The bill to reform how cities regulate owner occupancy and number of unrelated persons for ADUs, SB 5235, has moved from the House Local Government Committee with a new amendment.

Rather than a tiered approach that would phase out owner occupancy requirements, the House committee voted to retain city authority for owner occupancy requirements, but cities must offer a hardship exemption if certain events affect the homeowner. Specifically, the exemption would apply if either the ADU or primary residence had been owner occupied but the owner no longer occupies the primary unit due to age; illness; financial hardship due to the death of a spouse, domestic partner, or co-owner of the property; disability status; the deployment, activation, mobilization, or temporary duty of a service member of the armed forces; or other such reason that would make the owner occupancy requirement an undue hardship on the owner. In such situations, a city must provide an exemption that allows an owner to offer the ADU as a rental for periods of 30 days or longer.

Please provide AWC with any feedback you may have on this new approach; we believe it is preferable to previous iterations of the proposal.