“Granny Flats” Could Remake the Housing Market. Why Are They So Contentious?

Painter Rachel Hecker purchased her 1920 bungalow in the Heights, northwest of downtown Houston, in 1987. It was charming and cheap—just $60,000—but uninsulated and teeny, with 1,100 square feet of space. She made do for years. Then, in 2019, she started researching options to expand. Adding on would cost $450,000, an astronomical sum more than seven times what she originally paid for the house. But a garage apartment? At roughly $200,000, it sounded a lot more doable. She gave her contractor a paper maquette of precisely what she wanted: a modernist structure with a pitched roof, clerestory windows, and gray siding, which would sit beside and “shake hands with” her existing studio, like a miniature backyard campus. It doesn’t seem like something that would fit with the…

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