Press resources
For journalists — how to cite this desk, and what it will and will not give you
What the desk is, what it publishes, the data you can take now, the terms you can take it on, and the things we will decline.
Written by HyreADU Research Desk Primary-source research and data analysis
Start here
HyreADU has no press coverage to list, and this page will not pretend otherwise. There is no “featured in” strip here, no logo wall, no awards and no quotes from journalists, because there is nothing true to put in them.
There is also no spokesperson. The HyreADU Research Desk is an organizational research function with no named staff, no credentials and no field operation.
Nobody here can be quoted as an expert, and any page on any site that quotes a named HyreADU researcher is not describing this desk.
What is on offer instead is the material. 9 open CSV datasets, 3,828 data rows, published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 and downloadable without asking. A section-level register of California’s ADU statute with each enactment line retrieved individually.
Permit-time, valuation, contractor and pre-approved-plan datasets for named California jurisdictions. Every figure on this site carries a provenance label and a retrieval date, and every study links the file it was computed from.
The correct way to cite the desk is as an organization: “the HyreADU Research Desk”, with the file or study named and the date you retrieved it. There is a boilerplate below, written to be pasted.
And there are things we will decline, which are listed here rather than left for you to discover on a deadline: we will not supply a named expert quote, we will not comment on a specific company, we will not produce a number for a deadline that we would not publish, and we will not give an exclusive or an embargo on material that is already public.
What this page is, and why it looks like this
Most press pages are proof-of-attention pages. This one cannot be, so it is a proof-of-material page instead.
HyreADU has not been cited, quoted, mentioned or covered anywhere, and the honest thing to do with that fact is state it in the first paragraph rather than fill the space with something that implies otherwise.
A logo strip of publications that once linked to a page, an award from a body nobody has heard of, or a “trusted by” line with no referent are all available and all are false signals. None of them will appear here.
The absence is not a reason to have no press page. A reporter working on ADUs needs four things from a source of this kind: an accurate description of what the source is, access to the underlying data, terms they can rely on, and a clear statement of the source’s limits so they do not over-attribute.
All four exist. None of them requires anyone to have written about us first.
If that changes, what appears here will be a list of specific pieces with links, not a logo wall. A publication that linked to a dataset is a fact; a logo is a claim about a relationship.
How to describe the desk, and how not to
The wordings on the left are accurate and we would be glad to see them. The wordings on the right are ones we have seen used for research operations of this kind and would ask you not to use for this one.
Accurate
“The HyreADU Research Desk, which publishes primary-source research on California accessory dwelling units.”
“HyreADU, a California ADU research and lead-generation site, which publishes its underlying datasets openly.”
“An analysis by the HyreADU Research Desk of [named file], retrieved [date].”
“HyreADU calculated the figure from [the primary source], and publishes the file.”
Not accurate
“HyreADU researchers say…” — there are no named researchers and none can be quoted.
“A HyreADU study of American ADUs…” — the desk’s empirical base is Californian; it makes no national claims from its own store.
“HyreADU surveyed homeowners / builders…” — it has never run a survey. It computes from files other people published.
“Industry body / accredited institute / think tank HyreADU…” — it is none of those, holds no accreditation and belongs to no association.
“HyreADU, which builds ADUs…” — it does not design, permit or build anything.
The distinction that matters most for accuracy is between our calculations and other people’s data. Where a figure came from HCD, HUD, the Census or CSLB, credit the agency and describe us as having compiled it.
Where we computed it from a primary file, the calculation is ours and the file is theirs. Every figure on this site is labeled with which it is.
Boilerplate, written to be pasted
Three lengths. All three are accurate as they stand and none of them requires a fact-check call.
One line. HyreADU publishes primary-source research on California accessory dwelling units and publishes the underlying datasets openly.
Short. HyreADU is a California accessory dwelling unit information site. Its research desk computes figures from primary files — statute, municipal permit extracts, license registers and agency returns — publishes every source with the date it was retrieved, and releases the underlying datasets under a Creative Commons license.
