Home prices and rental prices in Kingston, NY, have increased as much as 50% since 2019. So, tinier homes, like ADUs, might seem like a cheaper solution. But building generally starts at $250,000, and that's if you're lucky. That's if you have the correct public infrastructure set up. And that's if you have a good design ready to go.
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Molly Anderson: This is WAMC’s Northeast Notebook. I’m Molly Anderson. Finding a place to live that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg is tough right now. From single-family homes to studio apartments, prices are high and only getting higher.
Dennis Montella: I know that rents are very high, I know it’s very hard for the average working person here to find housing.
Molly Anderson: As costs soar, some municipalities are encouraging the construction of ADUs, or Accessory Dwelling Units.
Bartek Starodaj: So, the cost of actually building that ADU, per unit, is much lower than other construction types that we see. So that could actually potentially translate into lower rent.
Molly Anderson: The small-scale residences built on single-family properties are pretty popular in places like California and the Pacific Northwest. Now, they're catching on in the Northeast. But how big can these properties get, and are they really affordable? Nate Harrington, a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, has been following ADU expansion in the quaint western Massachusetts town of Great Barrington.
Nate Harrington: ADUs became legal in Massachusetts in February 2025, and Berkshire County as a whole has been slow in the pickup. Even relative to its low population, it has fewer ADU permits granted than its population, comparing it state-wide.
Molly Anderson: ADUs can take the shape of standalone, detached units in backyards, second-floor units, or garage conversions. In New York state, ADU laws are left up to municipalities, but in recent years, the City of Kingston has been one of the most proactive upstate communities in expanding ADUs.
Bartek Starodaj: There's been interest in expanding ADUs in the city of Kingston for a long time.
Molly Anderson: Bartek Starodaj is the Director of Housing Initiatives in the City of Kingston. He says that ADUs gained momentum in 2023 after the city rewrote its zoning code. That year, just one ADU was approved in Kingston. The following year, another was approved. Last year alone, the City of Kingston authorized 15 ADU permits. And this year, they’re on track to approve a similar number.
Bartek Starodaj: Lots of folks are excited by the concept because they see the need for housing, or maybe they see that in the future, you know, they might need to have their mom live with them.
Joseph Meloy: We knew that when we purchased the house that there was this ADU thing that was on the horizon.
Molly Anderson: Kingston Homeowner and artist Joseph Meloy jumped at the chance to build an ADU as soon as it became legal in Kingston.
Joseph Meloy: It scratched a creative itch for me while also building something very functional.
Molly Anderson: Many see ADU's as a part of the solution to the region's housing crisis - a crisis that Nate Harrington attributes in the Berkshires to a number of things.
Nate Harrington: It definitely has become a harder place to live. This is in part because during COVID, Berkshire County had a huge housing boom. Berkshire County was over insistent on building single-family homes for a while, and so it had a dearth of multifamily buildings, leading to, kind of, the apartment market also being a really tough place to be.
Molly Anderson: And in the Hudson Valley, Kingston has a housing crunch of its own.
Bartek Starodaj: It's well known that our home prices and also rental prices have increased dramatically, as much as 50% or more since even 2019.
Nate Harrington: It's created a place where a lot of people are left behind, and a lot of people don't have the housing that's necessarily right for them.
Molly Anderson: So, tinier homes, like ADUS, might seem like a cheaper solution. But the cost of building one isn’t exactly cheap.
Nate Harrington: These units generally start at $250,000, and that's if you're lucky. That's if you have the correct public infrastructure set up. That's if you have a good design already to go.
Molly Anderson: Joseph Meloy didn’t spend a quarter of a million dollars on his ADU. He spent more.
Joseph Meloy: I'd say probably in the low three hundreds to get this thing from soup to nuts, and that's more than we intended to spend.
Molly Anderson: When it comes time for somebody to actually move into that ADU and rent it out, what is that cost actually going to look like?
