SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Seeing his attached dwelling unit (ADU) or granny flat come together, Kevin Gaskins said it makes him extremely happy because it will serve as an extremely important home for his extended family.
“My in-laws both have dementia, and they need somewhere to stay,” Gaskins said. “Right now, I’m driving 30 minutes each way to their house, and I drive there almost daily to take care of them. And it will be much easier to have them here on the property where I can help take care of them.”
Gaskins isn’t alone in seeing the value of building an ADU in Sacramento.
The mayor’s office reports in 2018 the city issued 30 ADU permits. In 2023, 246 permits were issued.
It’s a similar scene across the state as cities work to streamline ADU permitting to help with the housing shortage.
And as happy as Gaskins is seeing his ADU go up, he said all the unknown fees associated with building his in-law’s new home have been exhausting.
“There’s a lot you don’t know and don’t understand,” he said. “In fact, we got shovels in the ground and I’m already deep into it money wise. And they said [permit officials], by the way, you need to before we can give you the permit to go forward. You need to go pay your school fees. I said, What school fees?”
The school fees Gaskins said turned out to be over $7,000.
Another fee he said he’s waiting on that could be costly is hookup fees for his sewage and electricity.
Utility hookup fees can often get costly and have caught the attention of State Senator Nancy Skinner, who has introduced a bill aimed at such fees, which she said costs the same no matter the size of the unit, which isn’t fair.
“My bill would put a cap on what water, sewer, electric [hookup] would charge on that unit of housing based on the value of that unit,” State Sen. Skinner said. “The value of the unit also correlates to the size of the unit, meaning a smaller unit would cost less to hookup than a larger unit.”
She also wants more transparency from utilities.
“Every utility that charges such a hookup fee, it has to be clear,” State Sen. Skinner said. “You could find it on the website so you know in advance exactly what you’re facing.”
A number of people Gaskins said had asked questions about his process to build his ADU and so he put out a notice to his community making his ADU available to see and for them to ask him questions in person.
He said his offer was eaten up, within two hours roughly 80 people saw his unit.
Gaskins said to help others he plans to make a blueprint of his process.
“It’ll have a list of everything,” he said. “And it’ll give you an idea of this is what you need to think about spending on top of your build.”
Something he said he wishes he had, because construction in any circumstance is never an easy process to begin with.