Berkeley Councilmember Lori Droste wants the City to allow more “missing middle” housing to relieve Berkeley’s housing crunch.
Hot on the heels of major new housing developments approved downtown, and significant public investments committed toward affordable housing, members of the Berkeley City Council aim to further tackle the housing crisis by potentially permitting triplexes in single-family neighborhoods. The City Council will vote on a potential study this Tuesday, February 26 at Berkeley City Hall.
Councilmember Lori Droste, the lead proponent of the initiative, has become a prominent local figure through her work on affordable housing and planning reform in Berkeley. In 2015, she introduced the Green Affordable Housing package, which works to remove the parking requirement for developments that included affordable housing, thus incentivizing residents to live closer to transit and bringing much-needed affordable housing to Berkeley more quickly.
Droste’s latest legislation, the Missing Middle Initiative, would commission a citywide study on “missing middle” housing: essentially, surveying where medium-density housing could be permitted in contrast to where it is currently prohibited. City staff would ultimately produce an augmented report on potential zoning code revisions that would allow for more housing density and smaller units on existing residential lots. The “missing middle” refers to the City’s lack of housing diversity: while it has ample single-family homes and some new high-rises, still it offers few options in between. The Missing Middle Initiative could lead to more zoning for duplex, triplexes and fourplexes in areas of Berkeley that only allow single-family homes. (Editor’s note: all “R1” zones in California now permit an additional “accessory” dwelling unit, or ADU, per state law. There are still ongoing efforts in the legislature to streamline ADUs.)
“It’s a request to inform future decisions that we may or may not make,” Droste said. “We are looking at where can we add more homes in an area where land is very scarce. This division of existing housing into multiple units would directly address the housing shortage and longstanding vestiges of racial and economic separation. We want planning to look at legalizing smaller, multifamily housing, which benefits students, low income residents and residents of color.”
While Councilmember Droste intends for the Missing Middle Initiative to become law before the summer, the current vote just requests additional research on Berkeley’s density standards from the Planning Department and a report detailing where these new housing types could go under a revised zoning code.
Berkeley Housing Advisory Commissioner Darrell Owens, appointed by Droste, believes that if the Missing Middle Initiative one day allows homeowners to build extra units on their properties, it could potentially to double Berkeley’s housing capacity.
“Oftentimes we hear complaints about high-rises,” Owens said. “That's because the city has historically put its housing allocations in one specific spot, saying that no one is allowed to build housing here or there, but in this one part of town we’ll let you build all the housing you need. That’s not an efficient way of building housing. An efficient way of doing it is by saying that every lot in Berkeley should be eligible to put an extra home on the property.”
UC Berkeley Professor of City and Regional Planning Karen Chapple, who served as Councilmember Droste’s appointee on the Planning Commission from 2015-2017, is in full support of the Initiative.
“This is so important in so many ways,” Chapple said. “The way [Droste] has written this initiative is dead on. She attacks downzoning and racial covenants, and addresses Berkeley’s horrendous racial history of downzoning. It’s a great way for Berkeley to face its legacy, and it's going to make the dialogue much easier.”
In the 1970s, Berkeley downzoned its density limits in response to low-rent “ticky-tacky” apartments being built in single-family neighborhoods—though apartments even in those buildings rent for exorbitant prices today. In the early 1900s, Berkeley established its first single-family zones in order to deter Chinese immigrants, African-Americans, and low-income tenants from moving there. This zoning ensured that big homes would only accommodate one family at a time, and through their scarcity appreciate in value—making them less accessible to low income residents and residents of color.
Neighborhoods targeted by redlining in the East Bay, where discriminatory mortgage practices enforced de facto racial segregation, still correlate with existing single-family zones in Berkeley, as shown in Droste’s staff referral.
“We have more demand than supply, and if you're a middle class family, it’s really hard to find a place to live in the East Bay,” Chapple said. “We’ve been building a lot of luxury apartments, but what we really need is a diversity of housing types.”
“Long-time Berkeleyans are worried that new development is going to destroy the character of the neighborhood, which they are historically very proud of,” Chapple said. “It's my hope that we can rethink neighborhood character to allow new developments to come in a non-intrusive way. It’s happening but it’s slow.”
Following an affirmative Council vote, Berkeley’s City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley, will work with the Planning Department to determine how this may be implemented, and to reconfigure the zoning code to allow for the construction of duplexes, triplexes, courtyard apartments, townhomes, and so on. The Planning Department would then issue a report outlining this new zoning. Following such a report, Councilmember Droste will then revise the original legislation and craft it into actionable law before a final City Council vote. The Missing Middle initiative is currently has three co-sponsors on the Council, and would only need a fifth vote to pass.
“The hope is that we are going to get this report back and we are going to have a lot of information to inform our decisions moving forward,” Droste said. “This is just to start the conversation.”
