House Bill 2720, known by some as the “casitas bill,” goes into effect Sept. 1 but Arizona’s cities have until Jan. 1 to bring their own ordinances into compliance with the new state law.
While the controversial House Bill 2720, known by many as the “casitas bill,” goes into effect Sept. 1, cities across the Valley are taking advantage of a short reprieve before they have to enforce it.
The bill, which was signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs in May, requires cities with populations of 75,000 or more to adopt new regulations by January 1, 2025, to permit up to three accessory dwelling units — often referred to as casitas — on all lots where single-family dwellings are allowed.
Furthermore, it takes cities’ authority away to require extra parking for the new units, require the homes to have fire sprinklers or even require the new units share any aesthetic characteristics as the main house.
The idea of the law is to ease the cost of housing in the state by allowing more homes to be built, but some local officials have decried the law, saying it will needlessly clutter neighborhoods and won’t fix the problem.
“It undermines decades of careful municipal planning, and it will turn backyards into apartments,” Scottsdale City Council Member Solange Whitehead said. “That’s not fair to someone who buys a house and they’re backing up to a tree-filled backyard in a single family zoning neighborhood, and now suddenly there’s a 30-foot multi-housing unit five feet from their wall. That’s what the bill allows.
“Furthermore rent is falling,” she continued. “The bill didn’t take into account all the units that Scottsdale and every other city has in the pipeline. The bill doesn’t give cities the opportunity to do what makes sense for us. It doesn’t take into account water. It doesn’t take into account traffic, and it doesn’t take into account that we have 240,000 people in our city, many of whom have invested in a house, and now they’re going to have a multi-housing unit (near) their yard.
“This city council has gone the extra mile to approve a lot of apartments but place them in appropriate places where there is transportation. Where there are jobs, and it doesn’t impact residential neighborhoods that are (zoned) single family.”
While Whitehead figures the new units will adversely affect neighboring property values, the new law could be a boon for those building the new units.
National mortgage lender Freddie Mac estimates on its website that an accessory dwelling unit can increase the value of a home by as much as 35%, not to mention the added revenue stream renting out such units can create.
But the devil is in the details. Scottsdale Planning Commissioner Diana Kaminski said during the commission’s July 10 that adding so many accessory dwelling units per property could create slums.
Glendale Director of Development Services Randy Huggins could see something like that happening.
“If it were to go to its maximum, for sure,” he said. “Let’s say investors come in. They pick up a house and they add two units and they pick up another house next door and add two units, pretty soon it’s like triplexes in a row in an area that wasn’t designed for it. Then, yeah.
“The parking is going to be the first noticeable thing,” he continued. If you got room for two cars in your garage and a car in your drive way, and (the new law) adds another family so a couple more cars and then another family so that adds two more cars. Now they’re parked in front of your house and the neighbor’s house and if the neighbor does the same thing, where are those cars going to park?”
Though precedent from other cities and states with similar laws suggest too many accessory dwelling units is not going to become the problem some fear, Huggins said.
City of Tempe Deputy Director of Development Ryan Levesque thinks a couple hundred extra casitas could pop up across the state over a period of two or three years but doesn’t see slums cropping up either.
“I think so because the state enacted this House bill, I think there’s not going to be a negative impact on property values,” Huggins said.
The new law isn’t being introduced into a vacuum. Many cities already have ordinances governing casistas, though the state statute will override them.
For instance, Tempe originally created an ordinance in 2019 that allowed properties with multifamily zoning with a single family use to have a single accessory dwelling unit.
The reason for the ordinance was to preserve homes near the downtown whose owners were trying to get rezoned for multifamily purposes, Levesque said.
“We saw benefit in allowing ADUs, basically to treat the property as single family but allowing an accessory dwelling unit, which allows an additional rental on the property without treating the property like it’s multi-family - no design reviews, no additional parking and no additional fees like a multi-family (building) would be required,” Levesque said.
Tempe city staff were initially looking to make the ordinance citywide, “but there wasn’t the appetite for it at the time,” he said.
Staff were in the process of updating that ordinance this year when the new state statute was passed.
Since its inception, about a dozen casitas have gone up under the law.
Glendale also had a casitas ordinance allowing for one accessory dwelling unit per home on the books prior to the state stepping in. The city council passed the ordinance in December of last year with it taking effect in January. The intent of the law is to drive down housing costs in the city by increasing the stock.
Three property owners in Glendale have taken advantage of the ordinance since it went into effect, and they were all building a home for elderly parents, Huggins said.
“We assumed there would be more,” Huggins said.
Scottsdale, on the other hand, currently has no ordinance allowing accessory dwelling units. It has an ordinance allowing a guest house on property zoned for single family use, but those can not be rented out, said Scottsdale Planning Manager Brad Carr.
It’s a popular ordinance that has been used thousands of times, Carr said.
“It’s just the type of community we are where we have people who build guesthouses on their properties,” he said.
Glendale, Scottsdale and Tempe are in the process of holding public hearings on what their new respective ordinances will look like before the state deadline kicks in Jan. 1. In the meantime, the Arizona League of Cities has crafted a example ordinance for municipalities to consider.
J. Graber can be reached at jgraber@iniusa.org. We invite our readers to submit their civil comments pro or con on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
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