With the recent changes to state law regarding Accessory Dwelling Units, you can see how various municipalities are dealing with changing their planning ordinances to come into compliance with the state legislation. In Oakland, they are allowing development within a house, and development attached to a house. They are allowing […]
San Francisco
30 posts
In California right now, there is a significant amount of interest in “accessory dwelling units” (ADUs). These used to be called “granny flats”, “in-law units”, or “back yard cottages”. Now they are most commonly called “accessory dwelling units” or “secondary dwelling units”. By definition, an ADU is a smaller dwelling […]
Are you thinking about working on a project in San Francisco? It could be remodeling, or legalizing an in-law unit. Maybe you are thinking about adding a rental unit. Whatever it is, you probably have lots of questions. This week there is an event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium […]
Things are busy here in the studio. I thought I would post an update on the progress of some of the projects in the studio, and introduce a couple new projects. My project in Danville is out of plan check! The owner picked up the permit about 3 weeks ago. […]
The project to legalize an in-law unit in San Francisco is complete! (Or at least, near enough to complete.) This project was to take an existing “unpermitted” in-law unit in a house in San Francisco, and, within the City’s legalization program, make the changes required to legalize the unit. The […]
The project to legalize an existing secondary dwelling at the garage level of a house in San Francisco is getting closer to be completed. The permit was issued in May. So we are three months into construction and it’s starting to look pretty good. This project is being built as […]
San Francisco has a program, the purpose of which is to encourage landlords to improve the earthquake safety of their properties. If a landlord voluntarily performs a seismic upgrade to a building meeting certain specific criteria, the City allows the landlord to add one or more rental units to the […]
Oh, heavenly day! We got the permit! Pardon me while I dance a little jig in celebration. You see, this is a small San Francisco project legalizing an existing secondary dwelling. We are doing this through a special program San Francisco offers, which allows owners of houses with unpermitted second […]
This is an experiment. I have a project in San Francisco and the client was having trouble visualizing what the skylights were going to look like. Instead of making static drawings of the space, I thought I would use the 3-D capabilities of Chief Architect and make a quick video […]
If you live in San Francisco and have a rental unit on your property that was built without proper permits, the City has an amnesty program which will allow you to legalize the unit. If you are legalizing voluntarily, the program allows you to legalize your illegal rental unit without […]