New Apartments and the “What If” Game
(Source: Flickr/Sightline Institute.)
There’s an anecdote I share often when I’m writing or speaking about housing, and it comes from an informal meeting I attended a couple years ago with several local leaders in the community where I then lived. Some were citizen activists, mostly neighborhood association presidents; one was an elected official, and a couple were city staff.
We were discussing an ordinance to allow limited missing middle housing in one of our core neighborhoods—in this case, duplexes through fourplexes on regular residential lots. The focus of the discussion was a laundry list of “what if”s and proposed measures to mitigate them.
What if the homes built aren’t affordable? Should we have a rent or income requirement?
What if they’re not occupied by members of the local workforce we’re trying to support? Should we require proof of residency?
What if trees are removed for their construction? What if the residents are noisy after hours?
What if, what if, what if?
Not all of the “What if”s were unreasonable, but I couldn’t stop thinking about one question:
Would we ask any of the same questions of a new single-family house in the same neighborhood?
I know the answer, because we don’t. New single-family homes are built all the time in existing neighborhoods, sometimes on vacant lots, but often after tearing down existing smaller and older homes. And for the most part, the rules governing this kind of construction are relatively simple and rote, and projects that check the boxes are swiftly approved.
We don’t ask a lot of probing questions about neighborhood compatibility when it comes to single-family homes. When a new apartment building is proposed in an urban neighborhood, developers and city staff alike often spend a lot of time on questions like, “Will this building have balconies that overlook someone else’s yard?” Or, “Will there be adequate landscape buffering between this building and its neighboring properties?” The process in most cities is designed to make sure these concerns get aired, and in many cases they become bargaining chips to secure project approval.
Minneapolis developer Sean Sweeney recently shared an anecdote of removing balconies from one side of an apartment building he was working on in a show of good faith to a specific neighbor, only to have that neighbor vocally oppose the building anyway and then move. At the same time, if I want to build a deck or balcony on my single-family home in such a way that I can see into my neighbor’s yard, in most jurisdictions there is no rule on the books that will stop me, and no negotiation process by which remedying this could be made into a condition of my building permit.
Multifamily buildings may be subject to design review panels, or to elaborate façade requirements that mandate irregular shapes and three or four different cladding materials. It’s not uncommon within walking distance of such a building to find a detached home with cheap vinyl siding and a garage dominating the front façade.
We fret over stormwater accommodations for apartment buildings—again, something that is not unreasonable on its face, as flooding is a huge concern in cities in climates subject to heavy rains. At the same time, single-family homes are often not only allowed, but required to devote half or more of the front lawn to a driveway wide enough to accommodate multiple vehicles plus an apron.
Such a driveway design, by the way, also eliminates multiple street parking spaces. But it only seems to be when an apartment building is proposed that people come out of the woodwork to ask, “What if the residents use up all the available street parking?”
We don’t often see the incomes of the people who are going to live in single-family homes as a valid concern for public policy, one that requires a direct remedy. Sure, there is plenty of (often warranted) concern about gentrification among community members and policy makers alike. But I have almost never seen, in any U.S. community, a serious proposal for a strict cap on either the sale price or the income of the buyer of a new single-family home. Such proposals applied to new apartments, or even new duplexes, are extremely common.
In almost every respect, our local regulations treat multifamily housing as something that presumptively poses various risks to the community. And we require elaborate and costly hurdles to mitigate these risks. Yet, even in cases where there is no logical reason to believe that new single-family detached houses could not pose all the same risks, we rarely apply the same scrutiny.
Great to pop by the open house for the TOMO 12 plex #passivhaus, co housing at main and 41st.
— Bryn Davidson @Lanefab (@Lanefab) February 25, 2024
Lovely project and people !
…but holy #%! the hoops they had to jump through to get this through the city planning approval process pic.twitter.com/4zlVJAmurG
This is a recurring theme in American housing policy for the past century. Homeownership is valorized in this country—culturally, but that value judgment is also encoded into law in a multitude of ways. Of course, the most significant way is by wholly banning other forms of housing on a majority of residential land. There are many forms of direct or implicit financial subsidy for single-family homes and neighborhoods. But this bias also creeps into regulation in a lot of more subtle ways, like the ones discussed above.
In a community sensitive to the disruptions that might be posed by new development in existing neighborhoods, these questions are a good place to start opening minds to the flaws embedded in zoning. “Do we place expectations or conditions on multifamily housing, even small multifamily housing, that for no clear reason are not similarly applied to owner-occupied homes?”
Some lawmakers are already attuned to this issue. Under Washington State’s new HB (House Bill) 1110, known as the “Missing Middle” law, “dimensional standards for middle housing [must] be no more restrictive than those standards applying to detached single-family residences.” This is not a panacea for cities’ efforts to prohibit multifamily housing, or in a longstanding American tradition, to effectively disallow it by making it financially non-viable. The requirement applies to “dimensional requirements,” which I take to mean that other stipulations such as design and materials requirements can still apply differently to single-family versus multifamily buildings. But it feels like a useful principle that can be extended.
Land use controls should have a rational basis in some concrete public interest, like health or safety. When we apply those controls differently to a building not based on how it impacts its surrounding environment, but based only on whether it will contain rental units or be offered for sale, we are no longer serving a vital public purpose.
Daniel Herriges has been a regular contributor to Strong Towns since 2015 and is also a founding member of the organization. His work at Strong Towns focuses on housing issues, small-scale and incremental development, urban design, and lowering the barriers to entry for people to participate in creating resilient and prosperous neighborhoods. Daniel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota, with a concentration in Housing and Community Development.
Daniel’s work with Strong Towns reflects a lifelong fascination with cities and how they work. When he’s not perusing maps (for work or pleasure), he can be found exploring out-of-the-way neighborhoods on foot or bicycle. Daniel has lived in Northern California and Southwest Florida, and he now resides back in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, along with his wife and two children.