Every morning Sukie Stanley wakes before her husband, Jack, and almost everyone else in her family’s Palo Alto home. She goes downstairs, through the kitchen and family room and knocks on a door.
On the other side, her 77-year-old mother, Rilla Hanna, waits with a cup of coffee made in her “pretend kitchen.” While the rest of the house sleeps, mother and daughter sit in front of Hanna’s fireplace and plan the day’s schedule.
The routine has become an important part of their lives since Hanna came to live with the Stanleys 11 years ago. The landlord kept raising her rent. She couldn’t find a place to buy. Her daughter and son-in-law were remodeling.
After much discussion and fears of losing independence, they decided to add a carefully designed space that includes a loft bedroom, two bathrooms, living room and hallway that doubles as a kitchen area.
Building a living space for a parent or other family member is no where near as easy as everyone from city officials to frustrated adult children believe it should be. Zoning laws in most cities all but prohibit traditional “granny cottages,” known in bureacratese as “detached secondary dwelling units.”
A whole set of codes — which vary from city to city — limits what you can put in an attached space or garage conversion. Almost all prohibit full kitchens.
But contractors and designers say there are ways — legal and illegal — to create a nice place for a parent who can no longer live alone, or an adult child who can’t afford to leave home.
The area must be designed to meet needs for privacy, space and accessibility. It can be expensive. But the Stanleys and others who have built similar projects say the rewards are well worth the effort.
“I honestly don’t know how we would get along if it weren’t for Mom living here,” said Stanley, an assistant head of life sciences at Nasa-Ames Research Center. “I don’t know how we would manage working full-time jobs and being decent parents. I can’t imagine living separately now.”
Fears that backyard cottages would be rented out and ruin the character of residential neighborhoods have prompted municipalities to create a web of restrictions against them. Each city has its own laws, from San Jose’s outright prohibition to Santa Clara’s insistence that the builder provide one uncovered parking space.
The most common detractor is lot size. Many municipalities, including Cupertino, Mountain View and Sunnyvale, require lots of 9,000 to 10,000 square feet. Homeowners in Los Gatos must have at least 15,000 square feet to build a cottage without a full kitchen.
Even cities with smaller lot-size requirements, like Santa Clara’s 7,500 square-foot minimum, have tough requirements for parking and entrances. Almost all require a conditional use permit and a hearing before a planning commission. Variance not sought
For the Stanleys, their 8,100 square-foot lot, larger than most in the area, was not big enough to build the cottage they originally planned. Palo Alto required at least 8,500 square feet. They could have requested a variance, gone to public hearings. But they decided to build an attached space without a full kitchen.
In the city’s eyes, that made it no different from the two bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms they were already adding to their home. “You can have 14 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms and that’s OK, as long as you don’t have a kitchen,” said Tim Murray of Summit Remodeling Co. in Campbell.
Most zoning codes define a kitchen as a stove, refrigerator and sink. Most allow you two of three, with some gray in the area of hot plates, microwaves and counter-top burners.
Murray and other contractors say homeowners can build a master suite with a bathroom and a wet bar — all allowable under most city codes — install wiring for a refrigerator or stove and have building inspectors sign off the project.
“If you’re clever and you know about building, there are ways that you can convert (to a full kitchen) after the inspectors are gone,” said Clayton Nelson, a Los Gatos contractor.
City officials say they don’t go looking for illegal kitchens unless they get complaints from the neighbors. But they don’t recommend installing them. Anyone who decides to install an illegal appliance should make it as unobtrusive as possible, builders advise. Homeowners should also make sure their illegal additions can be easily removed when they are ready to sell.
And they should be on good terms with their neighbors. Most of the problems, say city officials, are with people who want to rent out the spaces. Complaints are usually about crowded parking or loud parties. “We’re not going to be walking into people’s apartments to see if there’s a microwave in another room,” said Cesario Rodriguez, San Jose’s senior planner.
Most people who are building for a relative are content with something legal, like Hanna’s “pretend kitchen,” which has a microwave, a small refrigerator and a bar sink.
Surprisingly, Hanna said, she doesn’t miss her big stove and oven. Instead of the large dinner parties she used to throw, she holds wine-and-cheese gatherings.
Logan will install a stove and sink in his mother’s apartment. She gets Meals-On-Wheels, he said, and doesn’t want or need a full kitchen.
Don and Joan McCullough are adding a master suite to their San Jose home for Don’s 88-year-old mother. The suite, which includes a deck and picture windows with sweeping views, will be attached to their kitchen.
“We want her to be part of our family and to join us with eating meals and watching TV and listening to music,” said Joan McCullough.
Hanna said her friends are surprised when she tells them she usually doesn’t eat with the Stanleys. “We have different schedules,” she explains. The respect for each others’ schedules is a main reason why their living situation has worked so well, Sukie Stanley said.
Logan said he and his mother felt the same way. “She has her own separate world and I’ve got my own separate world. I think that’s really important.”
Any addition must meet the needs of the person living in it, say contractors and designers. The McCulloughs had Davis design their addition to provide plenty of room for a treasured baby grand piano.
The Stanleys installed upstairs and downstairs bathrooms in Hanna’s apartment so that children using a planned swimming pool wouldn’t be traipsing into her upstairs bedroom to change. They decided not to build the pool but are glad they have the downstairs bathroom. If she loses her ability to climb stairs, Hanna said, she can keep living downstairs.
Logan is making his mother’s apartment completely wheelchair-accessible, with wide doorways and a roll-in shower. Contractors estimate it costs between $150-$200 a square foot to build an addition that includes a bedroom, bathroom and wet bar.
“This is not a cheap undertaking,” said Logan. But, he added, it is less expensive than a home in a retirement community and much better for his mother.
Sukie and Jack Stanley see the little apartment in back of their house, with its high windows looking out on blossoming fruit trees, as a place they might live someday.
“It’s conceivable,” said Sukie, “that this house will stay in our family for multiple generations.”
Local zoning laws severely restricting secondary dwelling units — granny cottages — may be in conflict with state law, according to a Los Gatos attorney.
“Cities have to allow secondary units — subject to restrictions — in residential zones,” said Los Gatos attorney William Seligmann.
California land use and zoning laws state: “It is the intent of the Legislature that any second-unit ordinances adopted by local agencies…are not so arbitrary, excessive, or burdensome so as to unreasonably restrict the ability of homeowners to create second units in zones in which they are authorized by local ordinance.”
But many municipalities have lot-size requirements that do make it almost impossible to build a second unit.
Fears that secondary units would crowd residential neighborhoods and cause parking and noise problems cause neighbors to take a dim view of them, said Cesario Rodriguez, senior planner for San Jose.
“When you get two independent families on the same lot, you drive down the street and all you see are cars,” he said.
Jennifer Davis, a Campbell designer, said making it easier to build second units might help restrict those that are now built illegally — and often dangerously. “At least it would be legitimately done,” she said. “You can keep it contained and you don’t have people trying to sneak things in the middle of the night.”
