Why Our Missing Middle Stays Missing

Over the past three years, Kirkwood has notched numerous successes in adding to its housing stock. 38 new homes were approved on a one block long stretch of Madison, 24 new town-homes are coming to South Kirkwood along Big Bend, a massive parcel that once held a mansion will now hold three, a much needed infill lot came to fruition near the Harrison railroad overpass, the corner of Adams & Clay will soon see three new condos, and most notably, the 152-unit James received the council’s approval in the northern portion of downtown. 219 new homes means means nearly 1000 new people will be able to call Kirkwood home. The last three years have seen tremendous progress for the community’s development practices.

But of course none of this has come remotely close to making Kirkwood affordable. For each of these homes added, at least twice as many, small, formerly affordable homes are torn down for a replacement double their size. And you can tell people are starting to grow concerned with the feeling that Kirkwood is becoming a bubble. The following email that I received shortly after publishing my story on The Hutton is indicative of a lot what a lot of people are feeling:

Hi Parker, 

Thanks for responding to my email. I just wrote you about West Madison. I am not opposed to development and thank you for your work on increasing walkability in Kirkwood. What does concern me is that recent developments in Kirkwood decrease income diversity in Kirkwood. Urbanism should not just be for the rich. I am hoping you agree. 

My best to you and please stay well,

XXXXX XXXXXX

I think this email approaches the issue slightly differently than I do, but is probably more in-line with most people’s perception of what’s going on. Most people perceive that the problem with Kirkwood is not that we’re building too little housing but that we’re building the wrong type of housing. But the simple fact is that as long as we keep development in the hands of developers both will simultaneously be true: Not enough projects will be approved and the ones that do get approved will be luxurious in nature. The approval process is too long and tedious for developers to pursue anything but the few most profitable projects.

So the question as to how to change this dynamic becomes threefold: 1) What are our goals? 2) How much housing do we need to build to achieve those goals? and finally, 3) what does that housing look like?

The goals question touches most directly on the tension in the email. The way I see it, most people have one goal while reality probably only lends itself to a lesser one. The best articulation of this first, more ideal goal is to try to make housing affordable enough here that the residents of Kirkwood look like a cross-section of the region as a whole. The St.Louis metro area (as of the 2010 census) is 18% Black while just 7% of Kirkwood’s residents are. The median household income in the St. Louis region was $50,900, in Kirkwood it is $77,420. We’ll get updated numbers with the new census here soon but I would venture to guess that those differences have probably persisted. So we could build housing until we reached these numbers, until Kirkwood reflected the region in which it exists. But that’s a ton of housing and I’m not really sure most people would be comfortable with what it would take to get there.

A less appealing but likely more feasible goal for Kirkwood is to simply stockpile as many upper middle class families as it can. This goal doesn’t have the same high moral appeal as the previous one —Kirkwood would continue to be a bubble (although a much larger one)— but it is, I would argue, still morally important. Every family Kirkwood soaks up is one that doesn’t push other poorer families further out. If Kirkwood had enough homes to ensure everyone in Ballwin who wanted to move to Kirkwood could afford to do so, then perhaps the people currently living in Wentzville could afford to move to Ballwin and so on down the line. It is through this process that we begin to wind sprawl back in, slowly but surely. And as you add to this housing stock and begin to stockpile these families , you actually do get more diverse, at the margins. You get more solidly middle class families moving in, you see more diversity. Maybe not at the scale of the region as a whole, but certainly a marked improvement on the status quo.

So how many new homes do we need to achieve these goals? A study from Xiaodi Li in 2019 suggests that home prices decrease 1% for every 10% increase in housing stock. While Kirkwood is seeing growth in its housing stock, it almost certainly isn’t seeing 10% growth. 10% growth is a lot. The James, the largest housing project in years, will likely add somewhere between 1.5 and 2% to Kirkwood’s housing stock. I can assure you that we are not going to build five Jameses worth of apartments a year and even if we did, that would mean just a 1% decreasing in housing costs. Which brings us to our last question: What does this increase in housing look like and where does it go?

