Advocates for ending single-family zoning to allow more apartments have notched victories in Florida and Virginia, building on a national trend of municipalities and states trying to create more affordable dwellings to help with housing shortages.
St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington County in Virginia, approved changes to allow duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in neighborhoods previously zoned strictly for single-family homes. Arlington County went further by allowing properties with six units to be built in some areas.
The municipalities join Minneapolis, California cities and states like Oregon in making zoning less restrictive to encourage a moderate increase in housing density in single-family neighborhoods and improve affordability through more units. Other cities such as Atlanta are considering similar changes, while the Colorado legislature is pondering bills aimed at overhauling zoning codes to encourage denser housing development in urban areas such as Denver and eliminating hurdles owners face in adding units.
The issue is important for apartment developers, which could end up with more competition for tenants in some areas that are short on housing and support higher rents. Across the country at the end of 2022, there was an estimated shortage of 6.5 million single-family homes, up from 5.5 million at the end of 2021, needed to keep up with U.S. household formations, according to available federal government data.
“Strong evidence indicates that many current zoning rules limit the housing supply and increase the cost of homes,” according to a new report from nonprofit commercial real estate research organization Urban Land Institute.
ULI’s report noted that Houston lacks a formalized zoning code, and the city “creates 14 times more housing than peer cities.
For all the debate and proposals, there's no guarantee that increasing the number of units will made housing more affordable, some critics of added density argue. They say demand in areas for housing could outstrip the added units that result from removal or easing of zoning laws.
Missing-Middle Housing
By changing the zoning to allow housing with two to four units, municipalities are attempting to fill the so-called missing middle between single-family and higher-density apartment buildings. Daniel Parolek, founder of Berkeley, California-based architectural firm Opticos Design, coined "missing-middle housing" in 2010 to describe the types of housing common prior to World War II but less common now.
That housing typically includes duplexes, cottage style housing, rowhouses and small apartment buildings with courtyards.
The hope is that generating more of this type of housing will mean affordable options for middle class residents largely in urban areas.
“The increasing demand for missing-middle housing pushes cities to rethink solutions for first-time homebuyers, smaller families, couples, retirees aging in place, adults with disabilities, car-free households and many others,” James Corbett, St. Petersburg’s city development administrator, told the city council March 23 before the vote.
St. Petersburg had been working on the change since 2017. Arlington County, meanwhile, began considering the zoning change eight years ago. Arlington County's vote was unanimous while St. Petersburg's vote was 7-1.
E-commerce giant Amazon chose Arlington County for its East Coast headquarters in 2018, with the promise of creating 25,000 jobs by 2030, sparking concerns that housing affordability would worsen in the area. The company has been funding the development of new, as well as preserving, affordable housing in the area.
However, Amazon halted construction on the second phase of its office development in Arlington in early March as it rethinks space needs while cutting thousands of jobs across the company.
Old Rules
St. Petersburg and Arlington County reflect the arduous task of making a major change to decadeslong single-family zoning rules.
The efforts often face stiff opposition from residents concerned that anything more than single-family houses would alter the character of their neighborhoods. But the arguments also include challenges to whether building duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes will reduce housing costs.
Jon Huntley, an economist who runs a website named Arlington Analytics and a long-time Arlington County resident, produced an analysis last May that concluded new missing-middle housing would have little effect on rents and home prices in Arlington County.
“The number of existing residences in that market segment is simply too large for Missing Middle to have a meaningful impact on rents and prices,” Huntley wrote.
These efforts continue to play out elsewhere in the country. Minneapolis approved in late 2018 eliminating single-family zoning, Oregon in 2019 voted to end that zoning in urban centers and cities including Columbus, Ohio, and California's Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose have looked at or enacted similar legislation. Utah lawmakers may allow property owners to more easily add accessory dwelling units and promote denser developments.
Gainesville, Florida, was the first city in the state to eliminate some single-family zoning last October. But it also may be the first in the country to reverse the decision after newly elected city commissioners who opposed the zoning change voted in January to begin a process for reverting to single-family zoning rules.
Single-family zoning, also known as exclusionary zoning because it prevents multifamily development, has been around since the early 1900s, which at the time segregated neighborhoods.
For older urban neighborhoods, larger new and more expensive homes frequently replace old homes.
Libby Garvey, an Arlington County board member, said during last week's board meeting when the change was approved, that previous zoning led to “single-family mansions,” which aren’t “conducive to a sustainable and diverse community.”
In the end, “there’s no way to make everyone happy on this issue,” Garvey said.
Katie Burke of CoStar News contributed to this report.