In an effort to ease the current housing shortage Salt Lake City recently changed the rules associated with mother-in-law apartments.

Old rules meant that unless you lived within a ½ mile of a TRAX stop it was difficult to build an accessory dwelling unit. ADU’s include basement apartments, inside apartments, above garage apartments and separate buildings in the yard.

The changes have relaxed these rules for all of Salt Lake City, although there are some conditions for areas containing mainly single-family homes. The new rules also ease some requirements associated with entrances, setbacks, and parking.

In order to control investors from taking over, the new rules require that the owner must live in either the main building or an ADU and the city also introduced a licensing system for the ADU owners. The owner-occupant definition rules were also relaxed to include relatives, not just the building owner.

These kinds of changes have already taken place in other parts of the country like Portland and Denver. Judging by the impact they have seen these changes could mean up to an addition 25 ADU’s per year in Salt Lake City.

While some people welcome these changes as a way of easing the housing shortage, others have voiced concern on their impact on the local area, in particular, the impact on parking.

For more information please visit the Accessory Dwelling Unit page on the slc.gov website.