What is middle housing, and what will happen in this project?
Middle Housing is generally defined as duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, fiveplexes, sixplexes, townhouses, courtyard apartments, cottage housing, and stacked flats. These are housing types that fall between detached single-family homes and high-density multi-family uses in density, but are considered consistent with a single-family scale and neighborhood character.
Middle Housing is often referred to as “missing middle” because many communities do not have an abundance of these housing types and in fact have made it impossible or very difficult to build these housing types in most areas through their zoning regulations.
Middle housing is middle class, workforce housing, meaning it is generally not affordable to people earning very low incomes, but is more affordable than a typical detached home on a single lot.
The goals of this project are to study the presence of existing middle housing in Snohomish, analyze policies and development regulations that make constructing these housing types difficult, and to provide a range of suggested policy changes to help incentivize the construction of middle housing in appropriate locations. There are no regulatory changes required of this project.
