Research study
Owner-occupancy rules: what your city’s code still says
The single provision most likely to turn an investor’s answer from yes to no — and the one where the printed municipal code is most likely to be out of date.
Written by HyreADU Research Desk Primary-source research and data analysis
Audited by HyreADU Research Desk Statutory citation and retrieval-date audit
The finding
A California local agency cannot impose an owner-occupancy requirement on an accessory dwelling unit. Government Code section 66315 states that no standard other than those in section 66314 “shall be used or imposed, including an owner-occupant requirement,” and the Department of Housing and Community Development’s ADU Handbook answers the question in two words: “No. A local agency cannot impose an owner-occupancy requirement on any ADU.” The 1 January 2025 sunset that most published guidance still describes no longer exists. AB 881 (Stats. 2019, Ch. 659) created the prohibition with an expiry date; AB 976 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 751) deleted the expiry date with effect from 1 January 2024.
There is nothing left to sunset. A junior ADU is a different unit under a different rule. A JADU ordinance still requires owner-occupancy — but AB 1154 (Carrillo, Stats. 2025, Ch. 507) narrowed that requirement with effect from 1 January 2026 so that it applies only where “the junior accessory dwelling unit has shared sanitation facilities with the existing structure,” and not where the owner is a governmental agency, land trust or housing organization.
The hard part is the citation, not the rule. The ADU statute has been renumbered twice in under two years, by SB 477 (Stats. 2024, Ch. 7) and again by SB 543 (Stats. 2025, Ch. 520).
Municipal code text, planning handouts and almost all secondary commentary still cite repealed sections; the crosswalk below maps them.
This page records what the statute says and what HCD says. It does not tell you whether an unamended clause in your city’s code is enforceable on your lot. Section 66316 provides that a non-compliant ADU ordinance “shall be null and void,” but whether a given clause is non-compliant is a legal conclusion, and reaching it is a lawyer’s job and HCD’s job, not ours.
Nothing here is legal advice. The jurisdiction governs, and the ordinance is what it says until somebody with authority says otherwise.
Read this first
- Nothing here is legal advice, and we do not tell you whether a local clause is void
We publish the statutory text, its enactment history and HCD’s published position.
Whether a particular sentence in a particular municipal code is preempted on a particular lot is a legal conclusion that depends on the whole ordinance, its adoption date, its submission history with HCD, and facts about the property.
HyreADU does not practice law and does not design, permit or build ADUs.
The useful next step is the planning counter, HCD’s ADU technical-assistance route, and — where money is at stake — a land-use lawyer.
- An ADU and a junior ADU are two different units under two different rules
Almost every wrong answer on this topic comes from collapsing them. An ADU is a complete independent dwelling on the lot.
A junior ADU is no more than 500 square feet of interior livable space, contained entirely within a single-family residence (Gov. Code § 66313(d)).
Owner-occupancy is prohibited for the first and, in narrowed form, still required for the second.
- The section numbers you will find elsewhere are probably stale
Two recodifications in under two years mean there are three live vintages of citation in circulation: § 65852.2(a)(8) (repealed 2024), § 66315 (current for owner-occupancy), and a set of sections renumbered again on 1 January 2026.
A source that cites § 65852.2 is not necessarily wrong about the rule — but it has not been checked since March 2024, and on this topic a lot changed after that.
- We did not read every California ordinance for this edition
The moat this desk is building is a normalised ordinance table across the roughly 480 California jurisdictions. It is not finished, and we will not imply that it is.
What this page publishes is the state rule, the enactment trail, and the mechanism by which a stale local clause is resolved.
Where we have not read a city’s current code, we say we have not read it rather than guessing at the row.
Why this one provision decides the project
Almost every other ADU standard changes the shape of the building. Owner-occupancy changes who is allowed to own it.
A setback costs you square feet; a parking space costs you a corner of the yard; an owner-occupancy covenant recorded against the title means that if you move out, the unit cannot lawfully be let, and the lot cannot be held as a pure rental asset.
That is not a design constraint. It is the difference between a project and no project.
