The City of Victoria, BC did a good thing last week: It passed its “Missing Middle Housing Initiative“, which means that up 6 dwelling units (their language not mine) will soon be permissible on every single-family lot in the city, and up to 12 dwelling… Read More
All posts tagged “single-family zoning”
Sorry, you can’t build that kind of housing here — downtown or the distant suburbs
Between 2016 and 2021, and according to this recent report from Statistics Canada, the population of the Toronto CMA (Census Metropolitan Area) grew by over 274k people: The population of the MontrĂ©al CMA grew by nearly 188k people: And the population of the Vancouver CMA… Read More
We’re running out of land — or are we?
The headline, here, is that “the US is running short of land for housing.” But if you read the article, you’ll see that the headline should probably read, “the US has land-use restrictions in place that make it unnecessarily difficult to build enough new housing.”… Read More
Are you sure you want Parisian-style urbanism?
This might seem like a fairly benign tweet by Clive Doucet, a former Ottawa City Councillor. I mean, Paris is wonderful. It is livable, walkable, and my favorite city in the world after Toronto. But as I have argued many times before on the blog,… Read More
San Francisco is kind of on the verge of abolishing single-family zoning
The headline sounds pretty promising: San Francisco is on the verge of abolishing single-family zoning, and will soon allow 4-plexes across the city and up to 6 units on corner lots. It is also clear recognition that, “hey, we have a housing problem and should… Read More
Rich people and single-family zoning
This is a chart from Abundant Housing LA (a YIMBY group), via City Observatory, showing the relationship between median household income and single-family zoning across the 88 cities that make up L.A. County. On average, about 80% of the land in the County is zoned… Read More