Could the Missing Middle Solve the Housing Crisis? | The Walrus
Could the Missing Middle Solve the Housing Crisis? | The Walrus
Victoria, BC, is making an ambitious move to densify neighbourhoods. It could be a model for the rest of the country
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Why does the conversation always centre on us pee-ons at the bottom or the supposed 'middle' ... the ones at the steering wheel are the ones with money, power and control. They are in the drivers seat as they are taking us all over the edge and we are all arguing about how to make ourselves comfortable inside this moving vehicle.
Feels like the classic neoliberal plan of one step forward, two steps back.
Make a plan that sounds like it can solve the problem, but then add a bunch of 'well intentioned' rules (space requirements around a home, requirements for dedicated parking etc) and the new opportunities are entirely lost.
This article talks about converting a single detached to a multiplex would require 4x the empty space between property lines that a single detached would. This prevents conversions, and forces developers to acquire expensive land, bulldoze the existing home to build another structure that will have to be smaller than the original home, to fit more people on the same land space in smaller dwellings. It's impossible to drive living costs down when replacing single detached with the missing middle costs 5x to get 2-3x the units.
It makes sense to have rules and regulations with building, but government seems to be more than happy to make a big paradigm shift, while doing everything they can to stimy their own attempt at progress.
Tax the wealthy and use the taxes to build stronger government and support people at the bottom.
Otherwise we're just handing more power to the wealthy, they get more power and they find it easier to squeeze more money out of the government and all of us.
The system is built on money and whoever has it gets the power ..... as it is right now, us plebs at the bottom have no money and therefore no control.
It's a feature, not a bug
The missing middle is used to refer to the middle size of apartment building.