This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Opti­cos Design . Read the orig­i­nal sto­ry here. All images in this arti­cle are cour­tesy of Opti­cos Design.

The dis­cus­sion of Pre-Approved Hous­ing Plans, or what we call a Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log (PAHTC) is being dis­cussed and con­sid­ered by juris­dic­tions across the coun­try to address the dire nature of hous­ing costs. Small and large com­mu­ni­ties, and even the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment think­ing about nation­al appli­ca­tion, are hope­ful these plans can help spur deliv­ery of more new hous­ing and at a greater vari­ety of price points. This approach, if imple­ment­ed effec­tive­ly, can be a way to reduce costs and time of enti­tle­ment and deliv­ery of homes while ele­vat­ing the qual­i­ty of design and liv­ing offered.

We agree this is one tool that cities, coun­ties, and even states, should con­sid­er in their hous­ing solu­tions tool­box. How­ev­er, the appli­ca­tion of this con­cept is at risk of being great­ly over­sim­pli­fied. There are numer­ous rea­sons this approach has not been applied soon­er, such as licens­ing and lia­bil­i­ty, which are also rea­sons why most house plan com­pa­nies focus sole­ly on detached sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes and duplex­es. Yet to be tru­ly effec­tive, these Pre-Approved Hous­ing Plans like­ly need to go beyond small sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes, duplex­es, and town­hous­es to include house-scale mul­ti­plex­es. The intent of this arti­cle is to bring to light some of the more tech­ni­cal and com­pli­cat­ed aspects of apply­ing a Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log (PAHTC) so that juris­dic­tions can bet­ter pre­pare for the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion and long-term admin­is­tra­tion of this sys­tem’s approach.*

Our team at Opti­cos Design, Inc. has spent the last 24 years work­ing with cities and devel­op­ers across the coun­try to pro­vide strate­gic advis­ing, plan­ning, zon­ing, and design solu­tions to deliv­er walk­a­ble urban liv­ing and a broad range of hous­ing choic­es. In addi­tion to this work, we are con­sid­ered the archi­tects of the Miss­ing Mid­dle move­ment: We cre­at­ed the con­cept of Miss­ing Mid­dle Hous­ing in 2010 which includ­ed the now ubiq­ui­tous Miss­ing Mid­dle dia­gram, launched missingmiddlehousing.com in 2016, and wrote the book, “Miss­ing Mid­dle Hous­ing: Think­ing Big and Build­ing Small to Respond to the Hous­ing Cri­sis” in 2020. Our work has fur­ther impact­ed the hous­ing land­scape for cities, towns, and regions across the coun­try includ­ing pre-approved or per­mit-ready ADUs for mul­ti­ple cities, the cre­ation of a hous­ing cat­a­log called the Miss­ing Mid­dle Neigh­bor­hood Kit™, sev­er­al city­wide Miss­ing Mid­dle Plans and Hous­ing Plans, Miss­ing Mid­dle strate­gic advis­ing and pol­i­cy, and region­al Zon­ing Toolk­its. Opti­cos Senior Asso­ciate, Jen­nifer Set­tle, led the col­lab­o­ra­tive effort with con­sul­tants Jim Kumon, Jen­nifer Grif­fin and Patrick Lynch to devel­op the Pre-Approved Hous­ing Type Cat­a­log for South Bend, IN, which has suc­cess­ful­ly expand­ed its pro­gram and has sev­er­al built results. Based on the lessons learned from these appli­ca­tions (no one gets things per­fect on the first try when inno­vat­ing a new tool), as well as research on what we are see­ing across the coun­try, we thought it would be help­ful to pro­vide some tips for cities and coun­ties to con­sid­er before they dive into a Pre-Approved Hous­ing Plans process.

*Dis­claimer: We are not attor­neys or insur­ance agents. This arti­cle is for infor­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es only and should not be con­strued as legal advice on any mat­ter.

