‘Missing middle’ homes could ease affordability squeeze, architect says
When Daniel Parolek looks at the American housing market, the architect sees both an affordability crisis and a distinct lack of the oldfashioned housing types that could deliver modestly priced homes.
In his new book, “Missing Middle Housing,” Parolek proposes building more medium-density housing, such as duplexes, four-unit buildings and cottage apartments. Those housing types were common in American cities before World War II. They’ve all but disappeared since. Single-family suburbs and high-rise condos have dominated the development scene.
Parolek, who runs Opticos Design in Berkeley, California, calls for using prewar neighborhoods as a template for today’s development. These cozier housing types are smaller than suburban houses, but they also cost significantly less.
“Missing middle is not the silver bullet, but it’s one tool that every city needs in their toolbox to deliver more affordability or attainability in housing,” Parolek says.
The following is a conversation with the architect that has been edited for clarity.
Q:
What is the concept of missing-middle housing?
Parolek: The premise for missing-middle housing is that historically and even currently, we’ve done a really good job of putting planning, zoning, financing and development industries in place to deliver single-family homes on one end of the spectrum. And on the other end of the spectrum, over the past 15 to 20 years in particular, we’ve established similar systems to deliver the larger multifamily or condo projects. There’s a full range of housing types in between those — duplexes, triplexes, cottage courts, smaller courtyard apartment buildings. They existed in neighborhoods before the 1940s, but we’ve pretty much stopped building them. Starting in 1979, there’s been a dramatic decrease in the number of missing-middle housing buildings that have been developed. It’s been a very steady decline. We haven’t delivered them because there are a number of barriers in place.
We define missing-middle housing as buildings with fewer than 19 units. The core of the missing middle is 12 units or less in house-scale buildings. Less than 10% of housing units produced between 1990 and 2013 were missing-middle scale. You used to be able to open a Sears & Roebuck catalog and buy a fourplex or a sixplex . ... We’ve definitely come a long way in the wrong direction for the delivery of these housing types.
Q:
As you’re describing these housing types, I’m envisioning an older neighborhood near a downtown or urban core.
Parolek: That’s an excellent location. Walkability tends to be a really key aspect to either renting or selling the missing-middle units. Those pre-1940 neighborhoods adjacent to a downtown are excellent opportunities. There are also opportunities in greenfield locations. One example of that is the Daybreak community in the Salt Lake City region. We designed a project called Mews, a missingmiddle townhouse community. Our client was able to deliver units at a price point about $25,000 less than their conventional townhouse product.
Q:
When you say attainable, how much do missing-middle units sell for?
Parolek: It obviously varies. At Daybreak, the prices started at $189,000 and went up to $220,000. They were having a really hard time delivering anything for under $275,000 to $300,000 in the townhouse market. Obviously, if you jump into a hotter market, like the Bay Area, those numbers will spike. One of the things we’ve seen in the last two years is a real spike in costs for construction and the entitlement process. That Mews home that started at $189,000 in the first phase had to jump up to a little over $200,000 to cover those increases in costs.
Q:
That price range sounds attractive. What are buyers giving up?
Parolek: We’re removing the cost of that garage space from the equation. With that walkability that’s being delivered in these neighborhoods, a household may only have one car, or they’re using Uber or Lyft or a carshare. A lot of people are OK parking on the street. We did the planning for the first missing-middle community in the country near Omaha, Nebraska, and it’s delivering one parking space per unit, and the second parking space is on the street. And smaller units are really key. We’re finding that the more walkable a location is, the smaller the units that will be acceptable to the market.
Q:
What are the biggest barriers to these kinds of housing?
Parolek: Unfortunately, there’s a lot of barriers. First and foremost are zoning barriers. Part of our work is to go into cities and do targeted or wholesale changes to their zoning codes to enable missing middle and walkability. Sometimes cities don’t even have zoning that really and truly allows for missingmiddle housing. Their zoning will go from allowing single-family homes and maybe duplexes, then it jumps up to 55-foot-tall buildings. Even in cities that do have medium-density zoning, densities are typically too low, setbacks are typically too high, parking requirements are too high. The culmination of all those make it really hard to deliver these housing types.