The following are various strategies for getting in touch with ADU designers and getting their plans into your ADU Plans Gallery. There are multiple ways that a designer’s ADU plans can end up in your gallery, which are overviewed in our Pathways to Pre-Approved Plans resource.
Previously-permitted ADUs #
Reach out to designers who have previously permitted or built an ADU in your jurisdiciton. Previously permitted ADU plans can be resubmitted by another homeowner if they do not alter the base plan, and gain access to the same privileges of expedited review as a pre-approved plan. Because of this, we recommend formally recognizing those plans as pre-approved, to avoid potential confusion and to build a high-quality gallery of ADU plans for homeowners in your jurisdiction.
Our resource page contains an email template for you to customize and send to the designers of ADUs previously permitted in your jurisdiction. It explains the benefits they gain by signing up and listing their plans, and walks them through the entire process.
Reach out to local professionals #
The more ADU plans designed by local professionals you have on your gallery, the more useful your gallery will be to homeowners. Consider the following:
- Meet designers where they are at: Find local architecture organizations, such as AIA or ULI. Offer to give a presentation about the Plans Gallery at their next meeting, or provide some content to go out in their next newsletter.
- Use social media to open an official call for submittals. We provide a set of social media graphics to help with this purpose on our resources page.
- Word of mouth. Talk to local architects you know and ask them to pass around the word that you are seeking to add new designers to your Plans Gallery and that your jurisdiction is open for pre-approvals. Ask your colleagues and friends to do the same.
Find designers from across California you want to add to your Gallery #
The Statewide Plans Gallery includes all plans in our database. We encourage you to browse the gallery for plans that you think would be a good fit in your jurisdiction, contact those designers, and invite them to apply for pre-approval using the email template found on our resource page.
Add pre-designed plans to your Gallery #
The ADU Plans Gallery allows you to add plans to your gallery that have not been pre-approved by your jurisdiction, to help homeowners get inspired. We call these “pre-designed” plans. Click here for a guide on how to add these plans to your database. NOTE: Adding prefabricated plans in this way will categorize them as pre-approved on your gallery, because we require all prefabricated plans in our database to be certified by either HCD or HUD.
