Educational Resources

Publication date: November 2023

Over the past number of years, we have seen more and more cities across North America change their zoning bylaws to allow for more housing. In Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, Minneapolis, and states like Oregon and California to name just a few, cities are legalizing “missing middle” housing like laneway houses, multiplexes, and row houses to add more density to single family neighbourhoods.

Yet simply legalizing this important kind of housing does not necessarily mean that it will be built.

With this in mind, Small Housing teamed up with Uytae Lee and the team at About Here to produce a video to help shed light on what is preventing more forms of gentle density housing from emerging, and what can be done to overcome these barriers and deliver the types of homes that people want, need, and deserve. Uytae delves into the obstacles hindering the development of Missing Middle housing, such as height and lot restrictions, additional rules for increased density, and financial viability challenges. His reporting also helps viewers gain insights into cities, including Auckland, where successful Missing Middle projects have been delivered.

Small Housing Co-Founder Jake Fry joined the Homebuilders Association Vancouver (HAVAN) and their excellent “Twice Measured Cut Once” podcast alongside The Honourable Housing Minister, Ravi Kahlon, and HAVAN CEO, Ron Rapp to discuss the impact of the Housing Supply Act, and what opportunities it presents for industry and small-scale developers, and crucially, what can be done to enhance its effectiveness.

You can watch the interview via the Youtube video above, or check out the podcast/audio version here, or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Jake Fry of Smallworks talks with Homebuilders Association of Vancouver (HAVAN) and their excellent Measure Twice, Cut Once show about the concept of attainable housing for the missing middle and building modern day communities. Land valuations, environmental impacts of today’s building materials and systems, and the importance of our end goals all add up to a riveting conversation with Jake recommending we keep an open mind to solutions and focus on sophisticated conversations, versus complicated ones.

You can watch the interview on the Youtube video above, or check out the audio version here, or wherever you get your podcasts from.

In this episode of ‘Ask The Experts’ from UrbanLogiq, Tamara White, the Associate Executive Director of Small Housing BC discusses the concept of gentle density homes, often spoken about in the context of “Missing Middle” housing types.

Published in 2023, the video explores:

• What do we mean when we say gentle density
• How it differs from traditional density
• What are the benefits it can bring to our communities
• How can data and technology help progress the scalability and affordability of such homes.

In July 2023, the Casita Coalition convened a dialogue featuring prominent figures in the field of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) from various regions, including Portland, OR, Vancouver BC, California, Seattle WA, and Montana.

These leaders, pioneers, and innovators shared their insights on the strategies they employed to successfully implement significant ADU and middle housing reforms. In addition, perspectives from advocates in Texas and New York about their ongoing initiatives were shared. Small Housing was represented by Co-Founder Jake Fry, who presented

Key insights:

What are some of the key steps Government can take to support the delivery of ADUs?

• Build a broad coalition across political and other divides.
• Talk to other ADU/middle housing reform advocates from cities/states that have been successful to speed learning and avoid pitfalls.
• Tailor the messaging based on local values–and always center the human stories.
• Raise awareness and gather supporters by offering tours and showing photos of appealing ADUs, ‘plexes, cottage courts and the happy people who live in them.
• Passing statewide laws is essential, but prepare for the next barriers after zoning restrictions are removed.

Infill Development in Edmonton: Strategies for Success brings leaders to better understand how public support is garnered for infill development in residential neighbourhoods and explore strategies that can be transferred to BC communities (including municipal policies and processes, partnerships, resources and engagement tactics/messages).

In this Gentle Density Network webinar from February 2023, learn how the City of Edmonton garnered public support for infill development in residential neighbourhoods, with insights from Nicholas Rheubottom, Executive Director at Infill Development Edmonton Association (IDEA), and Travis Fong, Co-Founder and President of YEGarden Suites.

Key insights:

There are many benefits to infill development:

More diverse housing stock: Infill helps to create diverse and vibrant neighbourhoods by providing options to meet everyone’s needs, whether it be new families, seniors, students, front-line workers, or more!

Financial Sustainability: Similar to above, by creating more diverse housing options, we can also cater for a greater diversity of financial needs and incomes.

Multigenerational Living: Enabling a variety of housing options in a neighborhood provides families with the choice to age in place, allows young individuals to reside nearer to the city center

Amongst the key barriers to infill include:

Infrastructure: At project inception, infrastructure upgrade costs are unknown and unpredictable.

Financial Feasibility: Medium-scale development from 4 units to 8 stories can be difficult to finance and has high risk brought on by contradictory planning policy, and uncertainty in approval processes and infrastructure upgrade costs

In this edition (March 2023) of Small Housing’s Gentle Density Network series, we seek to learn more about our policy proposals to expand the supply of affordable and attainable housing in British Columbia.

Featuring Jake Fry, Founder and former director of Small Housing BC; Akua Schatz, Director of Small Housing BC; and Tamara White, Associate Executive Director of Small Housing BC, the panel explores the policy levels available to release the potential of single-detached neighbourhoods and encourage the creation of housing that will meet the needs of today’s families and communities.

Key insights:

• Is the solution to more attainable housing located right in our backyards? By subdividing properties, strata titling has the potential to deliver creative, smaller-scale homes that can unlock doors to attainable housing and expand options for aspiring homeowners.
• Strata-title for accessory dwelling units could not only unlock more housing options for first-time buyers, it has can play a key role in supporting the financing of new supply.
• The panel explores how a Permanently Attainable Home Ownership (PAtH) model can support both attainable home ownership and secure affordable housing for middle-income earners. PAtH is an innovative homeownership framework that blends non-market and market units within a single houseplex configuration or infill layout. The approach utilizes existing assets (land from homeowners), planning tools (density bonus and strata-titling) and affordability enablers (covenant on title for non-market units) to incentivize the creation of attainable housing. You can read more about PAtH in our Small Housing Guidance Paper on the topic.