The Housing Bill: 10 Things to Know
An excellent housing package becomes law
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, passed by overwhelming bipartisan margins, unceremoniously1 became law last Friday. This is celebration-worthy on multiple levels.
First, it’s nice that our legislators put so much effort into solving a problem that is pressing but not the least bit politically charged.
Second, they tried to solve it the right way: with several small but meaningful changes that should add up to a significant increase in housing construction rather than a one-simple-trick, silver-bullet approach.
Third, there’s a ton of good stuff in here, and even the bad stuff (like limits on institutional investor home purchasing) was mostly defanged by the time it passed.
Here’s ten things to know, plus a bonus rant about front yards:
An Excellent Housing Supply Framework
Within the next 3 years, HUD has to issue guidelines and best practices for housing policy that include:
Reducing or eliminating parking minimums
Increasing max floor area and building height ratios
Reducing minimum lot sizes and set-back requirements (a rant on this below)
Eliminating restrictions against accessory dwelling units
Increasing by-right uses like duplex, triplex, and quadplex buildings
Streamlining review processes
Reducing barriers to modular housing
Standardizing, reducing, or eliminating impact fees
Mechanisms for states to encourage local adoption of State zoning frameworks
Streamlining environmental review
Imposing maximum review timelines
This guidance will make it easier for states to adopt these recommendations—hey, we’re just doing what HUD said was right—but at the end of the day, they’re just recommendations. In fact, the ROAD Act specifically bans HUD from taking adverse action against any state or locality that declines to adopt a guideline.
Single Stair!
Point-access block buildings—commonly called “single stair”—are apartments organized around a single vertical core (one stairway or elevator). These are not allowed in most parts of the U.S. because building codes tend to require two exit stairways, ostensibly for safety reasons.
The ROAD Act requires HUD to issue guidelines for “model code language, best practices, and technical guidance that could be used to facilitate the permitting of point-access block residential buildings” within the next 18 months.
I love single-stair buildings. They have more interesting designs, more varied floor plans, more natural light, and better cross ventilation than double-loaded buildings, and they allow for more units on smaller lots.
Point-access buildings are widespread in places like Japan and Scandinavia, and it’s no coincidence that those places are known for good looking apartments.
Getting single-stair into the building code sometimes requires a battle against local fire departments, despite the fact that single-stair buildings have strong safety records, and having federal guidance should help with those efforts.
Optimistically, this will add momentum to the already-rolling single-stair movement. Cities like Baltimore and Austin have recently adopted single-stair, joining long-standing single-stair cities like Seattle and Honolulu.