It also decides how the unit is financed. A lender underwriting a small-balance construction loan against projected ADU rent is underwriting an income stream that an owner-occupancy covenant can extinguish. Our financing study sets out how narrow the product set already is; a recorded occupancy restriction narrows it further.
HyreADU analysis: the reason this provision generates so much confusion is that the law changed four times in six years and each change was reported as if it were the end state.
The 2019 package created a prohibition with an expiry date. The expiry date was then deleted. The junior-ADU carve-out survived both, and was itself narrowed in 2026. Meanwhile the section numbers moved twice.
A reader who found a confident answer in 2021, 2023 or 2025 found a different confident answer each time, and each was correct on the day it was written.
ADU and junior ADU: the rule side by side
Two units, two rules. Every cell below is the statutory text or HCD’s published answer, with the section number as it stands after the 1 January 2026 renumbering.
| Question | Accessory dwelling unit | Junior accessory dwelling unit | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can a city require the owner to live on the property? | No. “No additional standards, other than those provided in Section 66314, shall be used or imposed, including an owner-occupant requirement.” | Yes, but only in a narrowed case since 1 January 2026. A JADU ordinance must “require owner-occupancy in the single family residence in which the junior accessory dwelling unit will be permitted” — but, as amended, only “[i]f the junior accessory dwelling unit has shared sanitation facilities with the existing structure.” | Gov. Code § 66315 (ADU); § 66333(b) as amended by AB 1154, Stats. 2025, Ch. 507. Retrieved 2026-09-05. |
| Is there an exception for institutional owners? | Not applicable — the requirement cannot be imposed at all. | Yes. AB 1154 carries an exception where the owner is a governmental agency, land trust or housing organization. | AB 1154, Stats. 2025, Ch. 507, amending Gov. Code § 66333. Retrieved 2026-09-05. |
| Does the prohibition still expire? | No. AB 881 wrote a 1 January 2025 expiry into the prohibition. AB 976 deleted it, effective 1 January 2024. | Not applicable. | AB 976, Stats. 2023, Ch. 751. HCD Handbook (Jan. 2025): “Removes the existing 2025 sunset of the prohibition on owner-occupancy requirements and instead mandates no owner-occupancy requirement for ADUs.” |
| Can the city record a deed restriction against the title? | Not for owner-occupancy. State law bars the underlying requirement, so there is nothing to record. | Yes, and it must. A JADU ordinance is required to “[r]equire the recordation of a deed restriction” limited to a prohibition on separate sale and a restriction on size and attributes conforming to state law. | Gov. Code § 66333(c)(1), (c)(2), as described in the HCD Handbook (Jan. 2025), p. 21. Retrieved 2026-09-05. |
| Can the city require a minimum rental term? | Yes — “rentals of terms 30 days or longer.” That is the one thing § 66315 expressly preserves. | Yes, and since 1 January 2026 it is mandatory: an ordinance must “[r]equire that a rental of a junior accessory dwelling unit be for a term longer than 30 days.” | Gov. Code § 66315 (ADU); § 66333(g) as added by AB 1154. See our short-term rental study. |
| Can the unit be sold separately from the house? | Only under two narrow routes: the nonprofit-developer pathway (§ 66341) or a local condominium ordinance adopted under § 66342, the AB 1033 mechanism. | No. A JADU deed restriction must prohibit sale separate from the single-family residence. | Gov. Code §§ 66341, 66342 (Article 4, “Accessory Dwelling Unit Sales”); § 66333(c)(1). Retrieved 2026-09-05. |
The owner-occupancy rule and its neighbors, ADU against junior ADU, as the Government Code stands after SB 543 took effect on 1 January 2026.
HyreADU note: the JADU owner-occupancy requirement is a requirement placed on the ordinance, not directly on the homeowner. It obliges a local agency that adopts a JADU ordinance to include the clause. That distinction matters when reading a city that has adopted no JADU ordinance at all.
How the rule got here
Six years, five statutes, two renumberings. Every entry is the chaptered bill record, retrieved from leginfo on 2026-09-05.
