Have you ever walked an entire alleyway in Evanston? He often goes: a garage, a garage, a garage, a parking lot, a garage, a garage, and then a house! These backyard homes are known as “Additional Condominiums” or ADUs. According to the Evanston Guide to Extension Condominiums, ADUs are “small stand-alone housing units on the same plot as a standard dwelling with kitchen, bathroom, living and sleeping areas.”
In recent years, Evanston has increasingly become a Abu Dhabi University-friendly city. Reinforcing Evanston at Design’s focus on “good design” in our city, this two-part series explores ADUs from two angles – the macroscopic plane of a neighborhood block and the microscopic plane of a single backyard. This first article, focused on city planning, examines the purpose of ADUs as a housing option in Evanston and how they relate to our city’s values of equity, sustainability and affordability.
Under the current set of regulations, ADUs are a relatively new type of housing in Evanston. Prior to 2018, it was not legal in Evanston. While a separate “coach house” could have been built in an individual’s backyard, these units could only house family members, and could only be built behind single-family homes. Then, in 2018, the City of Evanston legalized the lease of existing ADUs to “non-family members.”
This initial change in 2018 opened the door to a broader reform. Evanston issued an initial ordinance in January 2020 that legislated the construction of ADUs behind any apartment building on matching property, among other policy changes. Subsequently, the city council issued a full ADU ordinance in September 2020 that relaxed off-street parking requirements, and allowed different types of ADU and revised height requirements. Although the Evanston City Plan Committee briefly discussed not requiring a fire sprinkler system in new, separate ADUs, that discussion did not progress further and regulations remained in place, adding to the cost of establishing ADU today. Despite this caveat, with the final law remaining in effect as of late 2020, the Washington Post has highlighted Evanston as one US city that has successfully modified zoning rules to allow for better ADUs.
When examining the question “Why ADUs” in Evanston, it is useful to look at the mismatch between “houses” and “houses” sizes. According to US Census Bureau data, the average or average household size in Evanston is 2.38 people. Furthermore, 18,945 households in Evanston consist of one or two people, which equates to 66.4% of all households in the city. In contrast to these demographic trends, the size of new single-family homes in America has increased since the mid-20th century. Approximately 40% of residences in Evanston currently have three or more bedrooms.
Moreover, Evanston suffers from an aging population. According to Census Bureau data, 21.4% of Evanston’s residents are 60 or older, which is 4.8% higher than the city’s 60-year-olds in 2010. Older adults tend to live in smaller families in the United States, and 27% Adults age 60 or older live alone. As a result, one of the biggest proponents of ADUs across the country has been AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons). Given the housing size mismatch in Evanston, it seems reasonable to allow for smaller units that better align with the housing needs and lifestyles of our residents, particularly those seeking to age in the place.
Furthermore, ADUs are an affordability tool in high-cost cities like Evanston, particularly in single-family residential areas. According to a 2020 report by Enterprise Community Partners, allowing ADUs in single-family areas “could open up fully underutilized land and possibly … could enhance … opportunity for less affluent, rentier families, who have been excluded from those neighborhoods for years.” “. Given that land alone is expensive in Evanston, building more homes per lot is a step toward affordability.
While the ADU is a step in the right direction, it is not a panacea that will alone address the cost of housing in Evanston. Instead, perhaps our city should consider a logical zoning reform to allow for different types of “lost in the middle” housing, including (but not only) ADUs.
By allowing condominiums, duplexes and triplexes in all residential neighborhoods, we can begin to mitigate mounting housing pressures in a constrained local market, where the average home sale price has increased by 14% in 2020. These reforms can be accomplished without allowing skyscrapers in every Including the Evanston neighborhood, which is why people often refer to them as “average” housing types – not single family, but not outside the surrounding residential neighborhood.
Additionally, given the racial history of single-family zoning in the United States, housing reform to allow for ADUs and other “missing in the middle” housing types is an equity issue. As Richard Rothstein writes in his book The Color of Law, “To prevent low-income African Americans from living in middle-class white neighborhoods, in the 2000s local and federal officials began reserving middle-class neighborhoods for single-family homes. Homes that couldn’t Low-income families of all races bear the costs.”
In considering Design Evanston’s commitment to ‘good design’, equal neighborhoods that are accessible to people of all incomes, races, genders and living experiences should be a key component of this principle. The reform of ADU in 2020 was a first step towards affordable housing in Evanston, although it cannot be the last if our city strives to be the best place to be inclusive and welcoming.
In short, as we reflect on a few of the challenges of the twenty-first century – wealth inequality and systemic racism – it’s time to envision how to design neighborhoods that are resilient, diverse, democratic and collectively owned by the local community. Socially conscious design requires intent: proactive decisions about who is included (or excluded) in Evanston based on the types of housing allowed. Allowing ADUs and “missing average” types of housing in our single-family neighborhoods could be one intentional step in achieving a fairer city.
Evanston design articles “Eye on Evanston” focus on Evanston’s design history and advocate good design. Visit designevanston.org to learn more about the organization.
