Aiming to ease San Diego’s housing crisis by accelerating construction of granny flats, city officials are creating easy-to-use instruction manuals with sample floor plans and other crucial details.

Modeled after similar efforts in Seattle and San Francisco, the manuals will help homeowners decide whether to build a granny flat in their yard or above their garage, provide them with cost estimates and suggest how to find tenants.

Creation of the manuals was prompted by the City Council approving legislation last month that loosens regulations on granny flats, which are additional housing units on an existing property.

The legislation is part of a larger package of reforms Mayor Kevin Faulconer has proposed to quickly increase the amount of housing constructed at prices affordable to middle and low-income workers.


In addition to creating the manuals, city officials hope to have an architect create a set of pre-approved granny flat models that would allow homeowners to get automatic approvals if they choose one of those designs.

And the city may also explore using federal money to subsidize construction of granny flats if homeowners building the new housing agree to rent only to low-income residents.

That program, which is still in the early exploration stages, would be modeled after a similar one in Santa Cruz that has been successful, city officials said.

The instruction manuals, which will be available online and on paper, will cover plumbing, electricity, height restrictions and how far a granny flat must be from the property line.


They will also cover whether a homeowner’s zoning allows granny flats, who they can call with questions, where to obtain official city approval and a checklist of tasks.

Granny flats are being increasingly viewed across the nation as an innovative way to create more housing without more land or infrastructure.

They are considered ideal for recent college graduates, young people with lower-paying jobs and the senior citizens on fixed incomes that gave these units their colorful name.

Granny flats fit with the city’s goal of fostering “smart growth,” where new housing is built along transportation corridors and existing neighborhoods are encouraged to absorb more density.


They have been hailed as one of the fastest and cheapest ways to increase the local supply of housing affordable to people with low and middle incomes.

State laws that took effect in January force cities to soften regulations for granny flats regarding parking, installation of fire sprinklers, requirements to hook up public utilities and rules requiring setbacks — buffer areas between structures and property lines.

The new city rules go significantly beyond that by reducing parking requirements and increasing the maximum size of a granny flat, officially called a “companion unit,” from 700 square feet to 50 percent of the primary residence’s size or 1,200 square feet, whichever is less.

In addition to those changes, the city will allow granny flats to be created inside single family homes as long each such unit is equipped with a kitchenette, but a separate bathroom wouldn’t be required.


Called “junior companion units,” these can be a maximum of 500 square feet and would cost far less to construct than a separate structure on the property.

The city legislation doesn’t require the owner of a property with a granny flat to live there, but tenants must stay at least 30 days to make it harder for granny flats to become short-term vacation rentals.

Other housing affordability reforms approved in San Diego recently include making many more proposed housing projects eligible for expedited approvals and streamlining approvals by revamping the appeals process.

Other changes proposed by Mayor Faulconer and in the approval pipeline include enhanced bonuses for densely-built projects, lower parking requirements in transit areas, softer requirements on developers to pay for parks and revamped rules for addressing nearby traffic congestion.


david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick