What is ‘missing middle’ housing, and could it solve Utah’s housing crisis?

Since 2015, the vast majority of building permits issued in Utah have been for single-family homes, but one expert says there’s a better way to chip away at the state’s affordability crisis.

Of about 140,000 building permits issued in the past decade for typical housing styles, 87% have been for single-family, detached homes, according to the Ivory-Boyer Construction Database.

Yet it’s the other kind of housing — duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, condominiums, town homes and cottage clusters — that can help us improve housing affordability, said Daniel Parolek.

Parolek, the founder of California-based Opticos Design, coined the term “Missing Middle Housing” more than a decade ago to describe these housing types and has spent years advising officials on how to provide more housing choices in sustainable, walkable places. His book, titled “Missing Middle Housing,” is tagged: thinking big and building small.

The Salt Lake Tribune sat down with Parolek to talk about “middle” housing and why it matters in Utah. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What is “missing middle” housing? How do you define the idea and get people to understand what it is and what it isn’t?

Parolek • So the way we define missing middle is buildings that are no bigger than a house. It’s house-scale buildings that have multiple units inside of them. It might be a duplex. It might be a fourplex, might be a courtyard apartment. It could be a cottage court. But we built these types historically in neighborhoods and even mixed them. Every neighborhood built before 1940 will have a mix of single-family detached houses and missing middle on the same block.

And this is a concept that I created in 2011 to really emphasize the gap between the types of housing that the market was delivering and what households wanted. Now it’s what they want, but, just as importantly, what they need as fewer and fewer households, even in this market, can afford to purchase a single-family detached house.

A lot of people default to middle income, and it becomes about income. And, yes, that’s a part of it, if you’re really thoughtful about it. With policy planning design, you can deliver attainably priced housing that you can’t deliver with single-family detached housing.

One of our most successful examples of doing that is actually we worked with Holmes Homes in [South Jordan’s] Daybreak, and we delivered a project called Mews Homes. They ranged from 900 square feet up to 1,400 square feet, and they were able to sell them at a price point of approximately $25,000 to $30,000 less per unit than they were able to deliver the three-story town house that’s now happening everywhere, so that’s a really successful model that’s in this region. It’s not an infill, but it’s in a new community.

This was six years ago. They started at $189,000 and went up to $230,000 as an asking price, and now those same houses are selling for almost $500,000. So [that] demonstrates how crazy the growth in prices has been in your market. It’s happening a lot of places, but this is one of the fastest escalating markets.

How does missing middle help bring home prices down and make ownership more attainable?

Parolek • It’s a lot of different things. It’s efficient, and it can use smaller lots. It’s often attached. It’s sometimes stacked. I feel like [in] this market, as with a lot of other markets, a fourplex condominium building is really kind of where the builders need to go. But there’s a lot of reasons that that’s just harder to do.

What we like to demonstrate is Mews, where approximately 15% to 20% is smaller in overall square footage, but we wanted to demonstrate that with thoughtful design, you can deliver a smaller unit, and it’s still very livable. Missing middle sort of caps out at 2½, sometimes three stories, and so it’s all wood construction, which keeps the cost down.

So there’s efficiencies in all of those things, including, historically, there’s some very simple buildings. If you look at any of the historic examples, they’re very elegant. Some of them are beautiful architecturally. Others are just really modest, nice buildings, which I think is a real goal for missing middle.

What policy barriers are there for middle housing? And how can policymakers help address any barriers?

Parolek • Zoning is a barrier for the delivery of missing-middle types in a majority of cities — probably 80% [or] 90%. It needs to really start with making the missing-middle housing delivery be right for developers. And it doesn’t have to be everywhere necessarily — in some places it ideally would be just based on the extent of the housing crisis. It’s things like maximum densities need to be higher, lot sizes need to be smaller, lot coverage needs to be smaller.

Parking requirements are one of the biggest hurdles. I was just talking to a client earlier, a developer, who was saying a city he’s working in is requiring 2½ parking spaces per home. He’s trying to build these really small lot single-family homes, and you can’t do it. There’s not enough space on a lot.

We have this process called a missing middle scan that we do for cities, and it’s the diagnosis before the surgery. We identify specific barriers in all of those different documents. It’s not just “you need to change your zoning.” It’s “you need to change the density from 10 units per acre to 24 units per acre. You need to change your lot coverage.” It gives the city all the content they need to basically make those changes in really targeted ways for select zoning districts.

I have a slide I’ve used for 15 years, which is a picture of a camera from 1920-something. It’s the same year that zoning was created. And you can imagine, if you want to take a picture and post it on social media or even just email it to your friend, you’re not going to use that camera. But that’s what we’re still using to try to regulate development in our all of our cities.

