In the midst of its housing crisis, the City of Seattle is looking at ways to make it easier for homeowners to build backyard cottages. Some residents are excited about proposed changes to the law — but one architect is fighting the changes ahead.

When the Cahn family wanted to add space to their thousand-square-foot bungalow in northeast Seattle, they found it was too expensive to add an extra floor. Plus, it wouldn't have fit the neighborhood.

“We didn’t want to build some towering thing that was imposing on the people around us,” Andrew Cahn said.

So, they built a backyard cottage instead. You can’t even see it from their leafy northeast Seattle street. And it cost about half what the extra floor would have cost.

The Cahns built their project under the city's old rules, rules that require every backyard cottage to have its own parking space. Fitting the parking stall in and still having a functional backyard was a bit of a puzzle, they said.

New proposed rules from the city would drop the parking requirement. "Eliminating that makes it much more enticing for a lot of people who would consider building a cottage," said Andrew Cahn.

Another proposed rule change would eliminate the requirement that owners live on the property.