What We Can Change:

The answer, I believe is a softer density that is spread more evenly throughout Kirkwood. One that doesn’t need an approval process but rather is by-right. And that means that the answer is, by-and-large, building the fabled missing middle. As I see it, there are three main ways of achieving this soft density / missing middle by addressing head on the core reasons why it’s missing in the first place. Let’s start with the most restrained option and then work our way to the most affirmative one.

1. Another Stab at Granny Flats

Perhaps the easiest way to add to our stock of missing middle housing would be to actually legalize accessory dwelling units, or ADU’s. In terms of affordability, almost nothing comes close to granny flats. Granny flats are almost by definition affordable and spread any added density about as thinly as you can possibly spread it throughout Kirkwood. Additionally, granny flats are almost always rented rendering them even more accessible. Even better yet, in the vast majority of cases, granny flats are built and owned by existing residents rather than real estate developers which means that Kirkwood residents themselves get to enjoy some the direct benefits of added density too in the form of an extra income stream.

Kirkwood is currently in the final stages of a substantial revision to its zoning code that would ostensibly legalize ADUs. While ADU’s will be legal however, the stringent rules included in the code will all but assure almost none are built. There are three primary problems in the code that must be addressed if ADU’s are to play a role in bring more affordable housing options to Kirkwood: Owner occupation requirements, parking minimums, and onerous setback requirements.

Owner Occupied is Still a Hurdle

The requirement that the primary residence be owner occupied might sound reasonable, but in reality it severely limits the financing of ADU’s. Banks will give you a loan to build an ADU if they think that if they have to foreclose on your home, they will be able to derive an extra revenue stream from renting out the ADU. Because the bank itself will not be living in the home, the ADU would no longer meet the primary residence owner occupancy requirement and would no longer be eligible to be rented out. This means much less favorable terms for loans and as a result, and thus fewer people can afford to build them and thus fewer ADUs actually get built.

Cars Required

An additional stipulation of the code is that each accessory dwelling unit built requires a dedicated parking spot. This sucks for a couple reasons. First, the types of people who live in ADUs are much less likely to drive. Elderly parents who no longer drive, poorer people who live in ADUs because they’re much more affordable, adult children who want independence but require help due to medical conditions: all these people for all different reasons have no use for the parking spot that is required.

The main problem with requiring parking however, is simply that it means fewer ADUs will be built. Some homes will have space to build an ADU or for another parking spot parking, but not both, and so won’t build. For other’s the parking requirement may put the cost of building an ADU just out of reach. In any case, we should trust homeowners to know how much parking they need, not dictate it to them from on high.

Setbacks for Setbacks Sake

The final assurance that almost no ADUs are to be built, is the requirement that they abide by property line setbacks, even if constructed above existing garages that do not meet those requirements. This means that if you have a single story detached garage on an alley (meaning it probably sits exactly on your back property line), you would not be allowed to simply add a room above it but would rather have to demolish the whole thing, move it back twenty feet and build it there, presumably where your back yard currently sits. Obviously no one will do this. They’ll keep their garage exactly where it is and make sure their kids still have a backyard to play in thank-you-very-much.

The bottom line is that this legislation, as currently designed, is meant to make it look like Kirkwood is making progress on the issue while simultaneously ensuring nothing changes. Any politician or committee member who posits otherwise either didn’t read the code closely enough or is lying.

2. R-Missing Middle & Concentric Rings

The second option is to fundamentally rezone the area immediately surrounding downtown Kirkwood. Although the map has tons of different colors on it, the heart of Kirkwood (Downtown and the area immediately surrounding it) is essentially divided into two zones: areas that allow basically everything (multi-family housing, mixed use, shops and restaurants), and areas where all you’re allowed to build are single family homes. The divide between these two areas is stark. In the orange and red areas, a town is allowed to naturally develop, in the yellow and beige areas, suburban sprawl is strictly enforced.

