San Diego reins in controversial bonus ADU incentive
- desiraer2
- Jun 19
- 5 min read
The City Council voted 5-4 late Monday to approve stricter rules, including a compromise cap on the number of units per lot.
By David Garrick | David.Garrick@sduniontribune.com | The San Diego Union-Tribune
UPDATED: June 17, 2025, at 12:22 PM PDT
San Diego capped the number of backyard apartments that can be built on single-family lots Monday, a long-awaited effort to prevent developers from building dozens of backyard apartments on relatively small lots.
The cap, which the City Council approved 5-4 after a long and contentious public hearing, attempts to close a loophole in the city’s backyard apartment incentive — the most aggressive of its kind in California.
The council also approved a series of additional rollbacks to its policies governing backyard apartments, which are formally called accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
Those rollbacks include forcing developers to pay infrastructure fees, mandating parking spots for ADUs that aren’t near transit and requiring ADUs to be farther away from property lines.
Other changes include limiting ADUs to two stories, prohibiting them on cul-de-sacs in areas with high wildfire risk, setting a maximum size of 1,200 square feet and allowing the homes to be sold, not just rented.
The vote came in the face of warnings from state officials that rolling back the program could threaten San Diego’s official status as a pro-housing city, and possibly put the city out of compliance with state law.
City officials made adjustments Monday in response to the state warnings. But they also expressed confidence that the city’s status as a pro-housing city is well-established and won’t be jeopardized by changes in ADU policy.
Council members said a cap on the number of units and the other policy changes are crucial to prevent more situations where more than a dozen ADUs get built on single-family lots.
“We’ve seen an exploitation of this program,” said Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who accused some ADU developers of showing disrespect for residents and neighborhood character. “Clearly there was a failure to account for the impacts on neighborhoods that have been long neglected by the city.”
Council President Joe LaCava said he was motivated by a handful of projects with particularly large numbers of ADUs.
“We’ve seen very, very ugly and unfortunate examples,” LaCava said.
Councilmember Kent Lee agreed.
“I think everyone in this room seems to agree that a 20-, a 50-, a 150- or a 750-unit project is not what was ever intended,” Lee said.
The city’s ADU incentive currently goes beyond what state law allows by letting property owners build a potentially unlimited number of such units, provided a property is near transit and in an area with good jobs and other resources.
For every ADU a property owner is willing to build that is deed-restricted for low- or moderate-income tenants, they can build one bonus ADU and charge market-rate rent for it.
While in most cases this has led to property owners building between one and three ADUs, in some unusual cases property owners have used the program to build more than a dozen on a single lot.
To prevent that, the rules approved Monday set a maximum of four ADUs on lots of less than 8,000 square feet, five ADUs on lots of 8,001 to 10,000 square feet and six ADUs on lots of 10,001 square feet and larger.
The five council members in favor of Monday’s package of rule changes were LaCava, Raul Campillo, Marni von Wilpert, Henry Foster and Jennifer Campbell. Those voting against were Lee, Elo-Rivera, Vivian Moreno and Stephen Whitburn.
The opponents wanted either a less strict cap or no cap at all.
Lee and Elo-Rivera had expressed support for a softer cap that was crafted by the city’s Planning Department. It would have set a maximum of four ADUs on lots of less than 6,000 square feet, five ADUs on lots between 6,000 and 7,000 square feet, six ADUs on lots between 7,000 and 8,000 square feet and seven ADUs on lots of 8,000 square feet and larger.
In addition, Campillo and von Wilpert had proposed an even stricter cap that would set the cap at four dwelling units per property regardless of lot size — three ADUs and a primary residence.
That proposal was rejected in a 5-4 vote with Campillo, von Wilpert, Campbell and Foster in support.
In response to the concerns raised by the state, the council softened requirements on parking and the amount of space required between an ADU and property lines in areas with high wildfire risk.
Another change made in response to the state was reducing the number of acres the city is removing from the area where the city’s ADU incentive is available to developers.
A key part of the policy changes approved Monday is the new infrastructure fee, which city officials are calling a community enhancement fee.
State law prevents cities from charging developer impact fees for ADUs smaller than 750 square feet. But city planning officials said they believe San Diego can skirt that rule because the ADU incentive is an optional program developers don’t have to use.
The council’s debate came after several hours of public testimony at City Hall, where ADU opponents carried signs and wore T-shirts with messages like “No Bonus ADUs,” “Linda Vista stands for beautiful views, not ADUs” and “Stop the corporate takeover of San Diego’s neighborhoods.”
Residents in neighborhoods where large ADU projects have already been built complained of too little parking, too many trash cans and big jumps in the numbers of deliveries by Amazon and UPS.
Paul Scott said a rollback was crucial to the future of many city neighborhoods.
“The approval of numerous hotel room-sized mini-apartments has been a misuse of authority and a damage to the community,” he said.
Lynne Miller offered similar sentiments.
“Too much building, too fast benefits out-of-town builders and ignores local concerns,” she said.
Merv Thompson said he understands San Diego adopted its ADU incentive intending to address its housing crisis, but he said the intended solution is only making things worse.
“You don’t solve a crisis by creating another crisis,” he said.
A few speakers expressed support for keeping the incentive in place with either no changes or only minor ones.
Ninus Malan, a broker for Majesty Real Estate, said an aggressive incentive is needed because San Diego is consistently among the most expensive cities in the country.
“Families are being priced out, workers are commuting longer distances, and young people can’t afford to stay,” he said. “Limiting housing options right now — especially ones as efficient and community-friendly as ADUs — would be a step in the wrong direction.”
Originally Published: June 16, 2025 at 9:40 PM PDT
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