Here Are Our Top 10 Tips for Cities Considering a Pre-Approved Housing Type Catalog (PAHTC)

1. Understand Architecture Licensing and Stamping Requirements

The first item to con­sid­er is whether the range of build­ings you want in your pre-approved plans will require an archi­tec­tur­al stamp or a licensed archi­tect. Each of the 55 U.S. states and ter­ri­to­ries sets their own require­ments for licen­sure. They often have dif­fer­ent require­ments for the types and sizes of build­ings that require an archi­tec­ture license and archi­tec­tur­al or oth­er pro­fes­sion­al stamp.

In some states the size of a build­ing deter­mines the require­ment thresh­old, some­times it is the use, some­times it is occu­pan­cy, and some­times a com­bi­na­tion of the above. You can typ­i­cal­ly find this infor­ma­tion through your state licens­ing board, often by sim­ply doing an inter­net search for “what are the archi­tec­ture licens­ing require­ments for (state name).” Under­stand­ing this is crit­i­cal to help define how the cat­a­log and pre-approval process will work, and whether and how licensed pro­fes­sion­als will be involved. Below is a table sum­ma­riz­ing some of the research we did on this top­ic recent­ly when need­ing to under­stand the chal­lenges of allow­ing our Miss­ing Mid­dle Neigh­bor­hood Kit™ to be applied in any of the 50 states.

Note: For imple­men­ta­tion it is impor­tant to under­stand that it is typ­i­cal­ly not legal for one archi­tect to use and/or stamp draw­ings that anoth­er archi­tect has cre­at­ed with­out any par­tic­i­pa­tion or agree­ment from the orig­i­nal archi­tect, and there are pro­fes­sion­al lia­bil­i­ty con­cerns for both archi­tects.

2. Understand Building Design Risk and Liability

Build­ing design and con­struc­tion includes inher­ent risks, such as poten­tial con­struc­tion defects, poor qual­i­ty or improp­er con­struc­tion exe­cu­tion, or even engi­neer­ing mis­cal­cu­la­tions. One extreme exam­ple of this is a 4th floor bal­cony on a fair­ly new apart­ment build­ing in Berke­ley, CA, that col­lapsed and killed six peo­ple and injured sev­en oth­ers in 2015. Who is respon­si­ble if there is a prob­lem or if some­one is injured due to a con­struc­tion defect, and do they have prop­er insur­ance to cov­er this risk? The prop­er­ty own­er, the devel­op­er, the con­trac­tor, the archi­tect, the juris­dic­tion, or all the above may or may not be liable. So, ques­tions to ask as you are con­sid­er­ing Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log are: who is respon­si­ble for the risk, who is in the best posi­tion to man­age the risk and how is it being mit­i­gat­ed, and who ben­e­fits from the risks being tak­en? The juris­dic­tion or region is try­ing to solve a sig­nif­i­cant hous­ing prob­lem, and to do so, it will need to under­stand and help address the risk and lia­bil­i­ty con­cerns of the juris­dic­tion itself as well as those of the pro­fes­sion­als need­ed to con­tribute to the solu­tion. The City Attor­ney should obvi­ous­ly be a key mem­ber of this con­ver­sa­tion.

Note to Archi­tects: I don’t need to remind you that there is addi­tion­al expo­sure each time your design is built, and the idea of the cat­a­log is that they could be built mul­ti­ple times, for mul­ti­ple own­ers and by dif­fer­ent builders. Remem­ber to dis­cuss how best to con­sid­er and address this risk with your Pro­fes­sion­al Lia­bil­i­ty Insur­ance agent and your attor­ney.

3. Set Aside Budget and Schedule for Updating and Refining

Just like any zon­ing doc­u­ment, the Pre-Approved Hous­ing Type Cat­a­log should be con­sid­ered a liv­ing doc­u­ment that needs to be occa­sion­al­ly updat­ed and revised rather than con­sid­ered fixed and com­plete once you adopt it.  There­fore, you should set aside bud­get for this task and pre-deter­mine how often you are going to review and make revi­sions. You may want to assess the PAHTC every 12–18 months ear­ly on and set a longer time between review peri­ods after the sys­tem is in place and per­form­ing. As the mar­ket responds and begins to deliv­er hous­ing, you will like­ly want to adjust your cat­a­log based on which of the types are being used the most, which are not being used, and what vari­a­tions builders are being fre­quent­ly request­ed. This may mean that you need to add new types, adjust exist­ing plans to meet local builders’ needs, or cre­ate more archi­tec­tur­al vari­a­tions of types that are being used most often. It is also impor­tant to note that these plans will need to be reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed to stay in com­pli­ance with any changes to your zon­ing, build­ing code, and ener­gy require­ments.

Note: In low­er val­ue mar­kets where new con­struc­tion will like­ly strug­gle to be fea­si­ble, juris­dic­tions may need to pro­vide addi­tion­al incen­tives to encour­age the use of the Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types. For exam­ple, the City for South Bend now offers a tax abate­ment pro­gram for new home con­struc­tion city­wide and imple­ment­ed a pro­gram to help cov­er sew­er hook-ups for new infill hous­ing. They also encour­aged addi­tion­al sup­port and resources for small scale devel­op­ers through their Build South Bend ini­tia­tive: https://southbendin.gov/bsb/

4. Identify Who is Going to Administer the Pre-Approved Plans

The city staff that admin­is­ters zon­ing and does site plan review often have a spe­cif­ic, tech­ni­cal skillset that does not always trans­late to the abil­i­ty to over­see the design-review that is required for Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log. This means that you should care­ful­ly assess the capac­i­ty, capa­bil­i­ty, and inter­est of your cur­rent plan­ning or build­ing depart­ment to deter­mine if there is staff will­ing, avail­able, and capa­ble of lead­ing this design review task. If so, remem­ber to include time and bud­get to train them since imple­ment­ing a PAHTC will need to dif­fer some­what from the typ­i­cal enti­tle­ment process. You may also con­sid­er set­ting aside bud­get to hire an out­side con­sul­tant to per­form this task instead, since it is not uncom­mon for pri­vate sec­tor con­sul­tants to be hired as an exten­sion or sup­ple­ment to plan­ning staff, espe­cial­ly to per­form design review relat­ed tasks. In South Bend, the Build­ing Depart­ment did not typ­i­cal­ly review ele­va­tion draw­ings and the exist­ing inspec­tion time­line did not con­sid­er design-relat­ed items (such as win­dow or porch loca­tion) that were required of the pre-approved build­ings. The City had to fig­ure out who would be respon­si­ble and when was appro­pri­ate to review con­struc­tion projects for such com­pli­ance. Opti­cos has played this role of pro­vid­ing design review for sev­er­al cities includ­ing Rich­mond, CA, and the Her­cules, CA Cen­tral Her­cules Dis­trict Form-Based Code.

Note: Make sure to clear­ly define with­in your process how con­for­mi­ty to the pre-approved designs will be deter­mined. How much vari­a­tion is allowed before it is no longer com­pli­ant or pre-approved? Basic mass­ing com­pli­ance and ele­va­tion com­po­si­tion is pret­ty straight for­ward, but oth­er design details may require more thought­ful­ness than the typ­i­cal process affords. Is there a pre-deter­mined roof pitch; are cer­tain mate­ri­als or win­dows required (is wood sid­ing required, or is vinyl or fiber cement ok to use?); what hap­pens if they don’t pro­vide the intend­ed win­dow sur­rounds or porch details? It is cru­cial to under­stand and com­mu­ni­cate which stan­dards and ele­ments are inher­ent (e.g. required) in the “pre-approved” con­di­tion and which may have flex­i­bil­i­ty or a broad­er range of poten­tial appli­ca­tions.

