Making Room for Missing Middle: 4 Recommended Resources
The central path through Evans Oaks, a new cohousing community in Silverton, Oregon. Image by Jen Rahn.
Strong and financially resilient communities are comprised of a variety of housing types. Not just single-family detached homes on one end of the spectrum and huge apartment complexes on the other, but a wide range of “middle housing” options in-between: duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes, courtyard cottages, bungalow apartments, and more. Yet these middle housing types—so familiar to our grandparents and great-grandparents—are rarely built today.
Dan Parolek of Opticos Design coined the term “missing middle housing” to describe middle housing options that are in high-demand (across all age groups) but getting harder and harder to find. All too often, the market isn’t even given a chance to meet demand. Among other barriers, middle housing types have been zoned almost out of existence in many communities. Just how missing is missing middle housing? In a recent Strong Towns webcast, Parolek said that middle housing’s share of all housing produced dropped from more than 25% a century ago to less than 10% today. In the meantime, more than a quarter of all Baby Boomers and nearly 60% of Millennials say they are looking for walkable living and missing middle housing. Parolek didn’t share stats for my fellow Gen Xers—the missing middle of generations?—but, as Robert Steuteville wrote last year in Public Square, tens of millions of us will be downsizing in the next two decades.
Happily, my own town of Silverton, Oregon has begun a community-wide conversation about middle housing. The City will be updating its zoning code standards to encourage more middle housing and provide greater housing choice. These changes were prompted in part by the 2019 passage of Oregon’s HB 2001, which requires communities of 10,000 or more to allow duplexes on any lot zoned for single-family residential, and communities of 25,000 or more to also allow triplexes and fourplexes. (Silverton is just over the 10,000 threshold.) The bill, which our senior editor Daniel Herriges wrote about here, was championed by a diverse coalition—including AARP of Oregon, the NAACP, Portland Public Schools, and transit advocates, among others—and passed with bipartisan support.
Screenshot from the City of Silverton’s virtual town hall on middle housing.
Another reason Silverton is having this conversation now is in response to a recently-completed Housing Needs Analysis (HNA). According to the final HNA report, the median housing price jumped 72% between 2016 and 2019, from $250,000 to $429,000. Rental housing is scarce and cost burdens for renters are going up. The report confirmed with data what Silvertonians were already seeing: housing affordability, variety, and flexibility are major problems here. A pastor friend told me a couple years ago that, in a recent gathering of ministers, the majority of clergy identified affordable housing as the number one issue facing our town. Many young people who grew up in Silverton and would prefer to resettle here after college can’t afford to buy and can’t find a place to rent. Other friends who work with Silverton’s unhoused population tell stories of neighbors, including families with children, who find themselves suddenly homeless. They’re living in cars now, sleeping on the street, couch-hopping, or, in non-COVID times, spending cold winter nights in the local warming shelter.
Looking ahead, Silverton is expected to add another 3,000 residents over the next 20 years. Aging Baby Boomers and Xers, as well as Millennials starting households, will put additional pressure on the available housing stock. Silverton needs more multifamily housing, but the HNA concluded that we can’t accommodate demand based on existing zoning.
Thus, Silverton is considering changes to its zoning codes that would encourage duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes, cottage clusters, and townhomes. In January, the City facilitated a virtual open house to talk about middle housing and answer questions. Then they asked residents to give input via a survey. Some of the questions:
Screenshot from the City of Silverton’s virtual town hall on middle housing.
What should be the top policy goals for introducing middle housing zoning standards? Goals included managing the impacts of parking, supporting more affordable housing, encouraging walkable neighborhoods, and several others. We were asked to rate them from not important to very important.
