Sacramento Watch: The ADU Restriction in Your Governing Documents May Already Be Void

AB 956 would widen the rule that voids ADU restrictions in governing documents, and it would let owners build two detached units instead of one. If your association is a planned development, part of this has been law for years and your CC&Rs may already be unenforceable.

AB 956 does three things worth a board's attention. It expands the provision that voids ADU and junior ADU restrictions so it reaches every common interest development, not just planned developments. It changes the trigger from a lot zoned for single-family residential use to a lot zoned to allow single-family residential use. And it raises the number of detached, new construction ADUs a city has to approve ministerially on a single-family lot from one to two.

Start with the part that is already true, because this is where most boards get surprised. Existing law under Civil Code section 714.3 already makes a covenant or governing document provision void and unenforceable if it prohibits or unreasonably restricts an ADU on a lot zoned for single-family use in a planned development. That is current law, not pending law. If your association is a planned development and your CC&Rs flatly ban accessory units, that language is very likely unenforceable right now, and has been. AB 956 does not create that problem for you. It just widens who else it applies to.

The widening is the news. Moving from planned development to common interest development pulls condominium projects, stock cooperatives and community apartment projects into the same rule. Be careful about how far you carry that, though. The lot still has to be zoned to allow single-family residential use. A stacked condominium building on a lot zoned for multifamily does not suddenly become an ADU candidate because the category changed. The associations that actually feel this are the ones in the middle: detached condominium projects, townhome communities on lots that permit single-family, the small three and four unit associations all over Redondo and Torrance where the zoning underneath the project is residential and always has been.

The zoned for to zoned to allow swap looks like a technicality and is not. Zoned for reads as a lot whose designated use is single-family. Zoned to allow reads as any lot where single-family is a permitted use, which in a lot of South Bay zoning includes parcels designated for higher density. That is a quiet expansion of the map, and it is the kind of change that gets litigated later because nobody read it now.

Two detached units is the piece owners will hear about first. The bill increases the ministerial approval requirement from one detached new construction ADU to two on a lot with a proposed or existing single-family dwelling. There is a limit worth knowing: a local agency is not required to ministerially approve a junior ADU on a lot where two detached ADUs have already been built. So this is not an unlimited stack. But for a board, the practical question changes from whether one accessory unit shows up to whether two do, with the parking, noise, trash and guest traffic that come with them.

Here is what I would put on the next agenda. Pull your governing documents and find every provision that touches accessory units, second units, guest houses, granny flats or rental of a portion of a residence. Read them against section 714.3 as it exists today, not as it might exist in October. If your association is a planned development and any of that language is a flat prohibition, assume it is already void and stop enforcing it, because enforcing an unenforceable restriction is how associations end up paying the other side's attorney fees.

Then separate what you cannot do from what you still can. Void and unenforceable applies to prohibitions and unreasonable restrictions. It does not erase reasonable architectural standards. Boards retain real authority over setbacks that exceed the statutory floor only where the law allows it, exterior materials, color, roof lines, screening, and the approval process itself. The associations that will do well here are the ones that replace a dead prohibition with a defensible standard before an owner forces the issue. The ones that will do badly are the ones that keep saying no on the strength of a sentence a court will not enforce.

One timing note. This is not law yet. AB 956 is on the Senate floor, and the Legislature has to pass bills by August 31. That is two weeks from now. It either moves in the next fourteen days or it waits. Either way, the section 714.3 problem for planned developments is already sitting in your governing documents today, and that part is not waiting on Sacramento.