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Before 2020
Owner-occupancy is the normCalifornia cities commonly conditioned a second-unit permit on the owner living in one of the two units, usually enforced through a covenant recorded against the title. The statutory regime then lived in Government Code section 65852.2.
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9 October 2019
AB 68, AB 881 and SB 13 are chapteredThe 2019 package — AB 68 (Stats. 2019, Ch. 655), AB 881 (Stats. 2019, Ch. 659) and SB 13 (Stats. 2019, Ch. 653) — rebuilt state ADU law.
In HCD’s summary, the package “[e]liminates all owner-occupancy requirements by local agencies for ADUs approved between January 1, 2020, and January 1, 2025.” The prohibition arrived with an expiry date built in.
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11 October 2023
AB 976 deletes the sunsetAB 976 (Ting, Stats. 2023, Ch. 751), effective 1 January 2024, “[r]emoves the existing 2025 sunset of the prohibition on owner-occupancy requirements and instead mandates no owner-occupancy requirement for ADUs.” On the same day AB 1033 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 752) created the condominium separate-conveyance route. From this point the ADU answer is stable.
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25 March 2024
SB 477 renumbers the whole chapterSB 477 (Senate Committee on Housing, Stats. 2024, Ch. 7) was an urgency statute and took effect on chaptering rather than the following 1 January.
It repealed sections 65852.150, 65852.2, 65852.22, 65852.23 and 65852.26 and created Chapter 13 of Division 1 of Title 7, sections 66310 to 66342. Owner-occupancy moved from § 65852.2(a)(8) to § 66315. HCD publishes the full concordance table in the January 2025 Handbook.
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10 October 2025
Four ADU bills are signed at onceAB 462 (Stats. 2025, Ch. 491), AB 1154 (Stats. 2025, Ch. 507), SB 9 (Arreguín, Stats. 2025, Ch. 510) and SB 543 (Stats. 2025, Ch. 520) were all chaptered on the same day.
AB 1154 is the one that touches this page: it narrows the JADU owner-occupancy requirement and adds a mandatory 30-day minimum rental term for JADUs.
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1 January 2026
SB 543 renumbers part of the chapter againSB 543 (McNerney, Stats. 2025, Ch. 520) renumbered § 66324 to § 66311.5 (fees), § 66327 to § 66313.5, and § 66332 to § 66311.7 (unpermitted units), and added §§ 66333.5, 66335.5 and 66339.5.
Section 66315 itself kept its number. Owner-occupancy is one of the few provisions in this chapter you can still cite the way you could in 2024.
The citation trail, so you can check us
The crosswalk below is the table we wish had existed when we started. If you are reading an ordinance, a staff report or a blog post that cites one of the left-hand numbers, this is where the provision lives now.
| Provision | Pre-2024 citation | 25 Mar 2024 – 31 Dec 2025 | From 1 January 2026 | Renumbering statute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No local owner-occupancy requirement for an ADU | Gov. Code § 65852.2(a)(8) | Gov. Code § 66315 | Gov. Code § 66315 — unchanged | SB 477, Stats. 2024, Ch. 7 (only) |
| JADU ordinance contents, including owner-occupancy and the deed restriction | Gov. Code § 65852.22(a) | Gov. Code § 66333 | Gov. Code § 66333 — number unchanged, text amended by AB 1154 | SB 477; substantive amendment by AB 1154, Stats. 2025, Ch. 507 |
| Definitions, including “junior accessory dwelling unit” | Gov. Code § 65852.2(j) and § 65852.22(j) | Gov. Code § 66313 | Gov. Code § 66313 — number unchanged, text amended by SB 543 | SB 477; amended by SB 543, Stats. 2025, Ch. 520 |
| Non-compliant ordinance is null and void | Gov. Code § 65852.2(b) | Gov. Code § 66316 | Gov. Code § 66316 — unchanged | SB 477, Stats. 2024, Ch. 7 |
| HCD review of submitted ordinances | Gov. Code § 65852.2(h) | Gov. Code § 66326 | Gov. Code § 66326 — number unchanged, text amended by SB 9 (2025) | SB 477; amended by SB 9 (Arreguín), Stats. 2025, Ch. 510 |
| Impact fees and utility connection charges | Gov. Code § 65852.2(f) | Gov. Code § 66324 | Gov. Code § 66311.5 — renumbered | SB 477, then SB 543, Stats. 2025, Ch. 520 |
| Permits for unpermitted units built before 1 January 2020 | Gov. Code § 65852.23 | Gov. Code § 66332 | Gov. Code § 66311.7 — renumbered | SB 477, then SB 543, Stats. 2025, Ch. 520 |
Where each provision lives, across three vintages of numbering. Compiled by the HyreADU Research Desk from the concordance table HCD publishes at pages 47–48 of the January 2025 ADU Handbook, extended forward using the renumbering notes on the leginfo section pages themselves. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
HyreADU calculation, in the narrow sense that we joined two published tables: HCD publishes the 2024 half of this concordance and leginfo publishes the 2026 half on each affected section page. Nobody appears to publish them joined. If you find an error in the join, it is ours, not HCD’s.
