In the past few years Accessory Dwelling Units — small stand-alone units built into the envelope of the same lot as a single-family home — have emerged as a potential key to addressing Kingston’s housing affordability crisis. Now, a new design commissioned under a partnership between the city, Ulster County and housing nonprofit RUPCO has a template for homeowners looking to get in on the hoped-for ADU boom.

ADUs, like garage or basement apartments or stand-alone backyard cottages, are not new, but communities experiencing housing shortages are increasingly turning to them as a solution. In Kingston, where a new zoning code calls for increasing density to address a lack of housing, ADUs are expected to play an important role. Where just a few years ago ADUs were banned in some neighborhoods and required onerous an approval process in others, the new “Kingston Forward” zoning code makes them an as-of-right use citywide.

More encouragement for ADUs came earlier this year with the Home Plus One program. The partnership between the City of Kingston, Ulster County and RUPCO offers homeowners grants of up to $125,000 to build ADUs on their property in exchange for a commitment to rent them out at affordable rates for at least 10 years.

The program also included a design competition that invited architects to come up with a template for a stand-alone backyard ADU. The winning design, chosen by a panel of experts from among 26 submissions, came from DEMO Architecture. The firm, which has offices in Brooklyn and Olivebridge, specializes in energy-efficient residential construction.

DEMO’s “L’ADU” design emphasizes privacy in line with the contest’s goal of creating a stand-alone space in which unrelated people will be sharing a backyard. To achieve that, the DEMO team, starting with a basic square footprint, then cut out a corner to create a small fenced-in courtyard. The unit can be rotated in any direction to maximize the sense of separation between the main house and the ADU, as well as to account for things like natural light, views and proximity to neighbors.

“Our main focus was trying to present a building that would not just be put down in the back of a house without any regard for the future occupants of the ADU and the current occupants of the house, but something designed to create maximum privacy and maintain privacy,” said DEMO architect Allesandro Ronfini. “You wouldn’t want to build something in the backyard and then that backyard becomes the backyard of the ADU and not the main house.”

Inside, the 460-square-foot L’ADU includes a combined kitchen, dining and living space, a bedroom and ADA-compliant bathroom, a small mechanical closet and a second closet for storage. The roof above the dining and living space is elevated with clerestory windows to maximize natural light. The roof is also slanted for easy installation of solar panels.

A major challenge, Ronfini said, was meeting the competition’s guideline that designs should come as close as possible to the $125,000 grant to homeowners. After pricing out everything from construction materials to faucets, the DEMO design comes in at $139,000.

“We tried to be realistic with the pricing and really include every component,” said Ronfini. “That was the challenging part, the cost, but we got pretty close.”

DEMO is now in the process of creating construction documents based on the design. Those documents will be pre-approved by Kingston’s planning board and made available to homeowners free of charge. The documents will spare homeowners the expense of hiring an architect of their own to design an ADU, as well as the headache of multiple trips to the planning board.

“This competition was a fun, creative way to raise visibility about the benefits of ADUs, which are now allowed citywide with our new zoning code,” said Mayor Steve Noble. “We believe ADUs will contribute to the relief of the local housing shortage, as they encourage density, housing variety and affordability.”