Los Angeles promotes ADUs as a solution to increase housing supply and thus counter the housing crisis. Yet many ADUs reinforce the speculative housing markets, rather than enabling affordability: High construction costs, complex permitting, and limited, financial resources prevent many homeowners from building ADUs in the first place, while those ADUs built are often used by their owners for market-rate or short-term rentals. The project Cooperative Dwelling Unit proposes a framework for ADU production that restructures ownership, financing, and governance. Homeowners who can’t afford to build an ADU, lease their backyard to the cooperative while the cooperative builds and owns the CDU, which has to be strictly affordable. The cooperative contributes to construction, while rent flows are redistributed to cover maintenance, reinvestment, and generate a capped income for the homeowner. To lower costs and increase implementation speed, the cooperative offers a standardized, flexible design and construction system, where homeowners can create their CDU with a catalog of different elements, materials, and configurations.