The desk is an organizational function with no named staff; HyreADU does not design, permit or build ADUs.
Full. HyreADU is a California accessory dwelling unit information site that expects to earn revenue by connecting homeowners with ADU professionals, a relationship it discloses wherever it applies.
Its research desk publishes original analysis computed from primary sources: California Government Code as retrieved section by section from the Legislative Counsel, municipal open-data permit extracts for named jurisdictions, Contractors State License Board records, and returns published by the Department of Housing and Community Development and HUD.
Every figure carries a provenance label — a HyreADU calculation, an agency-published statistic, or a trade estimate — and every source carries the date the desk retrieved it. 9 underlying datasets, totalling 3,828 rows, are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
The desk is an organizational research function with no named staff, credentials or affiliations, and its empirical base is Californian: it makes no national claims from its own data. HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units and does not practice law.
Facts we will stand behind, with their sources
Each of these is phrased the way we would want to see it quoted, and each carries the provenance class and the source you would need to check it. Nothing here needs a call.
| The fact | Class | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| California’s ADU statutes moved. Government Code § 65852.2 returns no code text; the ADU chapter is Government Code Chapter 13, §§ 66310–66342. | Source fact | Requested individually from the California Legislative Counsel, 2026-09-07. Chapter 13 was created by SB 477, Stats. 2024, Ch. 7, Sec. 20, effective 25 March 2024. |
| Three ADU section numbers were retired on 1 January 2026: § 66324 became § 66311.5, § 66327 became § 66313.5, and § 66332 became § 66311.7. | Source fact | Each successor section prints its own renumbering line naming SB 543, Stats. 2025, Ch. 520, Secs. 7, 8 and 9. Retrieved 2026-09-07. |
| Half of California’s ADU chapter has changed since it was created: 18 of its 36 sections still carry only the 2024 SB 477 line. | HyreADU calculation | Counted from 36 individually retrieved section enactment lines, 2026-09-07. The register is published as a table and as a CSV. |
| Four California ADU bills were chaptered on a single day, 10 October 2025: AB 462, AB 1154, SB 9 (Arreguín) and SB 543. | Source fact | Chaptered Date field on each bill’s status page, California Legislative Information, retrieved 2026-09-07. |
| AB 462 took effect on the day it was chaptered rather than on 1 January 2026, and lets a certificate of occupancy issue for an ADU before the primary dwelling where the main house was destroyed in a declared emergency from 1 February 2025. | Source fact | Gov. Code § 66328 as amended, enactment line “Amended by Stats. 2025, Ch. 491, Sec. 1. (AB 462) Effective October 10, 2025.” Retrieved 2026-09-07. |
| A California local agency may not deny a permit for an unpermitted ADU built before 1 January 2020 on building-standard or ordinance-compliance grounds, and may not charge impact fees or connection charges on it, subject to a health-and-safety exception. | Source fact | Gov. Code § 66311.7(a) and (e), with the boundary at (b), (c) and Health and Safety Code § 17920.3. Retrieved 2026-09-07. |
| The statutory enforcement-delay route for a pre-2020 unpermitted ADU sunsets on 1 January 2030. | Source fact | Health and Safety Code § 17980.12(a)(1): the enforcement agency’s notice duty applies “until January 1, 2030”. Gov. Code § 66331 requires the delay on request. Retrieved 2026-09-07. |
| Since 1 January 2026 a California permitting agency must determine whether an ADU application is complete, and tell the applicant, within 15 business days. | Source fact | Gov. Code § 66317(a)(2)(A), as amended by SB 543. The parallel JADU rule is § 66335(a)(2)(A). Retrieved 2026-09-07. |
| Declared building-permit valuation is not construction cost, and the two are routinely conflated in ADU coverage. | HyreADU analysis | Declared valuation is the figure an applicant writes to generate a fee, and some cities substitute a published dollar-per-square-foot table. The distributions and the method are on the permit valuations study. |
| A permit is not a completion. HCD’s Annual Progress Report carries both series and the gap between them is large and varies by jurisdiction. | Agency published, compiled by HyreADU | California HCD Housing Element Annual Progress Report data, compiled for 20 usable jurisdictions and published as a CSV. Retrieved 5 September 2026. |
| California licenses no ADU classification, so no contractor license record establishes that a company is an ADU specialist. | Source fact | Contractors State License Board classification schedule. Being named on an ADU permit is engagement evidence for that jurisdiction on that date and nothing more. |
| At least one major California city currently has no operative local ADU ordinance and applies state law directly. | Source fact | City of Long Beach states “Long Beach Municipal Code 21.51.276 no longer applies” and that the city “currently applies state ADU law directly, as a local ordinance is still in development.” Retrieved 5 September 2026. |
Provenance classes are the same three used site-wide: a source fact quoted from a document we retrieved, a HyreADU calculation computed from a primary file, or an agency-published figure we compiled. HyreADU analysis is an interpretation and is labeled as one.