5. Let Your Most Common Lot Sizes Inform Your Type Selection

The range of Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types that are most eas­i­ly applic­a­ble to your area is high­ly deter­mined by the most typ­i­cal lot sizes, and more impor­tant­ly the lot widths along the street edge. This rela­tion­ship is why the Miss­ing Mid­dle Hous­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion and research we have shared at missingmiddlehousing.com and in my book “Think­ing Big and Build­ing Small to Respond to the Hous­ing Cri­sis,” includes detailed lot width infor­ma­tion. It is impor­tant to con­sid­er how each hous­ing type fits on vary­ing neigh­bor­hood lots and include this step with­in your process to iden­ti­fy your most com­mon lot sizes. The lot width ulti­mate­ly deter­mines which range of types are applic­a­ble. It is also help­ful to include the range of appro­pri­ate lot sizes that each hous­ing type works on.

In South Bend, we did an in-depth analy­sis of lot sizes with con­sid­er­a­tion of the under­ly­ing zon­ing stan­dards (e.g. set­backs, lot cov­er­age) to test and deter­mine the most appro­pri­ate range of types to include in the cat­a­log. This image below from South Bend demon­strates the sys­tem of types that were used.  You are like­ly not going to be able to deter­mine a detailed solu­tion for every lot width and size that exists in your com­mu­ni­ty, but you can us GIS data to deter­mine the most com­mon lot sizes to ensure that the types you are cre­at­ing work on the major­i­ty of infill lots, espe­cial­ly for tar­get­ed neigh­bor­hoods if desired.

Note: At region­al, coun­ty, or large city scale you will have to gen­er­al­ize lot sizes but under­stand­ing the range of the most com­mon lot sizes is very impor­tant to inform both the hous­ing types and the nec­es­sary zon­ing refine­ments. For our Marin Coun­ty, CA and Puget Sound Region­al Miss­ing Mid­dle Zon­ing Toolk­its we used a process that is ground­ed in ana­lyz­ing and under­stand­ing the broad range of Place Types, doc­u­ment­ed in a Place Types Man­u­al. That process enabled us to “sam­ple” lot sizes with­in each Place Type to ensure that the rec­om­mend­ed solu­tions are ground­ed in the unique exist­ing form and con­di­tions of each type of place rather than being gener­ic or “one-size fits all.”

6. Select a Broad Range of Types to Achieve your Attainability Goals

To pro­vide a tru­ly impact­ful hous­ing effort, make sure that the hous­ing types that you include in your Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log do not stop at duplex or town­house. You may need to even go beyond the four­plex.

Why is this impor­tant? In many mar­kets there is a strong need for build­ings with more than four units in order to make a project fea­si­ble and to enable builders to deliv­er attain­ably-priced choic­es. It is impor­tant to run pro-for­ma analy­sis on a vari­ety of alter­na­tives to ensure that you are select­ing hous­ing types that are fea­si­ble to build and to under­stand if those types will also deliv­er attain­abil­i­ty in your mar­ket. See item #7 below to learn why a pro­for­ma analy­sis is impor­tant and how to inte­grate it into your process.

In addi­tion, to under­stand how these types fit into your mar­ket, it is key to also visu­al­ize the char­ac­ter and scale of the build­ings you are propos­ing to build sup­port with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. We high­ly rec­om­mend select­ing a range of exist­ing lot sizes and con­di­tions and visu­al­iz­ing the intend­ed design out­come, not gener­ic illus­trat­ed exam­ples. These visu­als should include ground lev­el views to under­stand how it would be per­ceived by a per­son walk­ing down the street, along with low aeri­als views to illus­trate how the build­ing relates to oth­er exist­ing build­ings next to and behind the pro­posed new build­ing.

