Easing Missing Middle Housing: At the Planning Commission

Tonight, Tuesday the 19th, the Planning Commission will hold a formal Public Hearing on some new code for multi-family housing, especially for modest Missing Middle triplexes and fourplexes, and larger Missing Middle forms up to 12 homes. At nine pages the Staff Report is manageable, as is a two page summary, but the proposed code itself is over 400 pages of material. The devil's in the details and without specialist knowledge, you have to trust the City's summary.

Alas, in too many cases the City has shaded truth or misrepresented things, and it's not always easy to trust them. So, it's hard to say really how good is the proposed package of changes.

Preview and summary for proposed code amendments
on missing middle housing.

On the surface, the changes seem good, if timid. HB 2001 (see below) will almost certainly call for another round of adjustment and change.

Small plexes that fit into the neighborhood fabric easily will conform to more of the standards for existing single detached homes. This is a move for continuity and for historic norms.

There's also a modest reduction in off-street parking requirements, which drive up the cost of building.

Details on lot coverage, lot size, and setbacks could still plug up the works, however. I haven't seen any informed comment on those details, and maybe there will be more to say after the Hearing.

It would be helpful for the City to provide more concrete detail in pictures and case histories. That preview image above shows three Salem projects, but does not have any discussion of ways they exemplify problems, solutions, or illustrate any part of the proposed new code.

On HB 2001

As framing, the Staff Report buries HB 2001 a little under "additional considerations," perhaps since the code changes were initiated before HB 2001 was passed. But now that it will be law, the City should consider leading with HB 2001 and making that more centrally part of the framework for analysis and debate.

Fourplexes are going to be legal, no matter what! The City should be clearer that this is coming down the pipeline and we should want to start preparing for it.

Over at LUN, people involved with the neighborhood associations have talked a little about the proposal, and I want to argue with a number of their claims and observations.

Autoism and some NIMBYism

First off, by not talking more about HB 2001, the City allows people to draw inferences like this, that neighbors should be able to require a hearing or give input on a fourplex. The reason State action was necessary is because of this kind of neighborhood resistance to missing middle housing. (Indeed, this is one of the reasons the City of Portland is looking to phase out neighborhood associations. They may no longer be fair and equitable, and instead too often serve exclusionary ends.)

Why should neighbors be able to cancel a next-door fourplex? The Strong Towns formula on change neatly recognizes the historical reality of cities. Our current zoning scheme characteristic of mid- and late 20th century freezes residential neighborhoods in a way that is very much an aberration in history. It's not "natural" and it's bad. Urban renewal, the "cataclysmic money" Jacobs talked about, was also bad. (Though Strong Towns may also not give enough thought to our climate emergency and its exigencies.) These two concepts together are much closer to a "natural" concept of a city, the way they actually change in normal, organic history, apart from things like war or famine.

• Premise #1: No neighborhood should be exempted from change.
• Premise #2: No neighborhood should experience radical change.

The abnormal conditions of our 20th century contribute to an entrenched autoism and incumbency bias.

The more open space we have, the farther apart things are placed, the more auto-dependent the distances between them. Open space drives demand for cars. We have not thought through the mutualism between our fondness for open space and our fondness for cars.

The older parts of town are also the most walkable, and we should want more people to be able to enjoy walkable neighborhoods and the amenities that cluster in and near them. "Fencing" walkable neighborhoods with exclusionary zoning is a form of resource hoarding and maintaining incumbency privilege. If we want a larger quantity of affordable housing, and we want to be able to have a broad and diverse middle class, we will need to have greater numbers of smaller-footprint housing in walkable areas. We should want to share!

More than this, walkable neighborhoods are also conducive to lower-car and even car-free living. This points to another disconnect: Neighbors fear more cars in walkable neighborhoods, but by pushing development out into car dependent areas, we guarantee more cars in the city driving and too often zooming. The only way to have fewer cars and fewer trips is to leverage walkable neighborhoods. (Parking reform has to be a part of this.)

Proposed changes for bigger projects

There are also some changes on larger developments of 13 or more homes, and, honestly, I wish the three and four, and then four to twelve home pieces were being done first and done separately from the 13+ part. The two sizes of missing middle housing are a convenient unit, and it is easier to assess them alone. On the 13+ piece, case studies and concrete examples would be more useful.

On one of the elements, it turns out there's a helpful word!

"Demise lines" create articulation
Walkable City Rules by Jeff Speck

In his book Walkable City Rules Jeff Speck has a chapter on "breaking up big buildings," and this is what our code is doing on "building mass and articulation."

A demise line is an artificial vertical boundary that breaks a facade conceptually into several smaller units. There is as yet no theory of demise lines nor literature of demise lines, but they are used often...Architects are often uncomfortable with the concept of demise lines, because they are essentially a lie. They misrepresent the buildings behind them, and dishonestly reduce the scale of buildings that should be smaller. As such, they can be considered white lie...They should be required on private buildings that otherwise threaten to create a monotonous streetscape.

I have often wondered what to call these seams of articulation that don't actually correspond to a different building, and now I see we have a word for that. Demise lines. Remember that!

One kind of demise line at Southblock - via CB|Two

If builders, developers, and architects have public comment on the details and potential unintended consequences, there might be more to say. I fear, though, that most comment will be strong on emotion and weak on policy.

Previously:

• "Notes on Wednesday's Multifamily Design Workshop" (February)
• "Missing Middle Design Standards Workshop doesn't Explain Enough" (March)
• "Revised Missing Middle Housing Concepts Whiff on Parking" (May)