It’s been a minute since we last checked in on Tucson’s casita scene.
Three years ago, when we wrote about Tucson's experiment with casitas, the city had received just 61 permit applications in all of 2022. And not every one of those proposals ultimately got built.
At the time, Tucson was on the cutting edge of the push to make it easier to build casitas (formally known as accessory dwelling units or ADUs) by stripping away regulations that limited where and how they could be built — a policy that Arizona lawmakers later adapted and implemented statewide.
But a year into that experiment, Tucson was still off to a pretty slow start.
Today, more than 300 ADU permits have either been approved or are pending, and the city set a record last year by receiving 80 new applications, according to records we received in response to a public records request.
Casitas still aren’t the silver bullet for the housing shortage that some officials hoped they would be, but city officials note that accessory dwelling units are just one piece of a broader strategy to address Tucson’s affordable housing shortage.
“We had said from the very get-go, this does not mean (casitas will spring up) overnight,” Assistant City Manager Liz Morales told us. “What we're doing is creating the environment for people to have options.”
And after years of work, the policy is picking up steam and casitas are popping up around the Old Pueblo, offering simple, affordable housing to students, grandparents, single folks and more — not to mention some cash for homeowners who rent them out.
The most quintessential “Tucson casita” we could find.
Koren Manning, director of Tucson Planning and Development Services, estimates about 150 casitas have been built throughout Tucson since the Tucson City Council adopted a pro-casita policy in 2021.
And while that’s less than, say, one mega-apartment development, the trend on casitas is picking up steam.
“It started off like any new regulation,” Manning said. “The first couple years, we were definitely seeing strong interest, but it was a little slower. We actually saw a really significant uptick last year.”
Tucson was among the first Arizona cities to adopt citywide ADU regulations in 2021, long before state legislation required all municipalities to allow them in 2024.
And by the time the state was catching up to the policy, Tucson was already innovating — building a library of preapproved ADU plans that homeowners could choose from to save money and skip some of the red tape around building.
Those who use the library of preapproved model plans don’t have to pay the plan review fees, and it also means lower design fees because they don’t have to hire an architect, Manning noted.
"Since we put in the new ADU codes, it gives people clear, ‘This is what you do, this is how you do it,’” Morales said. “We’ve been able to provide real options for people to utilize the properties they already are on to add or expand housing options.”
Far and away, casitas are most popular in midtown neighborhoods.
Nearly 160 applications, or a little more than half, came from residences in the area bounded by North 1st Avenue and North Alvernon Way to the west and east, and between East 22nd Street to the south and the Rillito River to the north.
North Tucson residences accounted for another 64 permit applications, or just under a quarter of the total. The rest of the applications were spread out across the city.
Still, despite the growing interest, officials say the rising cost of raw materials remains the biggest hurdle for homeowners considering an ADU.
“I would say some of the challenges are still just the cost of construction,” Manning said. “Materials are more expensive, labor is more costly.”
The average cost to build an ADU is still over $100,000, per city officials.
Now including duplexes, triplexes and more
Earlier this year, the city started building on the success of its ADU policy by expanding the types of housing that property owners can build.
Instead of only allowing ADUs on most residential properties, Tucson started allowing duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes on most existing residential lots — giving homeowners more opportunities to add housing on properties they already own.
A triplex. You can tell because there are three doors.
During the program's first six months, officials say 76 middle housing units have either been approved or are currently under review. That’s in addition to the 150 casitas that are have been built in the last four years.
“What that tells me is the word is getting out each year,” Morales told us. “People are learning about it. People are figuring out how to finance these things.”
City officials expect construction to continue increasing as homeowners become more familiar with the program and local contractors gain more experience building smaller housing units.
“I think people are going to start looking at local builders who know how to do ADUs,” Morales said.
And just like it did with the library of preapproved ADU plans, the city is now working on building a stock of duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, and cottage courts that future builders can use to cut down on costs, time and regulations in the name of building more middle housing.
Yesterday, the city announced it received a grant from AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) to design new middle housing.
So if you’ve got a background in building and designing homes, this last line is for you.
The Middle Housing Design Competition will select 15 winners to receive a $1,000 award for their design.
And more importantly, the winning plans will be posted in an online library, where other homeowners select the designs that, like the ADU library, will not require building review fees to use.
Demolition derby: Crews started demolishing the 22nd Street bridge yesterday, the first step toward replacing the 60-year-old bridge as part of the voter-approved RTA Next plan, Andrew Capasso reports for KVOA. In other demolition news, neighbors aren’t too pleased about the demolition of a historic house in the Jefferson Park neighborhood, Arizona Public Media’s Thatcher Warrick Hess reports. He dove into the century-long story of the house built by the Lester family that was torn down in February, leaving neighbors complaining they weren’t given notice that they were about to lose a piece of their local history.
Keeping an eye on the clouds: Monsoon season brings heavenly rain every year, along with storm chasers trying to conduct research or snap the best pics of lightning and cloudbursts, Tony Perkins reports for AZPM. Last weekend, dozens of monsoon enthusiasts came to town for Monsoon Con (formerly known as Chaser Con) at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to trade tips and listen to speakers.
Monsoon Con attendee and photographer Donna Ruthruff bills herself on her Instagram page as “a crazy middle-aged lady addicted to chasing lightning” in Tucson.
Nothing to see here: The announcement a few weeks ago that the University of Arizona was splitting up its Health Sciences unit led to concerns that the UA was going to do away with it altogether, but former Regent Fred DuVal says the decision was a normal part of restructuring, Prerana Sannappanavar reports for the Arizona Daily Star. Basically, the College of Medicine will be overseen by a provost, while the research side will move to the Office of Research and Partnerships.
Longstanding legacy: In anticipation of the country’s upcoming 250th birthday, the Star’s Henry Brean put together a list of 10 Southern Arizonans who “made their mark on American history.” It’s an eclectic bunch that includes astronaut Frank Borman, tree-ring research pioneer and co-founder of the Steward Observatory A.E. Douglass, and Hugo O’Conor, who chose the site for Tucson in 1775.
We leave our mark on Southern Arizona’s history every day, thanks to readers who show their financial support.
Not giving up: The mothers who search for missing loved ones in Sonora, Mexico, under the banner “Buscando Corazones” say they’ll keep looking for Nancy Guthrie, KGUN’s Jane Caffrey reports. They got a tip that Guthrie might be in Sonora and started searching the desert. They say they’ll look for her as if she was part of their own family.
“Nancy is a mother,” Luz del Rayo Lopez Carrillo, a member of Buscando Corazones, said in Spanish. “Because of that, we have to search for her — no matter her nationality, no matter whether she's rich or poor. To us, she's a mother, just like we are, and that's why we're searching for her.”
The Legislative District 20 candidate forum over the weekend promised voters a chance to hear from the candidates.
For the most part, it delivered.
What we didn't know was that candidates could send surrogates in their place.
All these years covering politics, we thought it was a binary choice: Either you show up or you don’t.
Instead, the LD20 Democratic Committee allowed Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez to send a surrogate to Sunday's forum as she campaigns in the Democratic primary for the state Senate seat.
Hernandez told us she had a scheduling conflict. Organizers said candidates received roughly three weeks' notice about the forum and were also offered an opportunity to select an alternative date.
In all, four of the six Democratic candidates seeking seats in Legislative District 20 attended. Democratic Rep. Sally Ann Gonzales also did not appear.
After the debate, Perez took to social media to say he was disappointed that Hernandez and Gonzales (who are both running on the same slate) didn’t make time for the forum.
In the end, Hernandez's surrogate answered the presubmitted questions better than at least one of the actual candidates — in our own humble opinion.