Two of these are the ones we would most like to see corrected in general coverage, because they change the substance of a story rather than a detail: that Government Code § 65852.2 no longer returns text, and that the enforcement-delay route for unpermitted units sunsets on 1 January 2030.
The data available to you now
No request, no form and no embargo. Download any of these, cut them how you like, and cite the desk and the date.
| File | What it is | Rows | Provenance | Method page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| adu-statute-change-log.csv | California ADU statute change register | 36 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-statute-retired-numbers.csv | Retired California ADU statute section numbers | 4 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-permit-contractor-index.csv | ADU permit contractor index, five jurisdictions | 3,668 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-construction-duration-la.csv | ADU permit-to-occupancy duration, City of Los Angeles | 24 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-permit-times-by-city.csv | Application-to-issuance permit times, three jurisdictions | 17 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-declared-permit-valuations.csv | Declared building-permit valuations, five jurisdictions | 20 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-permits-vs-completions.csv | ADU permits against completions, top 20 usable jurisdictions | 20 | Agency published, compiled by HyreADU | Method |
| adu-preapproved-plan-programmes.csv | Pre-approved ADU plan programs | 35 | HyreADU calculation | Method |
| adu-hud-fmr-fy2026.csv | HUD Fair Market Rents FY2026, four California FMR areas | 4 | Agency published | Method |
Inventory read from the published files 2026-09-07. Full field dictionaries, exclusions and caveats are on the downloads page.
Every file begins with a comment line stating what it is and what it is not. That line is written to be quotable as it stands, and it is the difference between a figure that survives a subeditor and one that does not.
Citation and licensing terms
Everything on this site that is ours is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. That includes the datasets, the coding instruments and the statute registers.
- 1 Attribute the organization, not a person
The HyreADU Research Desk. Never a named individual — there is no correct name to use, and inventing one is the failure mode this whole page exists to prevent.
- 2 Name the file or study, and the date you retrieved it
For example: HyreADU Research Desk, “adu-statute-change-log.csv”, retrieved [date], hyreadu.com/data/adu-statute-change-log.csv, CC BY 4.0. Files are refreshed in place rather than versioned, which is why the date is load-bearing.
- 3 Carry the label with the number
“Declared permit valuation” rather than “cost”. “Permits” rather than “ADUs built”. “Fair Market Rent” rather than “rent”. If a figure is agency-published, credit the agency and describe us as having compiled it.
- 4 Link the method page where you can
Every dataset row above carries one. A reader who has the number without the frame will misread it, and the frame is the exclusions, the censoring and the date the feed stops.
- 5 You do not need permission, and there is no embargo
Nothing on this site is under embargo, nothing is offered as an exclusive, and no advance access exists to grant. Everything published is public the moment it appears, which is the only arrangement compatible with publishing the underlying file.
