Building a Missing Middle Housing
As the world is on the verge of a global housing crisis, the lack of a missing middle limit the number of options households have while choosing the right house.
Global leaders and national politicians have long preached housing for all but do not provide the legislation for housing of all sorts. Affordable housing does not alone concern the developed economies, such as the United States, but also the developing and low-income countries.
From Hong Kong’s too small an apartment to New York’s burning a hole in your pocket all-in-one-room apartments, the perils of housing shortage and unaffordability are not unknown. On the other hand, in countries like India, there lies a dichotomy in housing as one can see high-rising buildings surrounded by dismal slums.
There lie two problems at hand compassing the global housing crisis — persistent housing shortages and increasing unaffordability.
One of the solutions to these housing problems lies in the building of a missing middle housing. Daniel Parolek’s latest book, titled Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis, explains this phenomenon and stresses the need to build a ‘middle’ housing that remains missing. This idea of the missing middle has two connotations — in terms of scale and affordability. Middle housing emphasizes the need for mid-sized houses and complexes — scale — for middle-income families — affordability to the growing middle class.
Further, these buildings are ‘missing’ as they have become illegal to construct since the mid-1940s. There are many classifications to what the missing middle housing entails. Some of these building types are duplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, cottage courts, and courtyard buildings.
According to an article by Pew Trusts, about 25% of household income went to housing and related needs in 2014. However, the low-income households bore the brunt of financing their housing needs as they spent more than 40% of their income on housing. Moreover, renters spent about half of their income on housing needs.
In terms of scale, people belonging to various demographics demand different housing facilities. Singles require more amenities; women and the elderly, especially those living alone, expect better security in and around their neighborhood.
People prefer walkable communities as they improve accessibility to public transport, reducing transportation costs to local markets and other nearby community spaces, and enabling households to pocket more money for their expenses besides housing. The structure of the middle housing also tends to benefit all parties — residents and local businesses.
By design, a single-family housing block offers a lower density than middle housing that consists of multi-unit and clustered housing. Greater density of households and variety of household types attract amenities and allow local businesses to open shops within these neighborhoods. An increase in demand for goods and services creates its supply.
However, the ‘missing’ nature of ‘middle’ housing reflects the challenges faced by developers in building such housing complexes. Most of them are economic challenges, such as the high costs of acquiring land, designing and building such housing. Legal and regulatory challenges such as parking, building, and zoning codes keep developers from building these houses at a production scale. Increased density within regions is also a concern related to the development of middle housing.
Although densities are usually high in middle housing neighborhoods, the missing middle has a low perceived density due to the stacking of multiple building types in an individual block. The smaller sizes of some housing units are not as comfortable as larger units. But these give developers an edge to tap the potential market of single-member households to mortgage or rent such properties.
Moreover, the existing minimum parking requirements increase the monetary costs in the project budget and often result in wasted rather than utilized space. As missing middles tend to lie in proximity to amenities and services, people prefer walking around and use public transport for long travels. The missing middle plan proposes providing only one off-street parking space to each housing unit.
Most importantly, missing middle creates a shared sense of community among different housing types located within a single complex. These have the power to stimulate social interactions, long lost in the age of social media and distant housing.
The dialogue around the missing middle housing has grown over the past decade, essentially in several parts of the United States and Canada, due to its growing demand among the new generations.
While the housing crisis persists around the globe in various shapes and forms, there are some exceptions. Singapore, with its robust public housing schemes — government subsidies, easy access to loans, and over one million state-leased apartments — has achieved near-universal homeownership.
Although this forms a blueprint of how the state administration can execute housing schemes, every country has a different socio-economic and political climate. While some lack the political will, others lack the legal frameworks around land ownership. One such pain point for institutions, primarily in low-and-middle-income or developing economies, is acquiring and leasing land.
Land reforms have been politicized and seldom implemented at a large scale. If land, which is a prerequisite for affordable housing or, in some cases, the missing middle housing, remains a political yoke, how will we ever achieve the common goal of housing for all?
