Berkeley, CA Accessory Structures: ADU Owner Occupancy (2026)

4 makes owner-occupancy a condition of building a Junior ADU: if the property includes a Junior ADU, either the Junior ADU itself or the Single Family Dwelling in which it is located must be owner-occupied. This requirement is written into the same recorded deed restriction filed with the Alameda County Recorder that also imposes the 30-day minimum rental term and the no-separate-sale rule for Junior ADUs. The code carves out two exceptions: owner-occupancy is not required if the Junior ADU and the single-family dwelling do not share sanitation facilities (meaning the JADU has its own independent bathroom, so there is no shared-facility safety concern with an absentee owner), or if the property owner is itself another governmental agency, land trust, or housing organization rather than an individual.

B must be built within an existing or proposed single-family home or its attached garage and capped at 500 square feet; the code does not impose the same owner-occupancy condition on a standard, larger ADU built as new construction or a detached conversion, whose deed restriction terms are limited to the rental-term and separate-sale rules instead.