Is Your San Francisco In-Law Rent Controlled? One Word Decides

A San Francisco garage converted into accessory units in the Sunset. The San Francisco Standard.

You are standing in a bright Sunset in-law unit, lease in hand, and the landlord says the rent goes up "a little" each year. In San Francisco that word does most of the work, because two ADUs on two identical blocks can charge rent under opposite rules: one is bound by city rent control for the life of the building, and the other, holding its own certificate of occupancy issued after February 1, 1995, can raise the rent to whatever the market bears. The tell is not the unit. It is which program built it.

The short version:

• An ADU built under San Francisco's Waiver Program is subject to city rent control, permanently, because the owner agreed to that in exchange for zoning relief.
• An ADU built under the state (No-Waiver) track with its own certificate of occupancy after February 1, 1995 is exempt from rent-price control under state law.
• Either way, the SF Rent Ordinance's just-cause eviction rules can still cover you, so "not rent controlled" does not mean "no protection."

Two doors into the same building

San Francisco runs two ADU tracks, and the difference is not cosmetic. The Waiver Program (Planning Code Section 207) lets a property owner build a unit that would otherwise be blocked by density, rear-yard, exposure, or open-space limits. The city waives those standards. In return, the owner accepts that the new unit falls under the San Francisco Rent Ordinance. The SF Planning ADU program is explicit that the waiver track and the state track carry different strings.

The No-Waiver track follows the state ADU standards. No bonus, no waiver, and under California's Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, no local price control on a unit with its own recent certificate of occupancy. Here is the operative sentence, from the state code itself.

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an owner of residential real property may establish the initial and all subsequent rental rates for a dwelling or a unit about which any of the following is true: (1) It has a certificate of occupancy issued after February 1, 1995.

Civil Code Section 1954.52(a), via California Legislative Information.

Nearly every new detached or garage-conversion ADU in the city gets a fresh certificate of occupancy, so the state track lands squarely inside that exemption. The Waiver Program is the deliberate exception: the owner signs away the Costa-Hawkins exemption to secure the zoning waiver. That is why the same 500-square-foot garden unit can be rent controlled on one lot and market-rate on the next.

How to tell which one you are touring

If you are a tenant, work the question in this order.

Step one: find the certificate of occupancy. Ask the landlord for it. A legal ADU has one, and its date matters. A certificate issued after February 1, 1995 is the first sign you may be on the state track and outside price control. No certificate, or a unit folded into the main house's old certificate, points the other way.

Step two: ask which program approved it. The permit history says whether the unit came through the Waiver Program or the state track. A Waiver-track unit is rent controlled; a state-track unit is not. The landlord should know, and the answer changes what next year's rent can be.

Step three: check the Rent Board regardless. The San Francisco Rent Board administers both the rent-increase caps and the just-cause eviction rules. Even a market-rate ADU that is not price controlled can still owe you eviction protection under the Rent Ordinance. Verify the unit's status with the Rent Board rather than the listing.

Where people get stuck. The trap is assuming an older-looking garage unit must be rent controlled and a slick new one must not be. It is backwards as often as not. A brand-new Waiver-track unit is rent controlled by design, while a decades-old in-law that was legalized recently with its own new certificate of occupancy can sit outside price control. The paperwork, not the finishes, sets the rule.

The cross-street check. Los Angeles decides the same question by the certificate of occupancy too, but without San Francisco's two-track fork: as we covered in our look at LA's ADU rent rules, a new-construction ADU with its own certificate generally skips the Rent Stabilization Ordinance and can claim AB 1482's 15-year new-construction exemption, while a garage conversion without a separate certificate can inherit the main house's coverage. New York is a different animal again: a basement unit entering the city's Authorization for Temporary Residence pilot is chasing legal occupancy first, and its rent-regulation status turns on the building, not on any ADU-specific rent track. Three metros, three different first questions, and in San Francisco the first question is Waiver or no waiver.

Our read: the Waiver Program is a fair trade for an owner, but it is an underexplained one for a tenant. The rent-control status rides on a decision made years before you toured the unit, and nothing in the apartment tells you which way it went. Ask for the certificate and the program, in writing, or you are guessing at your own protections.

None of this cancels the reason people want these units. San Francisco added only about 1,300 in-law units from 2020 to 2024, and each one that comes online, on either track, is a home in a city that badly needs them. It also connects to the newer condo-sale ordinance we covered, which changes the ownership math without touching the rent-control question you still have to ask as a renter.

If you are hunting for an SF accessory unit and want to compare what is actually listed, A-du's rental map lets you see the units in the neighborhood you are targeting before you start asking landlords the hard questions.

The next thing to watch is legalization volume: as more formerly unwarranted in-laws come through with fresh certificates of occupancy, the share of SF accessory units sitting outside price control quietly grows, one certificate at a time.

Elsewhere on the ADU beat

• A builder turned one San Francisco garage into three mini homes for nearly $2M, or about $1,600 a square foot, The San Francisco Standard.
• San Francisco's 2025 ordinance letting owners sell new in-law units as condos, and who it is meant to help, Mission Local.
• Governor Newsom signed four new ADU bills heading into 2026, reshaping coastal permits and JADU owner-occupancy, Best Best & Krieger.