California - Attached ADU and JADU - Is it possible?

[Peter A Spears]

Hello everyone,

I've waded through hundreds of posts on ADU and JADU requirements. I haven't been able to figure out one aspect though. In my scenario I have a 490sqft attached 2-car garage. This could be converted to a living space as an ADU or JADU. I could also add a second story to this garage and part of the home it is attached to, yielding an additional 780sqft living space. I can't figure out if that is allowed though. It seems that I may be required to build a separate structure ADU to be eligible to convert the attached garage into a JADU. However, other interpretations seem to indicate that both an attached ADU (less than 50% of residence square feet) and an attached JADU (less than 500 square feet) are possible.

Has anyone successfully completed an attached ADU and JADU in CA under the new 1-1-20 mandates? Is it even possible or does at least one of those structure need to be detached in order to have both (I know you can also have a JADU attached to a detached ADU)?

Thank you for the wealth of experience here.

Peter

[Boris Suchkov]

@Peter A Spears Just curious, what is the problem you're trying to solve? Maximize living space, maximize the number of units, etc? JADUs have some issues that make them less than useful in many scenarios. JADUs are not exempt from parking requirements, which means that if you convert the garage to a JADU, you will need to build a new garage elsewhere on the property as per zoning. You may gain 500 sf of space in one location and give up an almost equivalent amount to a new garage. Also, JADUs trigger the owner occupancy requirement.