Sauk County, WI Accessory Structures: ADU Rental Restrictions (2026)

Sauk County Code § 7.059 does not create a rentable second unit. The land use permit that authorizes a temporary secondary dwelling is issued to the owner of the property and, by the plain text of Section 7.059(1), is not transferable. That non-transferability means the approval cannot be sold, assigned, or carried over to a new owner or a separate tenant relationship; it runs with the specific owner and the specific qualifying arrangement the county approved. Section 7.059(3)(h) reinforces the same limit from the occupancy side: a temporary secondary dwelling may not be occupied by more than two persons, and those persons must fit one of two categories the ordinance recognizes, either a person who is dependent on assistance with daily living from someone in the principal dwelling, or that person's live-in caretaker, or, for a farm-based unit, family members or hired workers of a qualifying farm operation.

The owner of the principal dwelling has to demonstrate to the Zoning Administrator that the occupant actually meets one of those two allowances. There is no general-purpose leasing pathway in the section, and Section 7.059(6) requires the owner to notify the Zoning Administrator once the dependency or farm-based use ends, at which point the unit must either be removed or converted, by a new land use permit, into an ordinary accessory structure rather than continuing as housing for an unrelated tenant.