Of course this is completely unnatural. If there were no zoning, housing would get denser and taller the closer you got to the amenities and transportation options of Downtown Kirkwood and progressively step down into first fourplexes and tri-plexes and then duplexes and finally single family homes the further you got from it. The single family homes themselves would get progressively less dense to: first they would appear on small lots close together (town-homes) and the lots would get larger and the homes more spread out the further you got away from that urban core. In other words the transition would be gradual.

Currently the transition is akin to falling off a cliff: on one lot you can build a 152 unit apartment building that accommodates 300 residents and the next lot over all you can build is a single home for a family of four. It’s an insane way to design a town. It is no wonder then that developers who own property in the red and orange area choose to try and build large apartment buildings rather than duplexes: you’ll make a hell of a lot more money. Throw in the fact that these sorts of apartments are only allowed on a very small percentage of Kirkwood, and you’re basically guaranteed to keep making money for a long time to come because you have, essentially no competition.

R-MM: A Step in the Right Direction

Kirkwood has recently taken a step towards rectifying this problem by creating a new missing middle zone: R-MM. To quote directly from the description, “This new district would allow row houses, duplexes, etc. of six units or less. Property owners would need to request a rezoning to this new district as no properties are proactively being rezoned with the code review project.” Because no part of Kirkwood will be proactively zoned R-MM, it will be left to the discretion of the property owner to apply to be rezoned. While technically any property owner could apply, the code specifies that this zone will be appropriate where it “provide[s] a transition from detached single-family home districts and more intense districts, multi-family projects, or commercial districts. This district may also be appropriate along major thoroughfares and at major intersections.”

This seems like a promising start, but unfortunately, much like the legalization of ADU’s, the new zone comes with several catches that will limit its impact. The most prevalent of these flaws is the fact that, because no parts of the city will be proactively-zoned R-MM, city council will essentially hold a veto on any project that would like to take advantage of the new zone. Individual property owners will have to jump through all the administrative hoops:

(A Planning & Zoning hearing, a Planning & Zoning subcommittee recommendation, a main committee recommendation, a City Council public hearing, two City Council readings and finally a City Council vote)

all before they’re allowed to rebuild their single family home into a duplex. This ensures 1) that City Council still gets to block projects that don’t suit their taste on a ad-hoc basis and 2) that even projects that finally do gain approval will have to navigate massive amounts of bureaucratic red tape before finally gaining approval. Most people who aren’t full time developers but who might want to build a duplex will simply decide it’s too big of a time commitment and headache to go through with it, especially if there’s a chance that at the end of the whole thing they get denied. The only real advantage of R-MM as it’s currently construed is that it ensures that any property that successfully makes it through the re-zoning process would be free and clear to be built out up to six-units in the future without needing council approval and that maybe somebody somewhere on the outskirts of Downtown Kirkwood will read about the new R-MM zone and that will give them the inspiration they need to actually give it a shot.

How to Make R-MM Work:

One potential solution would to try to recreate this natural transition by forming a new transitionary zone preemptively in an established area. This proposal would create an area surrounding the core of Downtown Kirkwood (the red and orange parts would stay as they are) where, say, up to four-plexes are allowed by-right (meaning the city would not have to approve each individual project, you would just be allowed to do so after obtaining the necessary permits). If you made the boundaries of this zone roughly Essex/Adams to the North, Holmes to the East, Rose Hill to the South and Geyer to the West, you could really start to direct the added density Kirkwood needs in a very targeted way.

There are multiple advantages to concentrating denser infill in this region of Kirkwood. First, this area is comprised of the single-family homes closest to Downtown Kirkwood, meaning they’re the most walkable. Walkable places are the best to add density to because people in more walkable places drive less, so you get more bang (density/diversity/affordability) for your buck (congestion). A duplex replacing a single family home on W. Argonne means one more family with the option of walking to PJ’s for dinner, to Kirkwood Park for exercise, or to St. Peter’s for mass and a family with those options available probably drives 15% less than a family located out by Greenbrier.