Charts and diagrams on the research pages are inline SVG generated from the same published dataset the adjacent table reads. They may be reproduced under the same license with the same attribution, and the numbers in any of them can be recomputed from the file.
What we will decline, and why
Listed here rather than discovered on a deadline. None of these is a negotiating position.
- A named expert quote
There is no named researcher, no credentialled specialist and no spokesperson. Supplying a quote attributed to a person would be fabrication, and it is the first thing a diligent reporter checks.
Where a story needs expert commentary on ADU design, construction or land-use law, the right sources are practitioners and academics who can be verified, and we would rather say that than supply a name.
- Comment on a specific company
The contractor index publishes public-record permit counts and license status with retrieval dates. It is engagement evidence, not a quality judgment, and we will not extend it into one on the phone. California licenses no ADU classification, so no license record supports a specialism claim either.
- A number produced for a deadline
If a cut can be computed from sources the desk already holds, it can be computed and published — and then you may cite it, because it exists on the site.
What we will not do is generate a figure privately that we would not publish, or approximate one from data that does not support it.
- A national ADU statistic from our own data
The desk’s store is Californian and its permit evidence covers five named jurisdictions. No figure computed from that base is a United States figure. For national context the right sources are the Census, HUD and the relevant state agencies, cited to them.
- An exclusive, an embargo or advance access
Nothing is held back, so there is nothing to grant early. Publishing the underlying file at the same moment as the finding is incompatible with an embargo, and the file is the more useful half.
- A ranking, a “best of”, or a recommendation of a builder
Nobody can buy a placement, a ranking or a favorable mention on this site, and none of the research pages rank companies. Asking us to name the best ADU builder in a city is asking for something that does not exist here.
The six mislabelling traps in ADU coverage
Offered as a service rather than a complaint. Each of these appears regularly in ADU reporting, including in otherwise careful pieces, and each is avoidable in one clause.
- Permit ≠ completion
- A permit records that a project was authorized; a completion records that it was finished. Both series exist in HCD’s returns and the gap between them is large. “ADU permits issued” and “ADUs built” are different sentences.
- Declared valuation ≠ cost
- The valuation on a building-permit application is a fee base. Applicants under-declare and some cities substitute a published rate table. A median declared valuation is not a median project cost and should never be presented as a price.
- Fair Market Rent ≠ market rent
- HUD’s FMR is a 40th-percentile gross rent including utilities, produced for a policy purpose. It is a defensible floor under an income estimate and it is not what a given ADU lets for.
- A license ≠ an ADU credential
- California licenses no ADU classification. A CSLB record establishes a license class and a status on a date. It does not establish that a company specializes in ADUs.
- § 65852.2 ≠ current law
- The section most ADU material still cites returns no code text. The chapter is Government Code Chapter 13, §§ 66310–66342, and three of its section numbers changed again on 1 January 2026.
- SB 9 (2025) ≠ SB 9 (2021)
- SB 9 (Arreguín), Stats. 2025, Ch. 510, amends HCD review of local ADU ordinances. SB 9 (Atkins), Stats. 2021, Ch. 162, is the urban lot-split statute. Bill numbers restart each session and both are live law.
Corrections, right of reply and errors in our own work
If a figure of ours is wrong, we want to hear it from you before your readers hear it from someone else. Corrections are made in place, the review date changes, and where the correction changes the substance of what was said the page states what changed and when.
We do not silently amend a number somebody may already have cited.
A discrepancy you find by recomputing a published file is the most useful thing anyone can send this desk. That is the entire reason the files are published rather than described.
If your recomputation and ours disagree, the file, the frame and the exclusion list are all on the site, and the disagreement is resolvable rather than rhetorical.
If we have described a jurisdiction, an agency or a company inaccurately, tell us and we will correct it. The research pages are deliberately conservative about this: no jurisdiction is characterized as non-compliant anywhere on this site, because compliance findings under Government Code § 66326 belong to the Department of Housing and Community Development and preemption conclusions belong to a court.
