Washington, DC Accessory Structures: ADU Owner Occupancy (2026)

The owner-occupancy condition is one of the core standards governing accessory apartments under Subtitle U § 253. It requires that either the principal dwelling or the accessory apartment unit itself be owner-occupied for the entire duration that the accessory apartment is in use, meaning an investor who buys a house purely to rent out both the main house and a separate accessory unit to two sets of tenants, with no owner living on site, does not qualify. 5 as one that cannot be waived in any R zone, and subsection (b) similarly protects the R-1B/GT and R-3/GT occupancy restriction from being modified.

That leaves owner-occupancy as one of the few truly non-negotiable conditions in the accessory apartment framework, regardless of how strong a special-exception case an applicant might otherwise present to the Board. A property owner who moves out of both the principal dwelling and the accessory apartment loses the basis for the accessory use altogether, since the framework is built around a single owner-occupied household with an ancillary unit, not a two-unit rental building.