When Susan Landry became mayor of Campbell, California, she took a pay cut — earning about $700 a month to serve one of the most expensive regions in the country. The job required her to live in the city, but on that salary, moving wasn’t an option. A small backyard cottage became her lifeline.

That 400-square-foot ADU (closer to 366 once you subtract the thick walls) didn’t just make it possible for Susan to serve — it also became a kind of living laboratory. As a landscape architect and local official, she wanted to understand firsthand what affordable housing really looks like. She went on to help legislate ADU policy and even gave tours of her own home to show what’s possible in a small footprint.

Inside, Susan makes every inch count with movable, stackable, and collapsible furniture. Living affordably has also given her something many people in Silicon Valley lack: time. Over the past eight years, she’s been developing a board game — testing it, fittingly, on the family who lives in the main house out front.

Susan never wanted to live in a high-rise. She values safe parking, shared outdoor space, and the kind of everyday connection that comes from knowing the people you live alongside. She shares holiday meals with her landlords, and says the close relationship makes her feel safer and more grounded.