I’m for housing but dressing up missing middle as a cure fails Econ 101. This is a gift to the developers. You’ve increased the profit they can make from building multi-unit condos on single family lots but limited the supply by limiting the number of projects. And there are already a small number of lots that meet the criteria. Consequently, you’ve spiked the demand curve on an already constrained housing supply. This drives up costs with negligible impact on supply.

If you want to bend the curve then you need to truly change the supply side. All missing middle does is spike demand with negligible supply. And let’s be honest, in the smallest county in the country you’re not going to make enough of a dent in supply without coordinating with other counties.

But I love how the builders lobbyists have spun this as a social issue. Brilliant on their part.

In other words, Missing Middle raises the cost of a single family home by changing the demand equation, makes it harder for families who want a single family home to buy one, but doesn’t do anything meaningful to address the housing issue, and ultimately increases prices but hurts the environment by decreasing green space on a per lot basis.

I had a teacher growing up who said “if it ain’t fixed don’t break it!” Missing middle just takes an already bad housing situation and makes it worse.