What happens when the municipal code still says otherwise
Readers arrive with exactly one question: “my city’s code says the owner has to live here — is that real?” Here is the machinery that answers it, and here is the point past which we stop.
The statute preempts, and says so
Government Code section 66325 provides that “this article shall supersede a conflicting local ordinance,” while expressly preserving a local agency’s authority “to adopt less restrictive requirements for the creation of an accessory dwelling unit.” State law is a floor, not a ceiling: a city may be more permissive than the state, never less.
A non-compliant ordinance is null and void by its own terms
Section 66316 is unusually blunt for a zoning statute: “If a local agency has an existing accessory dwelling unit ordinance that fails to meet the requirements of this article, that ordinance shall be null and void and that agency shall thereafter apply the standards established in this article for the approval of accessory dwelling units, unless and until the agency adopts an ordinance that complies with this article.”
That is the sentence behind every planner’s remark that “we just apply state standards.” The default is not that the city’s clause survives until challenged. The default written into the statute is that the ordinance drops out and the state standards apply.
HCD is the reviewer, and from 2026 the deadline itself has teeth
Section 66326 requires a local agency to submit an adopted ADU ordinance to HCD within 60 days, gives HCD the power to issue written findings of non-compliance, and gives the agency 30 days to amend or to adopt findings explaining why it complies.
SB 9 (Arreguín, Stats. 2025, Ch. 510) added the automatic consequence: miss the 60-day submission or the 30-day response and “that ordinance shall be null and void.” Before that amendment, HCD’s main lever was a referral to the Attorney General under Government Code section 65585(j), an authority AB 434 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 740) had extended to ADU law.
Note the bill-number collision. This SB 9 is the 2025–26 session bill by Senator Arreguín on ADU ordinances. It is not SB 9 (Atkins, Stats. 2021, Ch. 162), the urban lot-split statute. Two different laws, both routinely called “SB 9,” both relevant to a single-family lot.
Where we stop
We will not tell you that a specific clause in a specific code is void.
Preemption analysis turns on the whole ordinance, what was submitted to HCD and when, whether HCD issued findings, and whether the clause is genuinely a “standard” imposed on an ADU or something else — a nuisance provision, a building-code provision, a covenant recorded before 2020 on a unit approved under the old regime.
HyreADU recommendation: the useful next step is to ask the planning counter, in writing, two questions. First: has this ADU ordinance been submitted to HCD under section 66326, and did HCD issue findings?
Second: which sections of the ordinance does the department currently apply, given section 66316? Both questions have documentary answers, and both are more productive than arguing preemption at a front desk.
Four words that are doing a lot of work
- Accessory dwelling unit
- “An attached or a detached residential dwelling unit that provides complete independent living facilities for one or more persons and is located on a lot with a proposed or existing primary residence. It shall include permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking, and sanitation …” The definition expressly includes an efficiency unit and a manufactured home. Source: Gov. Code § 66313(a), retrieved 2026-09-05.
