Legalizing a garage someone converted without a permit

What AB 2533 changed

AB 2533 (Chapter 834, Statutes of 2024, chaptered September 28, 2024) moved the cutoff for unpermitted ADUs from January 1, 2018 to January 1, 2020. For a unit built before that date, the City cannot deny a permit only because the unit violates building standards or does not meet state or local ADU rules. The rule now sits in Government Code section 66311.7.

There are two exceptions. The City can deny the permit when correcting a violation is necessary to protect the health and safety of the public or the occupants, or when the building is substandard under Health and Safety Code section 17920.3. Applicants are also spared impact fees and connection charges unless utility infrastructure has to be upgraded to fix a substandard condition.

The confidential third-party code inspection

The law requires the City to tell homeowners that before applying, they may obtain a confidential third-party code inspection from a licensed contractor to learn the unit's existing condition or the likely scope of improvements (Gov. Code 66311.7(d), summarized in the HCD ADU Handbook, March 2026). Most owners do not know this step exists.

It means you learn what is wrong with the unit before the City does. A licensed contractor walks the conversion against the 17920.3 conditions and current code, then tells you what would need correcting. You decide whether and when to apply with that knowledge in hand. Aguila does these inspections.

When the converted garage is a room, not a unit

AB 2533 protects unpermitted ADUs and junior ADUs. A garage turned into a bedroom with no kitchen is not an ADU, so it is legalized through an ordinary as-built permit: drawings of what exists, openings in walls or ceilings where inspectors need to see framing or wiring, and corrections where the work falls short. Raise parking first, because the ADU parking waiver does not cover it.

HCD also told Simi Valley on October 29, 2025 (finding 15) that its ordinance must let unpermitted structures be legally converted into ADUs unless the structure both threatens public health and safety and is affected by the ADU work. Sometimes the cleanest route is to finish the space into a compliant ADU so those protections apply; sometimes it is to restore part of the garage. That choice comes after the inspection, not before.