Housing

To promote Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), a preapproved master set of construction documents will be assembled from a design competition into a how-to guide walking homeowners through the steps of building an ADU.

Seeing the alignment between the work of the AARP Livable Communities initiative and the City of Houston's Livable Places Action Committee, Houston's Office of Planning and Development applied for funding to increase awareness about accessory dwelling units. The AARP Community Challenge grant funded a design competition, an ADU website, several workshops, the ADU/HOU how-to design guide (pictured) and a master set of preapproved construction documents for Double-House, the grand prize-winning design by Rice University architecture students Adam Berman and Siobhan Finlay. (The home is visible in the upper-left corner of the image below and on page 5 of the guide.)