(The Center Square) – A new bill would limit how Arizonans can use additional dwelling units on their property.
Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, recently pre-filed Senate Bill 1105, which allows Arizona counties, cities and towns to restrict ADUs from being used for vacation or short-term rentals.
The state legislation seeks to mandate ADUs be used “to ease the housing crunch and not just become hotel rooms for people on vacation,” Kavanaugh told The Center Square.
These new units “should be used for affordable housing and not hotel profits,” he said.
Kavanaugh added he “respects local zoning” rules and doesn’t think single-family zone areas should have short-term rentals “popping up” around them.
Kavanaugh said he voted in 2024 against House Bill 2720, which allowed people to build accessory dwelling units on single-family homes in cities with more than 75,000 residents.
He said the rationale for HB 2720 was to provide “more affordable housing” to Arizonans, but it failed to specify that the new units can be used only for long-term housing and not as hotel rooms.
Kavanaugh said ways to help alleviate the housing problem in Arizona include eliminating “unnecessary regulatory costs,” such as speeding up permit processing and selling additional “state trust land for housing.”
To get home prices down in Arizona, the housing supply needs to increase, Kavanaugh noted.
“ Letting people use accessory dwelling units for short-term vacation rentals doesn’t increase the supply of housing,” he said.
Common Sense Institute Arizona released a report last year saying the state will always have a housing deficit. The report said it takes more than 300 days for new housing projects to finish their permitting, development and final inspection process.
Despite the lack of housing, Kavanaugh is not optimistic his bill will pass.
SB 1105 will “probably fail because a lot of people don’t have a problem with [ADUs] being used for a hotel instead of solving the housing crisis,” according to Kavanaugh.
“But I could be wrong,” he told The Center Square.
