Can an In-Law Suite Have Its Own Kitchen in Tampa Bay?

It can, but in Florida a suite with its own kitchen, bathroom and sleeping area is legally a second dwelling, so the kitchen is what moves the project out of ordinary addition rules and into your city or county's accessory dwelling rules. Decide it first, because it sets which rules the rest of the plan has to meet.

What a kitchen turns an in-law suite into

Knowing this before a design exists saves the most expensive kind of rework: drawing a suite the zoning code will not let you finish. Florida's accessory dwelling statute, F.S. 163.31771, describes an accessory dwelling unit as a secondary living unit with a separate kitchen, a bathroom and a sleeping area, either inside the main house or on the same lot. A bedroom and bath joined to the house, where your parent still eats at the family table, reads as an addition. Give that same space its own kitchen and it starts to look, in law, like a second home, and your city or county's accessory dwelling rules then decide the size, who may live there and whether it is allowed on your lot at all.

Tampa: a kitchen makes a second dwelling unit

The City of Tampa's zoning code defines a dwelling unit as an independent living unit with its own kitchen, sanitary and sleeping facilities, so a Tampa suite with a kitchen is a second unit. The city allows a true accessory dwelling unit in only four places: Seminole Heights, the area around Lowry Park, the East Tampa Overlay and the Tampa Heights Overlay. Everywhere else, the path for a parent is an Extended Family Residence, capped at 600 square feet of living area, on a homesteaded property, for no more than two occupants who are family, with no rent charged and no separate electric or water meter.

What a Tampa Extended Family Residence application involves

Families are often surprised that a suite for a parent can mean a public notice. An Extended Family Residence goes through a Special Use 1 application filed online in Accela, with a notarized owner affidavit, a to-scale site plan and a survey. Notice goes out publicly, the city makes its determination no sooner than 15 calendar days after the notice affidavit, and the approved site plan binds whoever owns the house next. That is a reason to settle the kitchen question early. Whether a suite without its own kitchen can skip this route is a question the city's zoning reviewers can answer for your address before anything is drawn.

Hillsborough County allows one kitchen per home

In unincorporated Hillsborough, which covers Brandon, Riverview, Lutz, Apollo Beach and Sun City Center, the code names the three parts of a kitchen: a sink, a stove and a refrigerator. A home may have only one. A second kitchen inside the house needs special use approval in every case and may not be designed to create a second unit, and the county says that occupancy by members of the same family has no bearing on whether a space counts as an accessory dwelling. A kitchenette with a sink and a small refrigerator sits close to that line, so ask the county how it reads your plan before the cabinets are ordered.

St. Petersburg: accessory living space without a second kitchen

St. Petersburg offers a middle path that suits a parent who will share meals. The city regulates accessory living space separately from accessory dwelling units, and it must work as an extension of the main home: no separate cooking facilities, no separate laundry, no separate mailing address and no separate utility meters, with floor area capped at 800 square feet or 67 percent of the main house. If your parent needs a bedroom, a bath and a sitting room but not a stove, this is the category to ask the city about first.

Unincorporated Pinellas: where the tax rule asks for the kitchen

Here the pull runs the other way. The Pinellas County Property Appraiser says quarters built for the parent or grandparent tax reduction must have their own bathroom and an efficiency or kitchen rather than sharing the main home's. Add that kitchen, though, and the county's accessory dwelling code applies: a full kitchen, a separate entrance, a size cap of 1,000 square feet, or 750 square feet in the Coastal Storm Area and flood hazard areas, and owner occupancy of one of the two homes. The kitchen that opens the door to the tax reduction in places like Palm Harbor also sets the size limit on what you can build.

Settling the kitchen question before a contractor quotes

The kitchen is the one decision that changes which rulebook applies, so it is the first thing we ask about. Tell us who the suite is for, whether they will cook for themselves, and the property address, and we work out which city or county rules govern the lot before you are connected with a licensed contractor to price the work. If your parent will eat with the family and the plan needs no stove, say so. That is often the simpler project, and there is no reason to design a second dwelling you do not need.