This Thursday, Baltimore City Council’s Land Use and Transportation Committee is again hearing Council Bill 26-0195. The bill would legalize Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in Baltimore City.
Baltimore has to pass a law like this one. In 2025, the General Assembly passed and Governor Moore signed the Accessory Dwelling Units Act. It requires Baltimore City and every county to adopt a local law allowing ADUs, and it set the deadline at October 1, 2026.
The October deadline has passed, and Baltimore City Council still needs to act.
An ADU is a small second home on the same lot as a house. In Baltimore, that could be an English basement with its own door, a converted third floor, or a carriage house off the alley. These kinds of housing options were regularly built in the city before suburban-oriented zoning changes banned them. Bringing them back gives people who need housing a way to find it in neighborhoods across the city.
ADUs especially help three groups:
Seniors: Nearly half of Baltimore households, 45.6%, are one person living alone, and many are seniors in family-sized houses who want to stay put. An ADU lets a senior rent out the basement to cover repairs, or move into the smaller unit and let family take the house.
Young people starting out.: An ADU is an affordable first apartment in a walkable community.
Growing families: An ADU makes room for a grandparent or a caregiver close by.
Whether these homes get built depends on the details of the legislation. This fall, the Pew Charitable Trusts reviewed ADU rules in the country’s 346 largest cities. Where the rules were simple, ADUs made up 19% of all new homes permitted last year. Where cities added restrictions, they made up 1.7%. The committee can put Baltimore in the first group with three changes.
Make it work for rowhouses. The state’s minimum covers lots with a detached house, and fewer than one in seven Baltimore homes are detached. Half the city’s homes are rowhouses, where a basement or top-floor unit is usually the only option. Allowing internal ADUs would expand the state’s goal into the neighborhoods where most of us live and most people moving here want to live.
Let builders build them. Most housing we live in today was built by a builder, not a homeowner. The bill currently requires an owner to live on site to build or rent out an ADU. Dropping that requirement would let community builders add an ADU when they rehab a vacant rowhouse, reducing the potential for appraisal gaps and opening the door for more renovations of vacant housing.
Make permits predictable. When ADUs are permitted by right under clear standards, homeowners can plan a project knowing it will be approved.
With these changes, Baltimore City’s Land Use and Transportation Committee can turn a state requirement into more ways for new residents to move to Baltimore while helping existing Baltimoreans to stay in their neighborhoods and make room for family.
Send an email to your city council member or join the hearing Thursday to testify online or in person.