- Junior accessory dwelling unit
- “A unit that is no more than 500 square feet of interior livable space in size and contained entirely within a single-family residence. A junior accessory dwelling unit may include separate sanitation facilities, or may share sanitation facilities with the existing structure.” The phrase “interior livable space” was tightened by SB 543 with effect from 1 January 2026, and the shared-sanitation clause is now the hinge on which owner-occupancy turns. Source: Gov. Code § 66313(d).
- Objective standard
- “Standards that involve no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and are uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion available and knowable by both the applicant or proponent and the public official prior to submittal.” This matters here because owner-occupancy is not a design standard at all, and § 66315 forecloses it as a “standard” of any kind. Source: Gov. Code § 66313(i); HCD Handbook glossary.
- Permitting agency
- “Any entity that is involved in the review of a permit for an accessory dwelling unit or JADU and for which there is no substitute, including, but not limited to, applicable planning departments, building departments, utilities, and special districts.” The definition was added so that a water district or a utility cannot impose a condition the planning department could not. Source: Gov. Code § 66313(k); HCD Handbook glossary.
How to check your own jurisdiction, in order
The reproducible method. It is the same one this desk uses, and it takes about twenty minutes per jurisdiction.
- 1 Find the ordinance, not the handout
A planning department’s ADU brochure is a summary written by a person, and summaries go stale first.
Go to the municipal code itself — most California codes are hosted on American Legal, Municode, QCode or Code Publishing — and find the ADU chapter.
Note the ordinance number and adoption date printed in the code history line.
- 2 Read the owner-occupancy sentence carefully, and check which unit it is about
Many ordinances carry two owner-occupancy sentences: one for ADUs, one for JADUs. A code that requires owner-occupancy for a JADU is following state law. A code that requires it for an ADU is a different matter. Copy both sentences verbatim before forming a view.
- 3 Compare the adoption date against 1 January 2024
AB 976 removed the sunset with effect from 1 January 2024. An ADU ordinance last amended before that date may simply not have been revisited since. That is common and is not evidence of bad faith — it is evidence of a small planning department and a fast-moving statute.
- 4 Ask whether the ordinance was submitted to HCD, and whether findings issued
Section 66326 requires submission within 60 days of adoption. HCD publishes its ordinance-review correspondence. If HCD has issued findings on your city, HCD’s letter — not our reading — is the authoritative account of which provisions the department considers non-compliant. That is the document to ask for, and to cite.
- 5 Put the question in writing to the permitting agency
Ask which standards the agency will apply to your application, given sections 66315, 66316 and 66325.
A written answer is worth more than a counter conversation, and under § 66317 a denial must come back with “a full set of comments to the applicant with a list of items that are defective or deficient and a description of how the application can be remedied.”
- 6 If money is at stake, get advice — from a lawyer, not from a website
Including this one. A recorded covenant is a title matter. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and a page cannot know your facts.
What this means if you are buying rather than building
The prohibition in section 66315 is about what a local agency may impose as a condition of approval.
It does not erase a covenant already recorded against a title under an older ordinance, it does not override a private CC&R question (although Civil Code sections 714.3 and 4751 make CC&Rs that “effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict” an ADU void and unenforceable), and it does not tell you what a lender will require.
It also does not make an ADU separately saleable. Under section 66314 the unit “may be rented separate from the primary residence, but shall not be sold or otherwise conveyed separate from the primary residence,” subject to the two narrow routes in Article 4.
If your model depends on selling the ADU, the question you are actually asking is whether your city has adopted an ordinance under section 66342 — a different question, with a different and much shorter list of jurisdictions.
Not investment advice. Rent, vacancy, financing and tax treatment all vary. Our rental-income study keeps rent as rent, and the ROI calculator refuses to output a single number on purpose.
What we could not verify
HCD’s ordinance-review letters. HCD publishes written findings when it reviews a submitted ADU ordinance, and those letters are the right way to report a compliance problem in a named city — they are HCD’s conclusion rather than ours.
