Promoting building and development of “missing middle” types of housing is a front-burner issue for land planners in many American cities. It should be in Santa Fe, too.
Especially because “missing middle” isn’t just a housing type in Santa Fe, it is a demographic. It is the demographic of middle-class professionals who cannot afford an entry-level home, if one even existed.
The nationally accepted definition of missing-middle housing types are those between single-family homes on one lot and multifamily apartments. That includes small casitas in backyards, but also duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, row houses and townhomes.
Those types are not absent in Santa Fe; indeed, they are all over historic districts, but they are not encouraged and often prohibited by zoning or private covenants. If Santa Fe has any hope of solving its housing-shortage crisis, then encouraging production of the missing middle must be a key tool in the box.
“Missing middle” in Santa Fe, meaning demographic missing middle, has roots in good intentions. Santa Fe recognized 25 years ago that keeping working-class “locals” in Santa Fe meant subsidizing the cost of homes and reserving a certain percentage in new developments for those families.
Known as “inclusionary zoning,” it required developments to sell some homes below market prices. The first iteration in 1997, called the Housing Opportunity Program, was complicated and had no enforcement teeth and few resale restrictions.
The subsequent program in 2005, called Santa Fe Homes Program, stiffened rules and eliminated resale speculation with city-owned liens on properties. It was the most draconian program in the country with a 30% affordability requirement, which was reduced in 2011 to the current 20%.
The city does partially subsidize developers producing affordable homes by waiving impact and permitting fees and making water and sewer hookups cheaper, but the developer still pays for all public infrastructure of streets, sidewalks, utilities and sometimes parks and off-site improvements. Remaining subsidies are from homeowners buying market-rate homes.
So, when the top tier of guaranteed and resale-restricted affordable homes in a subdivision tops out around $250,000 but identical market-rate homes sell for $500,000 to cover the construction costs, affordable subsidies, public infrastructure and slim profits, the priced-out missing middle is working professionals with incomes far above national or area median income.
That’s who moves to Rio Rancho. They’ve been doing it for more than 20 years.
Bringing back and keeping those professionals in Santa Fe — the demographic missing middle — means building the missing-middle housing types for them to occupy. But that means changing the nature of existing neighborhoods considered sacred under the banner of preserving neighborhood character. Many states and municipalities, both progressive and conservative, have shown courage to do it.
Santa Fe’s nibbled at the edges with revised accessory dwelling unit ordinances, but it’s a long way from Minneapolis or Oregon, which outlawed one-house-per-lot zoning to promote duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes on any lot big enough to support them.
In Santa Fe, with vast swaths of R-1 zoning with one house per acre, that opens a lot of potential infill.
Trailblazing communities are finding it doesn’t stop with simply loosening politically charged zoning. Changing building and development codes must follow with flexible house size, setbacks, open space and parking rules. Metering for water, gas and electric is complicated. Can a unit in a fourplex be sold “fee-simple,” meaning individual ownership without restrictions, or should they be condominiums with common property and maintenance agreements?
With an update of the land development code underway, and aspirations for a new general plan with its accompanying future land-use map, it’s time to ask questions and confront the inevitable.
