who own homes have adult children who do not yet have the income to qualify for a home purchase, he said.
“But if they have the land and they have the equity to fund the construction,” Arias said, “it’s a no-brainer for a homeowner who could use (an ADU) for their family or rent it out for extra income.”