Note: If you pick a broad range of hous­ing types, you may also want to deter­mine which of the types apply best with­in dif­fer­ent con­text types or with­in the avail­able zon­ing dis­tricts. For exam­ple, the small­er range of types includ­ing duplex­es, cot­tage courts, and up to four­plex­es may be applic­a­ble to many geo­graph­ic areas or more eas­i­ly fit with­in new neigh­bor­hood zon­ing dis­tricts. But the larg­er types such as a small mul­ti­plex (with 6–8 units) and court­yard apart­ments may only be applic­a­ble in oth­er areas that desire a high­er degree of change or increased inten­si­ty based on the adja­cen­cy to down­town, tran­sit, com­mer­cial or a major institution/university.

 7. Be Sure to Include Pro Forma Analysis to Inform Type Selection

An unfor­tu­nate out­come would be that you take the time, ener­gy, and bud­get to cre­ate a Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log and noth­ing gets built. To avoid this, you need to make sure the types you are includ­ing in your cat­a­log are eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble. In oth­er words, a builder must be able to buy a lot, get a per­mit, con­struct the build­ing, and then either sell it or rent it at a rate that cov­ers those costs with a rea­son­able prof­it and with­in a rea­son­able time frame. With that in mind, we high­ly rec­om­mend that you have an econ­o­mist or developer/builder on the team to run pro for­ma analy­sis that can test the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the dif­fer­ent types and more direct­ly under­stand what kind of return a builder could expect. You may be sur­prised how hard it is to make these projects make eco­nom­ic sense even in his­tor­i­cal­ly afford­able mar­kets. Ide­al­ly the pro for­ma analy­sis would be com­plet­ed by sub-area of a city, for both for rent and for sale approach­es, and for dif­fer­ent tar­get­ed returns or prof­its that con­sid­er the dif­fer­ent goals of var­i­ous devel­op­ment enti­ties.

The sec­ond ben­e­fit of run­ning this type of pro for­ma analy­sis is that you can test whether your approach is incen­tiviz­ing attain­ably-priced hous­ing options. It is pos­si­ble to offer more units on a lot than were his­tor­i­cal­ly allowed, but still not deliv­er attain­able units. In many mar­kets, we have found this out­come when four units are allowed on a pre­vi­ous­ly sin­gle-fam­i­ly lot. A builder may build four, large, attached or semi-detached lux­u­ry units (often town­homes) that each sell for even more than the orig­i­nal home. New con­struc­tion and sin­gle fam­i­ly detached sell and rent at a pre­mi­um. Allow­ing a few more units may not be enough to incen­tivize the deliv­ery of small­er, more attain­ably priced units. Con­struc­tion defect lia­bil­i­ty risk plays anoth­er major role in why builders are reluc­tant or unwill­ing to deliv­er what the mar­ket real­ly needs in small­er, stacked unit types.

Note: It is best to include the pro for­ma analy­sis while select­ing types as well as through­out the design phase of each hous­ing type. The results of the pro for­ma can decide which types best meet the City’s goals and can help adjust the build­ing designs accord­ing­ly, includ­ing unit size and types that offer bet­ter finan­cial out­comes. It is also worth­while to work with local trades and sup­pli­ers to do rough cost esti­mates for each fin­ished build­ing plan so that the City can help guide con­ver­sa­tions and expec­ta­tions for future users of the plans.

8. Don’t Forget Commercial Corridors and Larger Opportunity Sites

While most Miss­ing-Mid­dle-enabling efforts are cor­rect­ly focused on infill with­in res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods, due to the extreme nature of the hous­ing short­age and hous­ing costs in most mar­kets, it is also impor­tant for cities to select types that could be applied at scale on larg­er oppor­tu­ni­ty sites or in new growth areas. These sites may require a dif­fer­ent range of types or vari­a­tions on sim­i­lar types than those used for infill due to dif­fer­ent mar­ket con­di­tions in these loca­tions. For exam­ple, unit size and lay­outs (such as num­ber of bed­room and room sizes) as well as on-site park­ing assump­tions (nev­er more than 1 space per unit as Prairie Queen demon­strates) are all char­ac­ter­is­tics that will vary based on whether it is an infill con­text or new com­mu­ni­ty con­text. The avail­abil­i­ty of alley access and desired lot sizes are like­ly dif­fer­ent in urban vers­es sub­ur­ban con­text and may war­rant dif­fer­ent types. You may con­sid­er offer­ing a dif­fer­ent set of Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types specif­i­cal­ly for these large site appli­ca­tions and green­field appli­ca­tion.