There’s construction defect liability. Condos have this, layers and layers and layers. In most states, a developer who builds a condominium, regardless of size — it could be two units, it could be 200 units — is liable for 10 years for any defects in the construction. And it’s meant as a protection for consumers. The intent is really good, but what it’s become is at year 9½, there’s lawyers who go around to the condominium associations and say, “Well, what problems did you have, and can we go sue the developer?” And so it’s become very litigious. There’s a huge amount of risk, so the builders have to get additional insurance. As an architect, the first question on my professional liability insurance is: Do you design condominium buildings? Every percentage of your work that’s condominium, your rates go up. The great thing about Utah is they’ve actually changed that liability recently, and so it’s become a lot less of a barrier.

The third big barrier is building codes, and that jump from when you go to two to three units, you go from a residential building code up to a commercial building code. It treats a three-unit building pretty similar to a 300-unit building. There’s really a missing building code.

It’s just not a coastal or a really high-value market discussion. Montana’s having the discussion. Obviously, Utah is having the discussion.

Once policymakers on board, how do you get the community on board? How do you get past some ideas of what a duplex means?

Parolek • The part of why the missing-middle concept has resonated is we created this missing-middle diagram that shows kind of the range of missing-middle types and how they fit into the spectrum of housing types that should be in every community. And our work is very visual, we always create photo databases. And I feel like the visual part of this is critical to demonstrating what it is, not just theorizing or talking technically about something. I think it’s using those photos and those visualizations to dispel the myths and the rumors about what it is, but not always.

You always want to tie who the housing is for into the conversation. It’s not just buildings for buildings’ sake. As an example, we’ve seen a lot of instances where we’ll be working in a city, and even at the decision-maker level, there’s some resistance to it. But then at some point, when their kids decide they want to move back to the town that they grew up in, and they can’t afford to actually buy a place, and then it’s like, “Aha, it’s not that other person.” And then even having people tell stories about their experience with these missing-middle types, because inevitably, somebody’s either lived in a cottage court or a duplex or a fourplex at some point in their life. I think personalizing it helps a lot.

It’s talking about how few people can actually afford to buy or rent — the teachers, the firefighters. I think that resonates — that the people who are a critical part of their community and their social network can’t afford to be in their community.

And I think it’s needing to be respectful about concerns. You need to listen to people’s concerns, but then just be thoughtful about how to respond. We have a pretty good success rate. It’s not immediate. It takes some time, but just being able to thoughtfully respond to those concerns and get people to understand why it’s necessary everywhere.

I’ve been in the Salt Lake City market for probably 15 years teaching zoning reform and working with public entities and developers. But you can imagine if, even 10 years ago, more of these cities and more of these developers had [said], “Oh yeah, I think we should get ahead of the curve and deliver these types” that would have been the chance to really stay ahead of it, but now it’s trying to catch up or hastily respond to a market that’s just completely, exponentially growing in value in ways that’s not sustainable.

What else would you want people to know as local governments here start looking at middle housing. Is it better here than other states? Do we need more of it?

Parolek • It’s most effective when it’s delivering walkability. It’s sort of part of that bigger picture. We’re doing meetings up and down the Wasatch Front. There are a lot of places like Draper and Lehi with a historic grid and a sliver of a historic Main Street, but those are the kinds of places where, if there was good planning and policy and a vision for new zoning, they would be perfect places. Just let those places grow and evolve and become better and better with incremental infill.

Your region has invested fairly heavily in transit. And I’m just going to say this, that this region has some of the most unattractive transit-oriented development that I’ve ever seen in the country. I wouldn’t want to live there. I think there’s a more thoughtful approach to transit-oriented development. It doesn’t always need to be the big buildings. I think missing-middle scale around stations, especially when they’re embedded in a smaller town, is a great solution to get enough population density to support the transit and support those commercial amenities.

And there’s the big city of Salt Lake. There’s a ton of opportunity here. Builders get kind of stuck on delivering that town house. That’s what you see most of in this market. There are reasons for that, but I think getting over that hump is important.

There’s also the need for complete new neighborhoods that are walkable, that have a mix of missing middle, single-family, town houses, maybe bigger condos and apartments. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for every community. Every community needs to understand what would be easiest. And there’s some low hanging fruit in every community for what housing types fit where.

It has to end with thoughtful zoning changes. I’m going to learn a lot more about the state legislation here in Utah over the next couple of days, but I think there’s a lot of validity to the state stepping in and helping because of the extent of the problems. It’s always going to be a little bit of a blunt instrument coming from the state, but it’s necessary in a lot of places.

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.