DENVER — In the next decade, Denver will be short 44,000 affordable housing units, according to the city's Department of Housing stability.
But over the last few years, communities have been making it a little easier to explore a possible solution: Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
"The transition to accessory dwelling units was pretty natural and it was really driven by customer demand," said Jeremy Nova, co-founder of Studio Shed, a company that was initially started when he was looking for a better way to store his bikes.
The company now sells prefabricated homes in building kits that can fit on a homeowner's property. The ADUs can be used for external offices, club houses, short-term rentals, or affordable housing.
"It's a great way to add neighborhood density in a gentler way than single-family infill and multi-family construction," he said.
- Denver7 has followed the city's efforts to create solutions to the housing crisis over the years. Read our report from last year, which details how Denver made ADUs possible citywide.
Denver
ADUs now allowed in Denver neighborhoods citywide
Denver7 visited Angela K. Evan's home in Denver where she started the process to put in an ADU in late May of last year. Now, it's practically complete and she's getting ready to rent it out.
"When I bought the property, there was this extra space back here that was just all weeds," she said, "I just know what it's like in this neighborhood. It's amazing, it's very community-oriented, neighbors are great. And at the same time, it can be unaffordable for a lot of folks."
She plans to rent out the 680-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bathroom ADU at an affordable rate.
Earlier this year, a new state-wide law went into effect to make it easier for homeowners like Angela to consider building an ADU on their property.
Across Colorado, ADUs generally must be allowed anywhere else that other detached dwellings are allowed. The law also puts a limit on what local governments can restrict for the project.
"We've really seen a stronger uptick even recently with that," said Nova.
Meanwhile, local communities have also been chipping away at barriers to putting in ADUs.
Denver has seen the number of ADU permits slowly increasing. They anticipate to exceed 100 this year after the city passed their own measure last year to make it easier for homeowners to build them.
Depending on if homeowners start their construction and design from scratch, or chose a company that pre-fabricates the ADUs, it could even be cheaper.
"Apples to apples is probably 15% to 20% less. It's probably a good ballpark. The biggest savings are on the timeline in the field," said Nova.
Evans said there is still plenty of paperwork like any other construction project, but for her, it's worth it.
"I would just encourage everyone to think about the privilege that they do have and being able to live where they do. And recognize that we just need to create more opportunity in the places that we love, that we benefit from, for folks who maybe have less," she said.