Under­uti­lized or sub­ur­ban com­mer­cial cor­ri­dor sites, or grey­field sites, are also an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty for most cities to con­sid­er for the appli­ca­tion of the Pre-Approved Hous­ing Type Cat­a­log. It is impor­tant to note that often the zon­ing needs to be changed first to allow for pri­mar­i­ly res­i­den­tial uses on these sites. In both com­mer­cial or green­field appli­ca­tion, it is like­ly that engi­neer­ing and site plan­ning stan­dards will need to be amend­ed or over­rid­den to allow more com­pact devel­op­ment that sup­ports walk­a­ble Miss­ing Mid­dle Neigh­bor­hoods as is shown in the exam­ple below.

Note: To enable your Pre-Approved Hous­ing Type Cat­a­log on these larg­er sites by-right, you will like­ly need sup­ple­men­tal devel­op­ment stan­dards for large sites that includes new street design stan­dards, as well as access and block lay­out out stan­dards. Don’t for­get to flesh out any poten­tial con­flicts with emergency/fire access and trash col­lec­tion as part of cre­at­ing the pre-approved hous­ing types. Most cities’ require­ments are writ­ten for sub­ur­ban devel­op­ment project types and often require more infra­struc­ture or design stan­dards than is tru­ly need­ed, thus adding cost to a devel­op­er, often mak­ing a project infea­si­ble or too risky. Defin­ing the appli­ca­tion steps and sub­mit­tal require­ments will be impor­tant from the onset so that all depart­ments and stan­dards are fac­tored into the out­comes.

9. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Curate from Types Already Built

While cre­at­ing your PAHTC you should con­sid­er if you want to 1) select from types that are already designed and/or have already been built in dif­fer­ent mar­kets, 2) design cus­tom types for your cat­a­log, or 3) use a com­bi­na­tion of these new and pre-exist­ing types. There is some­thing to be said for select­ing types that are already proven and that have been built suc­cess­ful­ly in mar­kets that are sim­i­lar to yours. The pri­ma­ry chal­lenge for tak­ing this approach is that most house plan web­sites stop at duplex or town­house. A few have a four­plex, but it is hard to find any of these web­sites that offer a five-plex and above for many of the code, lia­bil­i­ty and financ­ing rea­sons we point out above. This lack of inven­to­ry is one rea­son why we launched a cat­a­log of types through this Miss­ing Mid­dle Neigh­bor­hood Kit™ site to fill the gap in avail­able home plans.

Note: An alter­na­tive approach in craft­ing a Pre-Approved Hous­ing Type Cat­a­log would be to hire some­one to curate the cat­a­log from mul­ti­ple design and archi­tec­ture firms. This option could add more vari­ety to the types and styles avail­able. In this sce­nario, it is crit­i­cal to have some­one at the helm to orga­nize and set the shared set of expec­ta­tions, stan­dards, and process for all involved.

