Re-Legalizing Middle Housing: Four Perspectives on Implementation

More communities and states are looking to “middle housing” – multiple units similar in scale to single, detached homes — to expand housing options, the supply of moderately priced housing, and equitable access to high-opportunity neighborhoods. This approach can be controversial with existing residents, but a cautious and limited approach can fail to “move the needle” for middle-housing development. How do you build support for a more ambitious implementation?

Presenters offer four examples:
* Beaverton, Oregon, emphasized equitable engagement and context-sensitive design, while enabling middle housing throughout the city’s single-detached housing zones;
* The Association of Bay Area Governments educated dozens of member jurisdictions in middle-housing best practices through online workshops, guidebooks, and tools;
* Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development navigated statewide implementation rules and support for local governments in the rollout of House Bill 2001, which required most jurisdictions to allow middle housing; and
* AARP is advocating for local and statewide efforts to expand middle-housing options.

Panelists discuss messaging and outreach strategies they found effective for building support for middle housing and describe the analytical and technical resources they used to inform their approaches and recommendations.

NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Intermediate. For more on learning-level descriptions, visit our General Information Page.