Riverside now has a program to help create more affordable housing in the city with pre-designed accessory dwelling units or ADUs.
The Riverside City Council launched DWELL, a streamlined ADU program, at its meeting this week, to expedite the process and construction of the units.
“Well, I’m pretty excited because I’ve been talking about this for over a year now,” Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson said at the Tuesday, Dec. 10, meeting. “Every time I go someplace I keep promising people that these are coming and now we have them.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1033 into law in October 2023, repealing an earlier ban on the sale of ADUs separate from a primary residence. The city first introduced an ADU ordinance in 2017, providing guidelines for property owners who wanted to build ADUs, according to a city report.
ADUs are a secondary unit attached or detached to a main house that offers more living units on a property. The city program has two goals, offering permit-ready plans for ADUs and providing faster pathways to construct them, according to a city report.
The permit-ready program was “designed to encourage the construction of ADUs,” offering pre-approved designs under local regulations, simplifying the application process and speeding up the approval process, according to the report.
The program offers several pre-approved code-compliant construction plans, ranging from one to four bedrooms and from 746 square feet to 1,200 square feet.
The program is now available.
For information about the program, visit the city’s website.
