ADU rules in Clearwater

ADUs are a Level One (Flexible Standard Development) permitted use in the LDR, LMDR, and MDR residential districts, with detached units expressly contemplated (separate detached setback and height rows, and a shipping container may serve as a detached ADU if it fully complies with the Florida Building Code and is architecturally treated with windows, doors, cladding, porches, and/or decks). Detached ADUs may not be located between the right-of-way and the principal structure and are limited to 15 feet in height, up to 20 feet through Level One approval, and never taller than the principal structure.

The definition covers a secondary dwelling unit within the same structure or on the same lot as a detached dwelling or nonresidential use. Attached ADUs must meet the principal dwelling's setbacks and their entrances may not be visible from the street.

Identical cap in the LDR, LMDR, and MDR districts. In the nonresidential districts that allow ADUs (Commercial, Tourist, Office and Institutional read in full), the ADU instead may not exceed 25 percent of the floor area of the principal use. Detached ADU height is capped at 15 feet, or up to 20 feet with Level One approval, and never taller than the principal structure.

In the residential districts, either the principal detached dwelling or the accessory dwelling unit shall be occupied by the property owner. The city requires a notarized Owner Occupancy Affidavit before a building permit application for a residential ADU; the form lets an owner who intends to sell to someone who will live there avoid enforcement if the conveyance happens within 180 days of the ADU's certificate of occupancy (that grace period is on the city form, not in the code). In the nonresidential districts the analogous requirement is only that title to the unit be vested in the ownership of the principal use.

The LDR, LMDR, and MDR flexible standard tables list minimum off-street parking for an ADU as a range of 0 to 1 space per unit, and the flexibility criteria allow one legal on-street parking space to be substituted 'in lieu of the required off-street parking space as determined by the City Engineer.' The city's ADU page reads this as one off-street space required in addition to the main house's parking, with the on-street substitution as the way to avoid it, so plan on one space unless the City Engineer approves an on-street space. The Commercial, Tourist, Office and IRT district tables require 1 space per unit.

ADUs are listed as Level One (Flexible Standard Development) permitted uses, which are reviewed and approved administratively by the city's professional staff with no public hearing, subject to the flexibility criteria in each district section. The city processes them as a Flexible Standard Development application reviewed by the Development Review Committee (a $200 fee per the city's ADU page), which must be approved before the building permit application. Chart 2-100 cautions that its X only indicates the use is permitted, not the nature of the approval required.

Renting an ADU (or the main house) requires a business tax receipt: the Residential Rentals division applies expressly to 'accessory dwellings,' requires a local contact in Pinellas or a nearby county, and requires an annual acknowledgment of the housing and development standards. Citywide, a residential use on residentially zoned property excludes rentals for periods of less than 31 days or one calendar month, whichever is less, and Sec. 3-919 sets prima facie evidence standards (state transient-rental licensing, vacation-rental advertising, overlapping short bookings) for enforcing that, so an ADU in a residential district cannot be a short-term or vacation rental. Sec. 3-919 dates to 2003 and 2009 ordinances, before the June 1, 2011 cutoff that Florida's vacation-rental preemption (F.S. 509.032(7)) grandfathers, and the city's code enforcement board still hears short-term rental cases in 2026. The code does not copy the state's optional affordable-rent affidavit (F.S. 163.31771(4)).