Bartek Starodaj: In terms of the regulation of rents in those ADUs, there's no regulation. However, New York State does now offer some grants for ADUs under the ADU Plus One program, and so there are several homeowners in the city of Kingston, actually about a dozen, that have received those grants. In exchange for those grants, they have to charge an affordable rent, so that rent level is capped in return for the public subsidy.
Molly Anderson: But with the cost of living being so high across the board, rent in Berkshire County isn’t too far behind major cities.
Nate Harrington: The average rent here, even for an ADU, is probably close to 2000, 2500, where it'd be 3000, 3500 out in Boston.
Molly Anderson: Cost aside, obtaining a permit and breaking ground for an ADU is far from simple. Nate said that in Berkshire County, there are educational resources for homeowners to figure out if their property is suitable for an ADU or not. But, a big backyard isn’t the only thing to consider.
Nate Harrington: The other big thing is a lack of public infrastructure in Berkshire County. There's not a lot of sewer. There's not a lot of water lines. Septic tanks are very expensive. They're one of the big pain points homeowners have to deal with when they're building these ADUs.
Molly Anderson: And after building permits…come the pains of being an amateur home-builder.
Bartek Starodaj: Typically, these are homeowners; these are not construction experts, if you will, and so they most likely need significant help.
Molly Anderson: There are also some municipal regulations to keep ADUs in check. In Kingston, two basic parameters are: they can’t be larger than half the size of the original property, and they must be under 1000 square feet.
Joseph Meloy: I walked it to the very, the very edge of what could be done. It's a whole, you know, three-bedroom, two-bathroom, two story house that's in the backyard. Nobody's gonna walk into it and say, "Oh, this is curiously small. Like, I don't know what to do with this.”
Molly Anderson: It's a lot bigger than I was anticipating it would be!
Dennis Montella: Yeah, you know what makes it really look big is that the ceilings are 10-foot ceilings, right?
Molly Anderson: Dennis Montella, one of the Joseph’s contractors, gave me a tour of the site.
Dennis Montella: This is the small little balcony I was talking about. You know, kind of cute, kind of quaint, but you know, just for their individual self to have a little coffee or something out front.
Molly Anderson: As to who is going to live in the three-bedroom ADU in Joseph's backyard, he doesn't think he'll have a hard time finding a tenant once it's completed. Although, he doesn't yet know how much he'll have to charge for the 1,000 square-foot project he's put hundreds of thousands of dollars into. But, rent costs aside, Joseph also thinks that more Americans are welcoming smaller, well-designed spaces to call home.
Joseph Meloy: I mean, I live with my wife and kids in a place that is definitely smaller than 1000 square feet, and we make it work.
Molly Anderson: Going forward, reporter Nate Harrington says that getting more ADUs on the market is just a matter of getting more people on board with living in and building them.
Nate Harrington: They're a huge undertaking, and so you not only have to be willing to spend a year in permitting, designing, construction, dealing with all those headaches, but then you have another 20 years to repay that mortgage that you took out to build that unit. It's only been a year and a half, and so we are just seeing these first batches of ADUs being completed. But as they're being completed, I think people are seeing them and being like, "Okay, that's actually a really great idea. I want to take that on.”
Molly Anderson: Dennis, Joseph’s contractor, has already been tapped to help construct two more ADUs, this time in Woodstock, New York.
Dennis Montella: The mother lives in one house and the family lives in the other house, and I think they're both going to put ADUs on their property in Woodstock. So yeah, I’ve been brought in on that project. It's at the ground floor, so it hasn't started yet, but I think I'm going to be in on both of those ADU builds. And I’m learning as I go, so the more I learn, the more I can educate people on, and like I said I’m just new at building ADUs. So this is an exciting process for me. I don’t know what to expect, who’s going to live here. It’s kind of exciting to think about who is going to live here, you know?
Molly Anderson: Northeast Notebook is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It was produced by me, Molly Anderson. Our Executive Producer is Lucas Willard. Our editor is Diane DeVore. Music by Eduardo Rivera. Consider subscribing to Northeast Notebook wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like the show, take a second to rate and review. It really does help others find us. Thanks for listening.
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