Before City Council on Nov 15, 2005, at 7 pm.
The City Council will be discussing second units on May 3, 2005, at their evening session, which starts at 7:00 p.m. in the new City Council Chambers. They're proposing a citywide pilot program in 2006 -- 100 permits granted.

Please contact John Davidson, Senior Planner, with questions about second units. Voice your opinion on them to the San Jose City Councilpeople (especially Ken Yeager) at this council session or by email.

Three big objections to the proposal:

1) NO ENFORCEMENT MAKES ITS PROVISIONS MOOT.
The proposal contains no funding for enforcement. Yet Code Enforcement cannot even enforce current law. San Jose contains thousands and thousands of illegal granny units (the San Jose Mercury News estimated the number as between 3,000 and 6,000). Current law is extremely simple (granny units are illegal). How, without a healthy increase in funding for Code Enforcement, can citizens expect that the byzantine provisions of the granny unit proposal will be adhered to? What provision will the City Council make to assess the increase in illegal unit activity, when they don't even know how many illegal units there are now?

2) NO ENFORCEMENT WILL RE-OPEN NON-CONFORMING UNITS.
All over the City, neighbors have had to work hard to get Code to enforce the law and close illegal second units. These illegal units are known to have adversely impacted the quality of life of their neighbors and in some cases pose a hazard to their residents. If the City passes this granny unit ordinance, many landlords will re-open these second units, with no or cosmetic changes, and neighbors will have to struggle all over again to close them again. Their struggle will be a lot harder this time, as the law has become arcane and Code will be even more overburdened than it was before.

3) ONE LOT SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL.
The proposal gives 6,000 sq. ft. as the minimum lot size eligible for a granny unit (8,000 for a detached one). The proposal gives no rationale to justify this lot size, or why granny unit rules should be the same for a 6,000-sq-ft lot as a 12,000-sq-ft lot. Common sense: the negative impacts of a second unit on a 6,000-sq-ft lot are much higher than those of a second unit on a 10,000 or 12,000-sq-ft lot.

Planners are hard pressed to show how a second unit can LEGALLY be added to typical homes on 6,000-sq-ft lots... but by including them, they make Code Enforcement much more difficult.

In reality, allowing second units on lots this small will create more problems than they could solve. That is why Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Cupertino all have higher minimum lot sizes for their second unit ordinances (7,000, 9,000 and 10,000 sq. ft. respectively).

Summary #1: if you want to operate an illegal second unit, you will love this proposal. Arcane rules, wide applicability, no enforcement - it's great!

Summary #2: it may be that, for some neighborhoods with larger lot sizes, second units are an asset. Only allow granny units there. Let the rich neighborhoods get richer; don't make the poor neighborhoods get poorer.

Summary #3: our vintage neighborhood voted to oppose the granny unit proposal.

- Ken Eklund

READ THE FULL TEXT OF OBJECTIONS TO GRANNY UNITS

The City's second units web page:
http://www.sanjoseca.gov/planning/zoning/secondunit.htm