I haven’t been that vocal about it, but I have tended to be of the opinion that missing middle housing - legalized duplexes and triplexes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), etc. - are mostly a symbolic victory. Just generally getting the local busy-bodies out of the way for very minor changes to each neighborhood’s structural environment probably isn’t going to make a huge dent in housing affordability, but it is a sign of a polity doing the right things. A city that passes a pro-ADU law is to a YIMBY like a local auditorium that removed the brown M&Ms from the green room is to
It wouldn’t be the first time that I was checking old blog post and saw you had pointed something out in the comments before I had come around to it. 🙂
An issue in the immediate term is (shocker here) pricing, at least in my area.
The vast majority of new du/tri/quadruplexes around here are built and priced for retirees or empty-nesters. No back or front yard, deluxe interiors, close together.
What would it take to incentivize the building of missing middle housing with first-time buyers in mind?
It may be the case that retirees are a good fit for those units and building them allows retirees to move out of homes that will be taken by first-time buyers.
I wouldn't classify this as backtracking on your part. One of the most consistent themes of your work has been to treat architectural housing typology with more objectivity than other people (like architects and hippy dippy New Urbanists). In the world of EHT, a housing unit is a housing unit---it doesn't matter if it's detached single family or micro-units in a high rise. Solving our housing shortage requires more of everything--as long as we don't start copying some of the Chinese developers who threw up superblocks of high rises in low quality suburbs. Sometimes you build it and nobody comes.
The ongoing debacle of zoning reform in Milton, Massachusetts demonstrates the deep political challenges of getting any sort of traction when it comes to changing the status quo. Salim Furth has an excellent explanation over at Market Urbanism, and he comes at from a deeply personal perspective as well as laying out some brutal facts. The solution requires every community in a Closed Access city pull their weight. I don't have a good answer as to what is more possible: concentrated density or comprehensive upzoning---both are third rails.
Yes! Glad you have arrived. There is soooo much land in existing single family neighborhoods. We just have to get them to start changing slightly, 1% per year. And it’ll be a big deal.
Great article as usual! Going off on a slight tangent:
> So, I’m sure that I sound outrageous when I say 10 to 20 million. (As I have pointed out before, I think, we are 5 million vacant units short of normal. Unless all of the other forecasters have discovered some new secret way to run a housing market with fewer vacancies than we had in the past, and they haven’t told me about it, the standard estimates are laughably understated.)
I always wonder how much of an impact unfettered AirBnB (and similar) can have. It's definitely a way to increase utilisation of the housing stock. Though in practice it seems to lead to people being able to take more vacations (very short term rentals) and competes with hotels, it doesn't really increase the effective supply of residential housing.
However by increasing the returns you can expect from residential construction, it might help contribute to a building boom?
I don't know. I'm inclined to be in favour of deregulating AirBnB-like activity just because the NIMBYs are against it. (But I realise that is probably a bad heuristic, because most NIMBYs are probably also against nuclear war..)
I think you have to be careful about reacting to a shortage of supply by trying to regulate demand. Airbnb can create noticeable issues in very small markets with a lot of tourism. But, I think there are still less than a million Airbnb listings in the US, so I doubt that it has much of an effect even if you allow for an "all else equal" analysis of it.
I have been honking about this for years, perhaps in a less credible and thoughtful way than Kevin Erdmann, but still.
Verily, the US is short millions and millions of housing units, maybe, yes tens of millions of units.
Imagine another world, in which housing in the US was abundant, and sellers vied for buyers. Housing was cheap, there was "too much" supply.
Like a world in which employers vie for workers.
A better world.
It wouldn’t be the first time that I was checking old blog post and saw you had pointed something out in the comments before I had come around to it. 🙂
An issue in the immediate term is (shocker here) pricing, at least in my area.
The vast majority of new du/tri/quadruplexes around here are built and priced for retirees or empty-nesters. No back or front yard, deluxe interiors, close together.
What would it take to incentivize the building of missing middle housing with first-time buyers in mind?
It may be the case that retirees are a good fit for those units and building them allows retirees to move out of homes that will be taken by first-time buyers.
I wouldn't classify this as backtracking on your part. One of the most consistent themes of your work has been to treat architectural housing typology with more objectivity than other people (like architects and hippy dippy New Urbanists). In the world of EHT, a housing unit is a housing unit---it doesn't matter if it's detached single family or micro-units in a high rise. Solving our housing shortage requires more of everything--as long as we don't start copying some of the Chinese developers who threw up superblocks of high rises in low quality suburbs. Sometimes you build it and nobody comes.
The ongoing debacle of zoning reform in Milton, Massachusetts demonstrates the deep political challenges of getting any sort of traction when it comes to changing the status quo. Salim Furth has an excellent explanation over at Market Urbanism, and he comes at from a deeply personal perspective as well as laying out some brutal facts. The solution requires every community in a Closed Access city pull their weight. I don't have a good answer as to what is more possible: concentrated density or comprehensive upzoning---both are third rails.
Yes! Glad you have arrived. There is soooo much land in existing single family neighborhoods. We just have to get them to start changing slightly, 1% per year. And it’ll be a big deal.
“Nobody deserves a backyard.” Geez dude.
Great article as usual! Going off on a slight tangent:
> So, I’m sure that I sound outrageous when I say 10 to 20 million. (As I have pointed out before, I think, we are 5 million vacant units short of normal. Unless all of the other forecasters have discovered some new secret way to run a housing market with fewer vacancies than we had in the past, and they haven’t told me about it, the standard estimates are laughably understated.)
I always wonder how much of an impact unfettered AirBnB (and similar) can have. It's definitely a way to increase utilisation of the housing stock. Though in practice it seems to lead to people being able to take more vacations (very short term rentals) and competes with hotels, it doesn't really increase the effective supply of residential housing.
However by increasing the returns you can expect from residential construction, it might help contribute to a building boom?
I don't know. I'm inclined to be in favour of deregulating AirBnB-like activity just because the NIMBYs are against it. (But I realise that is probably a bad heuristic, because most NIMBYs are probably also against nuclear war..)
I think you have to be careful about reacting to a shortage of supply by trying to regulate demand. Airbnb can create noticeable issues in very small markets with a lot of tourism. But, I think there are still less than a million Airbnb listings in the US, so I doubt that it has much of an effect even if you allow for an "all else equal" analysis of it.