Courtesy of Elaine Yang
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- Elaine Yang bought a house in California and built a tiny home on the property.
- Yang's one-bedroom, 540-square-foot ADU sits in her backyard and rents for $3,000 a month.
- Yang sees her ADU as a small solution to the state's housing shortage.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Elaine Yang, a strategic area and infrastructure planner based in Irvine, California, who installed a Samara ADU, short for accessory dwelling unit, in her backyard. Yang, 42, said the decision was not a financial one but was instead a small way to help address California's housing crisis. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I never thought I would buy a home. I was just crossing my fingers that I'd be able to retire one day.
For most of my adult life, I lived in a single room that was probably less than 120 square feet. I had one shelf in the kitchen, and shared a bathroom with multiple people. Every time I looked at apartments, the cost was so high that I just went back into my room.
So it was hard to imagine buying a home someday.
However, when my parents moved to the US in the '60s from Taiwan, they learned how to buy homes. They taught my siblings how to do it, and they were wondering why I wasn't getting in on this.
The exterior of Yang's ADU.Courtesy of Elaine Yang
When I was entering the workforce, I wasn't making much money, so I kept pushing the idea away. But my parents refused to stop asking me about it.
As my career stabilized, I started to consider renting an apartment. Then I thought, "Well, what would it look like to buy a home?"
Adding an ADU to the property wasn't my idea initially. But my parents dream big. They were like, "You have a home. Why don't you put an ADU back there?"
I have a background in city planning, so I knew all the ADU laws, the ins and outs, and the processes.
They kept saying, "You can make it happen." And I said, "I financially can't make it happen." But as my career continued to head in an upward trajectory, financially, it became more feasible.
Because I know how important housing is and how much California needs more housing, that was sort of driving me. I had expertise in ADUs and city processing, so I knew it was something I could do. So I thought, "You know what, let's just explore this."
I got a second mortgage for my ADU, but the rent I charge covers it
Initially, I explored traditional construction. I got a designer to design an ADU and costed out everything I could think of, from construction to permits to school fees. It came out to a number where I was like, at that point, I wonder if there are prefabs comparable that could be easier to do.
From there, I was really struggling with figuring out how I would finance building an ADU. I knew that you could do a HELOC, but I was really afraid of that.
The outdoor patio of the ADU.Courtesy of Elaine Yang
So I was just looking for what's the path of least resistance that would be affordable. I looked at a few companies, and what I landed on was Samara; the materials, the design, everything, it's kind of an all-inclusive contract. They manage the contractors, they manage the permits, and on top of that, they offered a financing approach that would allow me to do a second mortgage. With that second mortgage, the ADU became financially feasible for me.
It's pretty much just a regular mortgage, except in terms of line of order, it's the second in line to the mortgage on my main house. Obviously, interest rates were not as good in 2025 as in 2020, so it's a higher interest rate than what I have for my main house, but my payment is about $1,600 a month, and it rents for $3,000.
There aren't a lot of small homes to rent in Irvine, so I did look a little bit outside the city for comps. It's 540 square feet, with one bedroom and one bathroom. The bedroom and the living room have really high ceilings, so it feels a lot more spacious than it sounds.
The lone bedroom in the ADU.Courtesy of Elaine Yang
By having an ADU, I'm putting additional financial strain on myself. I can't live footloose and fancy free like some people in a similar job who are renting, so it definitely ties me down financially.
But there's this phrase that I really like: Count the costs, pay the price, and live a life of no regret. So you have to count the cost: You can have an ADU, but there's always going to be a cost for every single decision.
I didn't build an ADU for financial reasons — I wanted to help with California's housing crisis
I didn't build an ADU to house hack. I didn't need to rent a room. It was something I wanted to explore, and I know that there are a lot of benefits to it for myself and for people looking for housing.
Generally speaking, I know that a lot of people are struggling to make ends meet or even qualify to rent a home. It's really heartbreaking. If we can increase the housing available to rent, that might help stabilize the amount that people can charge for housing.
The kitchen and a door leading to the outdoor patio.Courtesy of Elaine Yang
I would love to continue to rent the ADU for the foreseeable future. I'm pretty fiscally conservative, so it's hard for me to imagine being at a point where I'm like, "I don't need anyone to live there. Why don't I make that a relaxation room or something like that?"
But if my family or my friends needed a place, I would definitely consider having them live there.
I can't help but express that building an ADU is one of the most effective, efficient, and advantageous ways to add housing. It's a ministerially approved process, so long as you comply with state regulations — even if your neighbors hate it — you get to build it. So it's just such a fantastic way to add housing, and I sure hope that this continues to have an upward trend.
I do think it will be a good partial solution to the housing crisis, but by no means is it going to address it fully.
The kitchen of Young's ADU.Courtesy of Elaine Yang
When I look at this ADU, it serves as a really good reminder to me about my limiting beliefs, because it's so easy to tell myself, "I could never have a home. I could never build an ADU. I can't even think about retirement."
There are a lot of limiting beliefs that we can unconsciously hold. I think we all owe it to ourselves to at least allow ourselves to dream and consider, even if the numbers don't necessarily add up. If there's a will, there's a way.
Read the original article on Business Insider