Knowing that standards must be applied equally to duplexes and single family detached dwellings, how important are the following duplex code standards? We were asked to rate the importance of the following standards:
Adding a requirement for a garage or carport
Allowing attached and detached configurations
Modifying setbacks and lot coverage standards to allow for more units
Reducing minimum lot sizes to allow for more duplexes
Creating physical/ visual connections between dwellings and the street
Limiting overall size of buildings
How important are the following cottage cluster code standards? Again, we were asked to rate:
Limiting overall size of the cottages
Orienting cottages around a shared courtyard area
Modifying setbacks and lot coverage standards to allow for more units
Creating physical/visual connections between dwellings and the street
Providing options for shared parking or parking close to each cottage
Similar questions were asked about townhouses, triplexes, and quadplexes.
The survey was short. It also included good illustrations, which I appreciated. Still, I received texts and Facebook messages from friends and family about the survey. Not because I’m an expert, but because Strong Towns talks a lot about missing middle housing and I talk a lot about Strong Towns. I answered questions as best I could. I also shared some of our best, most accessible resources on the topic.
It occurred to me to share some of those recommended resources here too. If your town or city is having a much-needed conversation about missing middle housing, or if you want to help start one, these four resources can help.
Our friend Daniel Parolek, the planner who coined the term “missing middle,” joined Strong Towns for a public webcast where he shared from the wisdom in his new book, Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis, and talked about how to bring affordability back into your community. Catch that webcast recording at right. And don’t miss the follow-up Q&A webcast as well; he answers a ton of important and detailed questions about how to advocate for and build missing middle housing in your community.
Missing Middle development is an indispensable piece of the Strong Towns vision for cities that are resilient, adaptable, and can pay their bills. We need to revive a culture of building this way, and we need institutions that will allow it.
Some of the biggest barriers to Missing Middle construction have to do with financing and federal regulation. A lot of city governments see this as outside their domain. But there's plenty that cities can do, too. Here are five things your city should be doing, if it isn't already, to help the Missing Middle get found again.
1. Legalize It. Everywhere.
The single biggest reason the Missing Middle has declined is that it is literally illegal in most places. This can be true even in urban neighborhoods that have a lot of duplexes or small apartment buildings: in many of these neighborhoods, zoning codes were changed in the 1960s or 1970s to prohibit the new construction of anything other than single-family homes. The older apartments that are part of the neighborhood's fabric are grandfathered in, but can't be replaced or imitated.
Fortunately, there's a movement to re-legalize the kind of eclectic neighborhoods, with a variety of home types for ownership and rental, that we used to build nearly everywhere.
Housing affordability is often treated as a “big city” problem. The reality is that housing affordability is a nationwide issue, affecting big cities, suburbs, and small towns alike. What’s a Strong Town to do? As with transportation, some like to write off housing affordability as a problem of insufficient funding. “If only we spent more money,” the thinking goes, “we could tackle housing affordability.” Indeed, more funding is needed for homeless shelters and housing vouchers for low-income families.
But this argument belies two key points: First, we realistically need far more new housing than subsidies could ever possibly provide. Second, policymakers already have a buffet of policies they could adopt that would increase housing affordability and accessibility without spending a dime of taxpayer dollars. If your town is serious about tackling the housing affordability crisis, consider adopting one or more of the following policies.
An unobtrusive duplex sits alongside single-family homes. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
All over the U.S., duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, ADUs, even small apartment buildings quietly exist in supposedly "single-family detached" neighborhoods. They're normal. They belong. They fill a vital need. But if you applied for a permit to build another one just like them today, you'd be denied.
All over America in cities big and small, the on-the-ground reality belies the legal fiction of “single-family neighborhoods.” There are 10,000 or so multi-unit homes hiding in plain sight in single-family districts in Seattle alone. You can find "illegal neighborhoods"—as in illegal to replicate today, despite that many are stable and prosperous and well-loved places—in Portland and Somerville and Lexington and Milwaukee and pretty much anywhere you could throw a dart at a map.
What's going on here?
The era of corner stores and mom-and-pop shops has mostly come to an end, with modern zoning codes strictly segregating commercial and residential areas. But a return to the mixed-use model might be just what we need to empower entrepreneurs and strengthen people's sense of community.