Missing Middle Housing: Accelerating America's Transition from Single-Family Zoning

Abstract

As housing unaffordability and climate change impose increasingly greater costs on American cities and towns, there is a growing sense that single-family residential zoning ordinances are partly to blame for these challenges. Many Americans remain unwilling to address these difficulties by welcoming large apartment buildings into their neighborhoods. Fortunately, policies designed to promote “middle housing” development––visually attractive duplexes and townhome projects––tend to be more politically feasible than policies that drive apartment development. Further, such policies do much to improve the affordability and environmental sustainability of residential neighborhoods. This Article describes how promoting greater middle housing development in the United States would help the nation to accelerate its transition to more affordable and sustainable housing and identifies some specific policy strategies for driving middle housing development across the country.

Keywords: Missing Middle Housing, Housing programs, Urban sprawl, Zoning laws, United States history, Environmental management