Salinas, CA Accessory Structures: Garage Conversions (2026)

Sec. 31-705 lists the additional covenants, conditions, and restrictions the city requires in the CC&Rs of a residential condominium conversion, on top of the general CC&R standards in Sec. 31-704. Subsection (b), titled 'Garage conversions,' requires the CC&Rs themselves to forbid the conversion of any required parking areas to living, storage, or other nonparking floor space in any project. Because the prohibition is written into the recorded CC&Rs rather than left as a separate zoning rule, it binds every unit owner in the project directly through the association's governing documents, and the city attorney reviews the CC&R language under Sec. 31-704 before the final map or parcel map can record.

The same article pairs the garage-conversion ban with related occupancy and insurance covenants: Sec. 31-705(a) requires occupancy limits consistent with fair housing law, and Sec. 31-705(c) and (d) require fire insurance and, where applicable, flood insurance on every unit. A copy of the CC&R's as approved by the State Department of Real Estate must be provided to the city planner within ten days of recordation, giving the city a documented record that the garage-conversion prohibition, along with the rest of Article VII's required covenants, actually made it into the final, recorded document.