May 17, 2026 / CBS News
When the Almeda Fire raced through Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley in 2020, whole neighborhoods were wiped out and a local housing shortage followed. In Medford, artist and contractor Jacob Fry and his wife, Elize, wanted to help neighbors who had lost homes. Instead of waiting for large-scale development, they borrowed money and built two small rental units behind their house.
Those units are accessory dwelling units — ADUs — compact, self-contained homes on the same lot as a main house. Also called granny flats, carriage houses or mother-in-law suites, ADUs have become a prominent part of housing policy experiments across the country. Recent state and local reforms have reduced barriers to creating ADUs, speeding approval and lowering costs in many places.
California’s changes have been among the most permissive: homeowners can add multiple modest ADUs on a single-family lot, and the law generally restricts them to long-term rentals rather than short-term vacation lets. The result has been a surge in construction. Dana Cuff, a professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA who helped shepherd ADU legislation, says tens of thousands of permits are active statewide.
Cuff herself moved into an ADU on her property and now rents the main house. She describes the trade-offs of losing a backyard tree or a play structure as small compared with the benefits of adding housing closer to the city. From her view, infill like ADUs helps contain sprawl, reduces the need to build farther into open land, and can be more environmentally sensible than new subdivisions.
Not all responses are positive. Neighbors and local officials sometimes worry about parking, sewage, waste collection and other infrastructure designed for single-family lots being stretched when more people live on the same parcel. There are also aesthetic and privacy concerns in tight neighborhoods.
Still, homeowners who build ADUs report tangible benefits. For the Frys, the project was about community, not profit. Their units brought in rental income and provided housing for young families who otherwise might have continued living with parents. Jacob says they intentionally charge well below market to keep the homes affordable for tenants starting out.
Tenants say thoughtfully designed small homes can feel much larger than the square footage suggests. Kaetriauna Bowser-Smith, her partner Jared Weber and their baby have lived in one of the Frys’ roughly 400-square-foot units for nearly three years. Bowser-Smith says they looked at the local market and found nothing comparable in price, and that without the ADU they’d likely still be living with relatives.
ADU conversions take many forms. In Los Angeles, 72-year-old Mona Field turned an underused garage into a two-bedroom ADU for herself, viewing it as an easier retirement option than staying alone in a large house. That conversion also freed up the main house for her daughter’s family. The arrangement has brought daily interaction and practical help — shared meals, childcare support and routine companionship — that extended-family living can offer when spaces are designed to work together.
Not every single-family homeowner will choose this path, and ADUs are not a single cure for nationwide housing shortages. But they expand options: owners can add rental income, downsizers can move into simpler, smaller spaces, and families can create multi-generational living arrangements that keep housing costs lower while strengthening support networks.
Design matters. Well-planned ADUs maximize light, storage and flexible layouts so a compact footprint works for a couple or small family. Local rules about size, setbacks and utility hookups still vary, so practical costs and timelines differ city to city.
Advocates say ADUs are one of the fastest ways to add housing without massive new infrastructure or large development projects. Critics urge careful planning to address parking, sewer capacity, neighborhood character and affordability outcomes.
As communities confront persistent housing shortages, backyard infill — whether detached ADUs, conversions of garages, or interior basement apartments — offers a way to add units incrementally, close to jobs, transit and services. That shift requires policy that reduces needless regulatory hurdles while protecting neighborhood livability.
“We have to start imagining new ways of living together well,” says one academic involved in ADU policy. For many homeowners and tenants, the experiment is already showing how a few extra homes in backyards can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
For further reading: resources on ADU design and policy include UCLA’s Architecture and Urban Design program, the American Planning Association’s materials on accessory dwellings, and practical guides like BuildingAnADU.com.