10. Get the Zoning and Parking Requirements Right First

It is becom­ing clear to most cities that zon­ing is a sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er to offer­ing more hous­ing choic­es, and that major zon­ing reform is need­ed. With­out get­ting over­whelmed in a com­plete zon­ing code rewrite, where do you start to fix your zon­ing to allow the range of types that you are defin­ing for your Pre-Approved House Type Cat­a­log?  There are sev­er­al poten­tial strate­gies to con­sid­er. A tar­get­ed approach would pick 2–3 exist­ing res­i­den­tial zon­ing dis­tricts and make small tweaks/fixes to the exist­ing met­rics to enable the desired types. You can use the met­rics pro­vid­ed by years of Miss­ing Mid­dle Hous­ing research here for each type and your typ­i­cal lot sizes to test your exist­ing zon­ing met­rics. Anoth­er option would be to cre­ate an over­lay dis­trict that over­rides the base zon­ing and allows the pre-approved types by-right on lots that meet the min­i­mum para­me­ters. Sim­i­lar­ly, you could sim­ply over­ride den­si­ty, lots size min­i­mums, park­ing, or lot cov­er­age bar­ri­ers when an appli­cant choos­es to use the pre-approved build­ing types. Alter­na­tive­ly, you could cre­ate a new zon­ing dis­trict that allows these types. In this instance, it is impor­tant to remap zon­ing dis­trict bound­aries. Final­ly, if your city has sev­er­al larg­er sites that could ben­e­fit from pre-approved hous­ing, you could con­sid­er a Mod­el Plan­ning Unit Devel­op­ment for mixed hous­ing. We do not typ­i­cal­ly like rec­om­mend­ing PUDs because they are hard to admin­is­ter long term, how­ev­er, this option is a way to quick­ly enable your PAHTC to be applied on larg­er sites. For more zon­ing relat­ed infor­ma­tion, you can go to “Miss­ing Mid­dle Hous­ing: Think­ing Big and Build­ing Small to Respond to the Hous­ing Cri­sis” to see detailed rec­om­men­da­tions and help deter­mine the right strat­e­gy for your com­mu­ni­ty.

Note: Be sure to effec­tive­ly address park­ing require­ments. These types will not hap­pen unless park­ing is removed or reduced. If there are con­cerns sur­round­ing park­ing, it can be help­ful to estab­lish a re-assess­ment every 1 ½‑2 years. It is also help­ful to com­mu­ni­cate that reduc­ing the require­ment for park­ing can be crit­i­cal for the deliv­ery of more afford­able units. Even in green­field con­di­tions with no access to tran­sit, a project can suc­cess­ful­ly func­tion with one off street park­ing space per unit if there is addi­tion­al park­ing on street like in the exam­ple below which is the Prairie Queen Miss­ing Mid­dle Neigh­bor­hood in Papil­lion, NE.

Conclusion

The Pre-Approved Hous­ing Type Cat­a­log approach can sim­pli­fy the imple­men­ta­tion and deliv­ery of much need­ed hous­ing choic­es. It is a tool that can help imple­ment zon­ing and offer real incen­tives to get a vari­ety of homes at a vari­ety of price points built. How­ev­er, we know it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a sim­ple sys­tem to set up and admin­is­ter as out­lined in the con­sid­er­a­tions above. If it were easy, it would have like­ly been done pre­vi­ous­ly and many times over already. That being said—due to the dire need for hous­ing, the esca­lat­ing costs of con­struc­tion, and the extent of bar­ri­ers that are in place for the deliv­ery of housing—we encour­age cities, coun­ties, and even states to con­sid­er this Pre-Approved Hous­ing Types Cat­a­log approach. These tips can help pre­pare you for doing this work effec­tive­ly and thought­ful­ly to ensure the suc­cess of such a pro­gram.

Final­ly, you don’t have to do it all at once. If you are feel­ing reluc­tant to jump all in, one sug­ges­tion would be to start with one build­ing or pre-approved ADUs. If you have any ques­tions feel free to reach out to us at [email pro­tect­ed].

Dan Parolek is pres­i­dent and found­ing prin­ci­ple of Opti­cos Design, Inc. and author of Miss­ing Mid­dle Hous­ing: Think­ing Big and Build­ing Small to Respond to the Hous­ing Cri­sis.  Jen­nifer Set­tle is a senior asso­ciate at Opti­cos Design, Inc.