Senate Bill 9 is expected to help many homeowners provide additional housing opportunities by allowing for residential lot division in most cases (so long as the project complies with health and safety requirements and meets other broader zoning goals). San Jose city planners are going to spend the better part of 2022 gathering public feedback to update existing city ordinances in response to SB9 but adopted an urgency ordinance at the most recent City Council meeting to implement the new state law.
It’s not just SB 9 and 10 changing the face of affordable housing in San Jose, the city is also removing the requirement for commercial projects connected to affordable housing projects with the hopes of streamlining large scale housing projects to get closer to their goal of 10,000 new affordable units by 2023. As of now, there have only been 506 units built toward the goal, and 3,300 of the 25,000 new units needed. The City’s goal of 25,000 new houses built by 2023 can’t be met at the current pace.
San Jose is well known for accommodating ADUs in the city and incentivizing ADU construction is a large part of San Jose’s overall housing strategy. To this end, the City started an ADU construction loan pilot program earlier this year and, like many cities, has also offered amnesty to bring unpermitted units into compliance. The loan program provides short-term, 0% interest loans for ADU permit and construction costs. It covers 100% of the project but was only available to 30 qualifying applicants. Once the findings of the approved projects are assessed by the city the program will likely expand to help more homeowners build ADUs.
San Jose ADU by Housable
The majority of housing in San Jose is single family homes, and to address the housing shortage the City of San Jose has been working to make the ADU building process easy for homeowners. This has included streamlining the permit process to a simple form and a short meeting at the building department with some permits being issued in an hour and a half. They also offer 14 different designs from two different vendors.
Learn more about building an ADU in San Jose here.
