Tiny Homes at CV BART
Tiny homes, more properly accessory dwelling units (ADUs), on display at the Castro Valley BART station on Redwood Road.
Inside one of the tiny homes recently installed in the Castro Valley BART station's parking lot
You can’t beat them for convenience to mass transit. Two tiny homes were installed recently in the underused parking lot of the Castro Valley BART station on Redwood Road.
More properly, they are accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, what people used to call granny flats or backyard cottages, often located behind a larger house. They have all the comforts of home, just in relatively little space, and cost much, much less than a full-sized home.
The smaller of the two units, a studio, is 400 square feet. The larger, a one-bedroom, is 500 square feet.
After years of some local governments discouraging ADUs, they are now often seen as part of a solution to California’s statewide housing crisis. A 2020 state law made it much easier to build ADUs in backyards of existing homes.
Patio between the two tiny homes recently installed in the Castro Valley BART station's parking lot.
But nobody gets to move into the two in the BART parking lot. They’re literally just for show, or showrooms, really. The Bay Area-based company Spacial, which builds ADUs, rented the equivalent of 16 BART parking spaces, currently going unused, to show people what living in an ADU of your own can be like.
Spacial is paying BART $4,500 monthly rent for the space, helping BART replace some of the parking fees it is not collecting from those empty spaces, said BART spokesperson Jim Allison. BART ridership dropped sharply during the pandemic and is gradually recovering, he said.
The lease is for nine months, with the possibility of extension, according to Allison.
“We’re certainly hoping enough people return to BART in coming months that we’ll need those parking spaces again,” Allison said. “But in the meantime, we’re looking for some non-parking uses that help the community and bring some revenue in.”
He said that while these are the first tiny home showrooms to go up at a BART station, the fight against Covid benefited from space being available at stations. Both testing and vaccination sites were set up in BART lots. Farmers markets used empty parts of lots, too.
For those thinking about returning to BART, there is plenty of parking available at most stations Allison said. The only lots starting to fill are those at Antioch station, he added.
Discussions are underway with Meals On Wheels for setting up a delivery hub at one or more stations so that drivers don’t have to drive quite so far to get meals to homebound seniors.
Spacial CEO Cory Halbardier said “If ADUs weren’t a thing, then people would be moving further and further outside of the urban area, further, further out towards Tracy. Then you end up with a lot more cars on the road coming back and forth.”
Spacial’s units start at $209,000 for a studio, Halbardier said. The price includes the foundation, utilities, structure, labor and city building plans. If you’re interested in touring the units, you can schedule an appointment by emailing info@spacialhomes.com, or call (925) 725-6444.