Where a page notes that an official page carries a superseded statutory citation, it says explicitly that no fault is implied and the substance of the program is unaffected.
The contact route is on the editorial policy page, which carries the switchboard number and the postal address. That page also sets out the sourcing policy, what this site will not publish, and how it expects to make money.
Story context the data supports, and the questions it cannot answer
Offered so that a reporter can tell in two minutes whether this desk is useful for the piece they are writing.
The data here supports stories about process. How long a permit takes from application to issuance in a named jurisdiction.
How long the build takes from issuance to sign-off, with incomplete projects handled properly rather than dropped.
Which contractors appear on ADU permits in a jurisdiction, and what their license status was on a stated date.
Whether a city runs a pre-approved plan program, what it charges, and what it still requires. What the statute says, when it changed and which citation is now dead.
It does not support stories about the market as a whole. There is no national coverage, no price series, no measure of demand, no measure of unpermitted stock and no count of legalized units — the last of which is a genuine public-data gap and is documented as one on the legalization index.
Where those questions matter to your piece, the honest answer from here is that the sources do not exist in public form rather than an estimate we cannot defend.
Two absences on this site are themselves reportable. There is no statewide ADU fee table here, and no normalised ordinance table for every California city, because the platform hosting most California municipal codes returns HTTP 403 to automated requests and municipal fee schedules were frequently unreachable.
That a basic comparison of what Californian cities charge for an ADU permit cannot be assembled from public sources without manual retrieval city by city is, we think, a story in itself.
Questions
Has HyreADU been covered anywhere?
Can I interview someone from the HyreADU Research Desk?
How should I attribute a HyreADU figure?
Do I need permission to reuse the data or the charts?
Is anything under embargo, or available in advance?
Can you run a custom cut for my story?
Can you comment on a specific ADU company?
Does HyreADU make money from this research?
What is the single most common error in ADU coverage?
How do I report an error in your work?
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 Dataset inventory read from the published files 2026-09-07; each fact in the fast-facts table carries its own source and date. 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
- HyreADU research data downloads , The 9 published datasets, 3,828 data rows, CC BY 4.0, with field dictionaries, exclusions and caveats. Downloadable without a request or a form. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
- How HyreADU research works — methodology , The provenance classes, the sourcing rule with retrieval dates, the statistical conventions, the publication blockers and the correction policy. The page to read before attributing anything from this site. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
- HyreADU editorial policy , Sourcing, what the site will not publish, how it expects to make money, the corrections policy, and the contact details for reporting an error. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
- What changed in California’s ADU rules — the statute change log , The section-level enactment register behind four of the fast facts: 36 sections, each retrieved individually, with the retired section numbers and their successors. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
- California Legislative Information — codes_displaySection service , The primary source behind every statutory fast fact on this page. Each section is requested individually and the enactment line at the foot of the section confirms currency. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International , The license applying to every HyreADU dataset, coding instrument and generated chart. Permits commercial reuse, redistribution and adaptation with attribution. Retrieved 2026-09-07.
Take the file rather than the quote
There is no quote to take. What there is: the dataset, the method page and a caveat line written to be quoted as it stands. That combination is what makes a figure survive a subeditor.
HyreADU has no press coverage, no media mentions and no awards, and nothing on this page should be read as implying any. The HyreADU Research Desk is an organizational research function with no named staff, no credentials, no accreditation and no spokesperson; it cannot supply an expert quote and any material attributing a quote to a named HyreADU researcher is not describing this desk.
HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units and does not practice law. Its empirical base is Californian and it makes no national claims from its own data.
It expects to earn revenue by connecting homeowners with ADU professionals, discloses that wherever it applies, and takes no payment for placement, ranking or favorable mention.
Everything published here is informational and is not legal, tax, financial or construction advice.