City's plan for housing may get credit for 'granny' units
By Kara Chalmers
Vanessa Smutnak, 26, is looking for work and housing in Saratoga. Specifically, Smutnak wants to live in a family's "granny," or "in-law" unit for free, in exchange for babysitting or tutoring the children part time.
These units, which the city calls second dwellings, are smaller homes located on the lots of larger single-family homes. The owners of the larger homes sometime rent out these smaller homes.
Smutnak, who recently moved back to her mother's house in the Rose Garden area of San Jose after graduating from UCLA, is a full-time substitute teacher in the San Jose Unified School District who makes between $100 and $110 per day. She wants to continue to live in the area and she said she heard that there are in-law units available in Saratoga.
"I don't know if in downtown San Jose I'd find the same thing," she said of the units. "I hear that in Saratoga and Los Gatos, people do that kind of thing."
Smutnak has only received one response, from a woman who wanted her to live inside her main house. Smutnak declined the offer. She would like her own place, she said, but she can not afford to sink all her earnings into rent. On her salary, it's questionable whether she could even afford Silicon Valley rents.
"I probably could, but I'd be struggling," she said.
Saratoga city officials have said they would like to try to get credit for the city's existing secondary units, as a way to meet the state's requirement for additional below-market-rate housing. The Association of Bay Area Governments has assessed that housing goals for Saratoga should be 539 units, 219 of which are to be below-market rate.
Today, the city has restrictions on second dwellings that would have to be relaxed, if the city decides to try to have them count as below-market-rate units. Second dwellings are not permitted on hillside lots in the city and, while they are permitted on the valley floor on lots of a certain size, either dwelling has to be inhabited by a senior or a handicapped person and the owner has to live in one of the homes.
The ordinances are deliberately restrictive, since the city decided long ago that it would not encourage second units.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
