CITYBUILDER Brief: Missing Middle Works

Portland's builds quadplexes; Wake County hosts first-ever housing symposium. Come to Single Stair lunch May 1.

On the National Radar:

Portland Legalized Missing Middle, And It’s Getting Built

Source: Cascadia Partners

Even after legalizing missing middle housing, many jurisdictions see sluggish growth in ADUs, plexes, and townhomes. Oftentimes, governments allow middle housing on paper, but dozens of technical barriers remain, minimizing what can actually be built.

Portland is different: Portland, Oregon seems to have cracked the code, experiencing a major uptick in middle housing construction after it legalized up to four homes per lot citywide in 2020. From 2021-2022, more quadplexes were built than single-family homes.

How they did it: The key to Portland’s success is its reformed floor area ratio (FAR) policy. The more units a developer builds on a lot, the larger their FAR can be. In a typical R5 zone, a single-family home would have a maximum FAR of 0.5 to 1, but a quadplex on the same lot would have a maximum FAR of 0.9 to 1. This is a great example of a city taking proactive steps to make …