Even if vehicular traffic does increase a little though, as it almost assuredly will, that traffic will be spread out. Because this area is governed by a fairly constant street grid (i.e. divided into blocks), the traffic will be well dispersed across many streets rather than funneling out of cul-de-sacs and onto, say, Big Bend. There’s an accident on Harrison? Easy, just re-route a block over to Van Buren.

The final upside to this proposal is that it would really link the couple of other spots of urbanism Kirkwood has to its most concentrated urbanism in Downtown Kirkwood. These small urban patches (think Kirkwood Deli/Dave’s Barber Shop at Essex & Geyer or the stretch of businesses along Woodbine) currently suffer from the fact that they are simply not surrounded by enough people within walking distance from them to out-compete larger operations from a pure convenience standpoint. Doubling the number of people living nearby changes what these businesses can be and who they cater to. These businesses in turn, ensure that even a duplex or tri-plex at the periphery of this intermediate zone are fairly walkable as . Linking up these patches makes them healthier and perhaps eventually encourages the patches to grow. Over the long term, it is not hard to see how the footprint of what is considered Downtown Kirkwood itself could expand to include them as well.

So in summary, Kirkwood could encourage missing middle by making a zone around Downtown that explicitly allows it. Concentric rings: Add people where it most makes sense. Spell it out for developers: here’s where you build apartments, here’s where you build single family, and right here, in the middle, is where you build what comes in between.

3. Legalize Duplexes Everywhere

As I just mentioned, in most of Kirkwood any use other than single family detached homes is banned. So the final option is to change this, to allow people who would prefer to build duplexes to do so.

By my count there are eighteen examples of duplexes in Kirkwood. Ten of these are in Meachem Park, leaving just eight that were actually approved by Kirkwood itself (MeachemPark was annexed in 1991, well after the duplexes found there were built). Just two duplexes have been constructed since 1960 and zero have been built in the last decade.

Duplexes sometimes get a bad name. Sharing a wall with someone means maybe occasionally you hear them or occasionally your yard’s landscaping preferences clash. There are positive tradeoffs too though: One fewer wall has to be built meaning lower construction costs. One fewer wall is exposed to the elements meaning the home is more efficiently heated and cooled. Both of these save money and make living in Kirkwood more affordable.

I also understand that, for most people, aesthetics are the main question to be addressed: Can you make duplexes “fit in” in Kirkwood. I think the answer is probably yes. Because duplexes in 2021 can be really nice! The above duplexes are located in the Berkley neighborhood of Denver that I lived in last year. While this particular architectural style obviously would’t fit in in Kirkwood, I think they do a pretty good job of demonstrating what I have in mind. If instead of flat-roofed modern homes pictured, we had pitched-roofed colonial and victorian duplexes of the same quality, there’s no real reason to think that Kirkwood residents wouldn’t come around

The advantages of this option are numerous. It’s easy to implement (if you want to build a duplex, you’re allowed to), it’s impact is inherently disperse (every neighborhood in Kirkwood would operate under the same rules), and much like the ADU’s residents of Kirkwood would see many of the financial benefits as duplex owners could rent out their other unit for an added revenue stream). But we’d have to make sure we do it right legalizing duplexes while requiring more parking or without altering setback requirements could run into many of the same problems as the ADU laws we touched on earlier. At the end of the day, we’d actually have to want these to get built, not just say that we do.

Anyways…

Anyways, the missing middle is still missing because we haven’t done anything to encourage it and under our current zoning it makes no sense to do so. Kirkwood grows less affordable and less diverse every day as a result. We can talk about how we want more of it or lament the fact that a new apartment building ‘isn’t the kind of missing middle we were talking,’ about all we want, but the simple fact is that if we do actually want it, we have to do something about it. I hope we will.

Thanks for reading