Town Meeting votes to ease restrictions on ADUs

Town Meeting on Tuesday night passed a measure aimed at making it easier for residents to build accessory dwelling units, known as ADUs, on their property.

ADUs, sometimes called in-law apartments, are a secondary unit on the lot of a single-family home, inside the home or in a detached garage.

They were legalized in Brookline in 2019, but the law was so restrictive that not a single new unit has been built since.

The changes that were approved, by a vote of 227 to seven with six abstentions, are intended to ease some of those restrictions: they allow ADUs to be larger and built more quickly after residents buy their homes, as well as allowing ADUs to have their own utility meter and front-facing entrance.

Roger Blood, chair of the town’s Housing Advisory Board, who pushed for the changes, hopes they will “in a small way, contribute to the desperate need for more moderately priced housing units in Brookline,” he said.

Blood predicts that in the best-case scenario, there will be dozens of new ADUs built in Brookline because of these changes.

One major change from Blood’s original proposal was the Town Meeting approved version would only allow “owner-occupants,” who live on their property to build ADUs, barring investors (or “absentee landlords”) from building the units.

John VanScoyoc, a member of the Select Board, said the measure will help provide flexibility for families whose needs change over time and increase the diversity of housing choices in town, while also respecting the scale and character of neighborhoods.