Courtesy of Jean Lowell
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jean Lowell, 75, a Montpelier, Vermont, resident who in 2020 built an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, in her backyard after receiving a grant from Vermont Housing Improvement Program. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
I didn't even know what an ADU was.
The city of Montpelier held a meeting about this project and it caught my eye because I had been trying to figure out a way to build a place for maybe a couple of years or so.
I was trying to serve dual purposes. One was to provide safe, secure, and affordable housing for my adult daughter and her child because the housing market is so limited, so expensive, and so volatile. The other purpose was to try to provide a place for my husband and I to live at our old age.
I had a house that I was living in where I raised my children, but it was not wheelchair accessible, and it couldn't be modified to be wheelchair accessible. And it was certainly bigger than I needed now that my kids were grown. I wanted to avoid, or at least delay, the need to ever go into a nursing home.
I signed up immediately. I think I was the first or, at most, the second person who filled out the form at that meeting.
I didn't have very much money and I saw this as a way of possibly bringing to fruition what I had been trying to do for a couple of years.
I had nothing to lose. Either it was going to work for me and I'd be qualified or it wouldn't, but it sounded like a possible solution to my financial challenges.
At the time, Vermont would give you up to half the cost, but no more than $20,000.
They would also lend you $10,000, that would be interest free, paid back over the course of five years. That $10,000 was for startup costs to pay permitting fees and have whatever inspections you needed done. I had to have an environmental person come in and test for lead.
You didn't get the $20,000 until after you got your certificate of occupancy. So you basically had to finance the unit yourself except for that startup cost.
Pgiam
It wasn't cheap. Basically, you had to have money to take advantage of the program. I was fortunate enough to be able to do it. I have good credit, but I had to refinance my home in order to do it.
I refinanced my mortgage by $89,000, but it cost quite a bit more than that. The actual cost of the unit was around $130,000. And that's for a unit that's 560 square feet.
There was also a lot of sweat equity.
I did the design myself — every square inch of it. An ex-partner of mine is an architect, so he did the plans, because the bank required plans. He and a colleague of his did the building. But my husband and I were very hands-on.
My husband installed the heating system and all the heating-system equipment. I reused windows from my old house. I bought all the doors, half the appliances, and half the windows.
We broke ground in May 2020 and moved in in October 2020. I thought it was very quick.
The program required that you build a unit and rent it to a low-income person for five years. My husband and I didn't qualify as low income, but my daughter did, so they just said, "As long as you're going to rent the unit that your husband and you were living in to your daughter who is low income, we'll let you move into the ADU."
Ray Tan
Our new space is cozy, to put it nicely. I have no complaints about it. My husband and I happen to get along well enough, and our needs are simple enough that it works for us.
A lot of people would feel cramped because it's such a small space, but the size of the space was dictated, in my case, by the land that I had available to build on, and my finances.
I have no regrets whatsoever. I feel so secure. I feel secure in my old age now in a way that I did not before. I call it my age-in-place home.