Throughout this retrieval, hcd.ca.gov returned HTTP 403 and a “scheduled maintenance” notice, so we could not open any individual letter. This page therefore names no city as non-compliant. When the letters are reachable again we will add a jurisdiction table sourced to them, and date it.
The March 2026 edition of the ADU Handbook. A more recent edition of the Handbook than the one we cite appears to exist. We could not retrieve it for the same reason.
Everything attributed to HCD on this page is quoted from the January 2025 edition, which we did retrieve and text-extract on 2026-09-05, and which predates AB 1154, SB 9 (2025) and SB 543.
Where the Handbook and a later statute could differ, we have followed the statute and said so.
A normalised owner-occupancy column for all ~480 California jurisdictions. Not done, and not claimed. See the ordinance tracker for the jurisdictions we have actually read, and for the coding schema.
Questions
Do I have to live on the property to build an ADU in California?
Didn’t the owner-occupancy ban expire on 1 January 2025?
What about a junior ADU?
My city’s code still requires owner-occupancy. Is that clause valid?
Which Government Code section should I actually cite?
Can a homeowners association require owner-occupancy instead?
Does any of this let me sell the ADU separately?
Does the state prohibition apply to charter cities?
Written and audited by
HyreADU Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a builder. We read the permit extract, the statute, the HCD return or the fee schedule ourselves, and publish each figure with its source and retrieval date.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we leave it out and say what we could not verify. Our store-based claims cover California only.
- CA
- the only state this desk will make store-based claims about
- 5
- jurisdictions with extracted ADU permit evidence
- 735
- CSLB-verified companies in the California store
- 0
- national claims from a one-state store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Permit counts come from the city or county that issued the permit. Production counts come from HCD’s Annual Progress Report. Rents come from HUD or the Census. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we download the source and compute the figure ourselves.
- This is a California site. The company store is 734 California firms and one New Mexico firm. Permit evidence exists for five named jurisdictions: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, San José and unincorporated Marin. A number from that store is titled to those places, never to the United States.
- A permit is not a completion, and a license is not an ADU grade. California licenses no ADU classification. Being named on an ADU permit is evidence of engagement in that jurisdiction, not of quality, completion, or work anywhere else. Owner-builder permits are excluded from contractor counts.
- Calculation is labeled as calculation. Figures we derive are never presented as something HCD, HUD, the Census or a city published. Terner Center research is cited as Terner’s, never restated as ours.
- We do not design, permit or build ADUs, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Pages that look like rankings are not: they publish public-record counts and let the reader decide.
- Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice. Zoning, underwriting and appraisal practice vary by jurisdiction, lender and appraiser. The useful next step on a specific lot is the planning counter and a licensed professional.
Data as of Government Code Chapter 13 sections retrieved from leginfo.legislature.ca.gov 2026-09-05; HCD Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook, January 2025 edition, retrieved and text-extracted 2026-09-05; session laws confirmed to their chaptered bill records. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold.
Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
- California Government Code § 66315 — no additional standards, including an owner-occupant requirement , Full text as retrieved: “Section 66314 establishes the maximum standards that a local agency shall use to evaluate a proposed accessory dwelling unit on a lot that includes a proposed or existing single-family dwelling. No additional standards, other than those provided in Section 66314, shall be used or imposed, including an owner-occupant requirement, except that a local agency may require that the property may be used for rentals of terms 30 days or longer.” Added by Stats. 2024, Ch. 7, § 20 (SB 477). Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66313 — definitions , ADU (subd. (a)), junior ADU (subd. (d), “no more than 500 square feet of interior livable space … contained entirely within a single-family residence”), objective standards (subd. (i)), permitting agency (subd. (k)), public transit (subd. (m)). Amended by Stats. 2025, Ch. 520 (SB 543), operative 1 January 2026. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66316 — a non-compliant ADU ordinance “shall be null and void” , The source of the preemption default: the agency “shall thereafter apply the standards established in this article … unless and until the agency adopts an ordinance that complies with this article.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66325 — state article supersedes a conflicting local ordinance , “(a) Except as provided in subdivision (b), this article shall supersede a conflicting local ordinance. (b) This article does not limit the authority of local agencies to adopt less restrictive requirements for the creation of an accessory dwelling unit.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code § 66326 — submission of ordinances to HCD and review , 60-day submission, HCD written findings, 30-day response. Amended by SB 9 (Arreguín), Stats. 2025, Ch. 510, adding automatic voiding for a missed deadline. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Government Code Chapter 13 (Accessory Dwelling Units), Article 1 — §§ 66310 to 66313.5 , Legislative findings, intent, application to charter cities (§ 66312), fees (§ 66311.5), unpermitted pre-2020 units (§ 66311.7), definitions and HCD guideline authority. Used to confirm the post-SB 543 structure of the chapter. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- AB 1154 (Carrillo, 2025) — Junior accessory dwelling units. Stats. 2025, Ch. 507 , Chaptered 10 October 2025, operative 1 January 2026. Amends Gov. Code § 66333: owner-occupancy required only “[i]f the junior accessory dwelling unit has shared sanitation facilities with the existing structure,” with an exception for a governmental agency, land trust or housing organization owner; and requires “that a rental of a junior accessory dwelling unit be for a term longer than 30 days.” Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- SB 9 (Arreguín, 2025) — Accessory dwelling units: ordinances. Stats. 2025, Ch. 510 , Chaptered 10 October 2025. Amends Gov. Code § 66326 so that failure to submit an ordinance to HCD within 60 days, or to respond to HCD findings within 30 days, renders the ordinance null and void. Distinct from SB 9 (Atkins), Stats. 2021, Ch. 162, the urban lot-split statute. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- SB 543 (McNerney, 2025) — Accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units. Stats. 2025, Ch. 520 , Chaptered 10 October 2025, operative 1 January 2026. Amends §§ 66311, 66313, 66317, 66320, 66321, 66323; amends and renumbers § 66324 to § 66311.5, § 66327 to § 66313.5, § 66332 to § 66311.7; adds §§ 66333.5, 66335.5, 66339.5. The second recodification of ADU law in under two years. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- California Department of Housing and Community Development, Accessory Dwelling Unit Handbook, January 2025 edition , Retrieved as PDF and text-extracted on 2026-09-05. Owner-occupancy answer at p. 34; AB 976 summary at p. 15; the AB 68 / AB 881 / SB 13 summary at pp. 50–51; the SB 477 concordance table at pp. 47–48; the JADU deed-restriction requirement at p. 21. This edition predates AB 1154, SB 9 (2025) and SB 543, and its citations to §§ 66324, 66327 and 66332 are superseded. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- SB 477 (Senate Committee on Housing, 2023–24) — recodification. Stats. 2024, Ch. 7 , Urgency statute, effective 25 March 2024. Repealed Gov. Code §§ 65852.150, 65852.2, 65852.22, 65852.23 and 65852.26 and created Chapter 13 (§§ 66310–66342). Retrieved 2026-09-05.
- Best Best & Krieger LLP, “Governor Newsom Signs Four New Accessory Dwelling Unit Bills” (7 November 2025) , Secondary source, used only to identify the four 2025 bills so that each could be confirmed independently on leginfo. AB 462, AB 1154, SB 9 and SB 543. Every substantive statement on this page is cited to the bill record, not to this article. Retrieved 2026-09-05.
Before you assume the rule, check the ordinance date
The state answer on owner-occupancy has been stable since 1 January 2024. The municipal text often has not been touched since before then. The feasibility checker asks the questions that surface that gap at the counter, and it will never tell you that you can build.
HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units, and does not practice law. This page is informational and is not legal advice, tax advice or financial advice.
It describes California statutory text and HCD’s published guidance as retrieved on 5 September 2026; it does not tell you whether any particular provision of any particular municipal code is enforceable on any particular property, and it names no jurisdiction as non-compliant.
Statutes change, and this one has changed five times in six years and been renumbered twice since March 2024. Ordinances and recorded covenants vary by jurisdiction and by lot.
The useful next step is the permitting agency, in writing, and — where money is at stake — a licensed land-use attorney.