The Laws Are Changing. The Conversation Isn’t.

By Mary Lynch

A neighbor and I met at the end of our driveways one morning, after dragging the trash cans down. Within four minutes of chatting, she told me something she’d clearly been carrying around for a while.

A year from now, she said, she wanted to be living on her daughter’s property, twenty minutes up the road. Everybody assumes the reason is the house because the maintenance was becoming hard.

That part was true, but it wasn’t the biggest part.

What she wanted was noise. Conversation. Kids carrying on. The heartbeat of a full house, which sounds nothing like the silence of an empty one.

Then she asked me the question I still think about.

“How do we get there?”

She didn’t mean a bedroom down the hall. She meant her own place on her daughter’s property. Her own door, her own hours, her own thermostat, and her family a few steps away. Together, but separate.

There’s a name for that: an accessory dwelling unit or ADU.

What is an ADU?

An ADU is an independent living space on the same property as a primary home. It can be a detached cottage, an attached addition, an apartment above a garage, a converted garage, or space created inside the existing home.

Once people understand what an ADU is, they start looking at their own property differently. The split-level with the walkout basement. The colonial with a first-floor space nobody really uses anymore. The detached garage that has held a lawn mower and Christmas decorations for a decade. Suddenly this doesn’t necessarily feel like “building another house.”

ADUs Across the Country

In the past, many communities did not allow ADUs. The answer was almost worse than a flat no; it was maybe, if you can survive the process: a special exception, a hearing, a variance, fees stacked on top of fees. Many families gave up, but that is beginning to change.

Over the last few years, states across the country have begun rewriting their rules around ADUs. Massachusetts now allows qualifying ADUs in zoning districts that permit single-family homes, generally up to 900 square feet depending on the size of the primary home.[1] Arkansas has limited owner-occupancy and additional parking requirements and capped the ADU application fee at $250.[2] Arizona requires larger municipalities to allow at least one attached and one detached ADU on qualifying single-family lots, and the state has since extended ADU requirements to counties.[3]

Virginia joined the movement this year, creating statewide standards that take effect in July 2027.[4] And in California, almost 25,000 ADUs were permitted in 2022, accounting for 18 percent of all new housing units permitted in the state.[5]

In Maryland, the General Assembly passed sweeping ADU legislation in 2025.[6] The law took effect October 1, 2025, and counties and municipalities with planning and zoning authority have until October 1, 2026, to adopt local laws authorizing ADU development on qualifying properties.

The Possibilities

I work with older adults and their families. But the longer I do this work, the more obvious something becomes. The same arrangement that helps a seventy-eight-year-old stay connected to her community can solve three or four other problems at the very same kitchen table. When one decision can potentially help three generations at once, it stops being something the family does “for Grandma” and starts being something everybody wants.

Remember my neighbor - she wasn’t asking for care. She wanted breakfast noise. Homework at the table. A grandchild knocking on the door for no particular reason, while still having a front door she could close.

ADUs can also create possibilities for an adult child who needs support but wants a life of their own. For families living with an adult child with a disability, a separate home on the family property may be one place where independence and proximity can meet.

A separate unit may also produce rental income that helps cover property taxes, insurance, maintenance or other rising costs. For someone on a fixed income, that could help make staying financially possible.

At the other end of the age spectrum are young adults who cannot afford to live in the communities where they grew up, while an older adult may be living alone in a five-bedroom house and hasn’t been upstairs in two years. ADUs may not be the answer, but it deserves to be part of the conversation.

Where to start

People expect me to say, “Call an architect.”

That isn’t where I would start.

I would start at the kitchen table.

Ask the question out loud.

How much easier would our lives be if we weren’t spread across three counties? Would we ever want to live on the same property? What would each of us need for that to work? What would make it wonderful? What would make us crazy?

That conversation is free, and for a lot of families it simply hasn’t crossed their minds yet.

If the answer comes back maybe, then build the team: a real estate professional who understands the property and local market, an architect or contractor who understands local code, and, depending on the plan, an estate attorney, financial professional, lender or tax adviser.

And pay attention to what is happening where you live. State laws may be changing, but many of the details are still being worked out locally.

Somewhere along the line

The older I get, and the more families I work with, the more I wonder whether somewhere along the line we took independence a little too far.

We celebrate “I can do it on my own” as though it is the finish line.

There is plenty of beauty in independence. But there is also beauty in leaning on the people who love you.

And there is enormous value in what you can give back to the generation ahead of you and the generation behind you when families combine some of their efforts instead of separating everything.

My neighbor asked me, “How do we get there?”

Maybe the first step isn’t a permit. It isn’t a blueprint. It isn’t a contractor.

Maybe it is simply asking a question at the kitchen table.

What if we lived a little closer?

About the Author

Mary Lynch is a Certified Senior Advisor (CSA)® and real estate professional with nearly 30 years of experience helping older adults and families navigate housing transitions. She is the founder of Downsize Baltimore and chairs the Greater Baltimore Chapter of the National Aging in Place Council.

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[1] https://www.mass.gov/info-details/accessory-dwelling-units

[2] https://katv.com/news/local/updated-housing-law-allows-accessory-dwelling-units-in-arkansas-adu-public-bill-act-self-contained-independent-accessible-living-kitchen-sleeping-home-little-rock-input-crisis-owner-rent-supply-demand-affordable-family-solution

[3] https://www.az-adu.com/arizona-adu-laws

[4] https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title15.2/chapter22/section15.2-2292.4/

[5] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/accessory-dwelling-units-adus-in-california/

[6] https://planning.maryland.gov/Pages/OurWork/PBP/ADUTF/ADU.aspx