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Council keeps Provo’s ‘extra living space’ policy but adds safety-inspection requirement
Summary
After a months‑long review, the council declined on March 25 to expand the city’s extra‑living‑space program for hardship applicants and instead voted to keep the current administrative program while adding a required safety inspection for licensed extra living spaces.
Lede: The Provo City Council on March 25 voted to retain its existing “extra living space” licensing program (Provo City Code 14.34) and directed staff to require health-and-safety inspections for any extra‑living‑space license, rather than create a new income‑ or hardship‑based pathway.
Nut graf: Staff had been asked last year to explore a hardship or economic pathway that would allow additional homeowners to license extra living spaces in their homes. After legal review and council discussion, councilors concluded that a legally enforceable, income‑based hardship route would be hard to administer and enforce; instead the council approved a motion to maintain the current code but to add a safety inspection requirement to extra‑living‑space licensing.
Body: Planning staff presented the council with the current distinctions between accessory dwelling units (ADUs, 14.30) and extra living spaces (14.34). Extra living spaces are an administrative license that allows a person 60 and older (or another qualifying status under code) to have an interior, internally connected renter in the same home without creating a separate address; the license runs with the applicant rather than as a legislative land‑use entitlement.
Staff and the city attorney advised the council that creating a new eligibility pathway based on income or narrowly defined hardship would require an administrative process with sensitive personal data — tax returns or pay stubs — and raised enforcement and privacy concerns. Councilors pressed whether applicant age, owner‑occupancy history or a term‑limited income test could address specific hardship cases such as divorce or income loss, but legal staff cautioned about enforcement complexity and incentives to conceal income.
On a motion from Councilor McKay, seconded by Councilor Bogdan, the council voted 7–0 to preserve the status quo for 14.34 but to amend that section to require a health‑and‑safety inspection as part of the application/renewal process for extra living spaces. Staff said they will draft the inspection requirement language and return it to the council for formal adoption.
Ending: Council members who supported the motion said the inspection requirement preserves tenant safety while avoiding an administratively complex, income‑based program; staff will prepare code amendments for the inspection step and return them to the council.
