MISSING MIDDLE HOUSING FOR RALEIGH
Thomas Barrie FAIA | Professor of Architecture
Students
CeCe Boudwin
Katherine Brooks
Danytza Cisneros
Jack Dalton
Lakkshita Indrabanu
Emily Lewis
Paige Kanipe
Chelsea Leland
Jennifer MacDonald
Shruthi Manivannan
Lindsay Medbury
Purvij Munshi
Alankrit Ganesh Rajagopalan
Roozbeh Salehi
Veronica Wyatt
Research
Assistant
Marina Mustakova
NC State University College of Design Campus Box 7701, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695-7701
©2024 An NC State University College of Design Publication
Thomas Barrie FAIA
Missing Middle Housing for Raleigh
Thomas Barrie reserves all rights to this material in conjunction with the College of Design at NC State University
Contents
Introduction
Missing Middle Housing Types
Demonstration Projects
• Duplexes, triplexes, quads, and townhouses
• Multiplexes
• Cottage Courts
• Live work and shop houses
• Accessory Dwelling Units
Conclusion
Appendix
• Research
Introduction
Raleigh has recently updated the zoning code to allow for more missing middle housing. The “missing” in missing middle housing refers to the fact that zoning laws typically prohibit this type of housing. It includes historic housing types that provide choices between single family houses and large apartment buildings including duplexes, triplexes, quads, townhouses, multiplexes, cottage courts, live work and shop houses, and accessory dwelling units. Missing-middle housing responds to the need for diverse housing preferences, ages, household sizes, and income levels. It can also create gentle density where it is most needed: in inner city and first ring suburbs.
Missing middle housing does not eliminate single family houses but simply provides a broader range of housing types in residential districts. It can provide affordable housing options to address a worsening national housing crisis. It also supports social stability and diversity and can increase the economic diversity of a community by allowing people to age in place and trade down without moving out. Duplexes, triplexes, quads, and cottage courts provide ownership and equity options – live-work and shop-house units can support home employment. Missing middle housing is also essential to a sustainable future. It is well established that buildings and transportation are the most significant contributors of CO2 emissions associated with global climate change. Housing density can mitigate sprawl and support public transportation which, along with reducing household transportation costs, can lessen an area’s carbon footprint. Smaller units and ones with shared party walls use less materials and require less energy to heat and cool, reducing utility costs and carbon emissions.
Missing middle housing is part of a national movement of zoning reform to create “complete communities” that are equitable, affordable, sustainable, and walkable. Proponents argue that reforms are needed to create diverse housing and transit-supportive, sustainable development. However, opponents cite fears of a loss of character and control of their communities. The fiercest battles are often in neighborhoods of single-family houses on large lots close to city centers, services, and public transportation. This has routinely been the case in Raleigh.
The studio focused on the research and design of missing middle housing for inner city neighborhoods in Raleigh. Inner city residential neighborhoods are often losing character, the result of the market economics of housing development. As land prices rise the only way developers can secure a return on investment is to build either a large house (if that is the only option permitted by zoning), or multiple missing middle housing. Because missing middle units are smaller they can be the most effective way to ensure development compatible with neighborhood character.
Team work included research on missing middle housing histories, policies, and precedents, and sustainable, equitable development and community capacity building. Students worked individually to comprehensively design prototypical housing on a range of sites. The studio as a whole assembled a diverse knowledge base of housing choices that best serve 21st century Raleigh. A studio research assistant provided additional research and documentation. The studio discovered that missing middle housing can capitalize on difficult sites. The students identified vacant inner-city sites, close to services, schools, and planned or existing public transit and services. The studio collaboratively mapped all potential sites to identify a diversity of sites appropriate to a full range of missing middle housing. The final choices, all of which were in zoning types included in the enabling ordinances, provided specific planning and design challenges. The demonstration projects that follow illustrate the power of design to solve complex planning and design issues and achieve diverse, equitable housing and communities that support transit and local businesses. The results also demonstrated that missing middle housing can also capitalize on sites in critical locations that are missing housing choices necessary for a rapidly growing 21st century city.
Missing Middle Housing Types
Duplexes, triplexes, quads, and townhouses provide options for smaller units with limited maintenance and landscaping tasks that are attractive to the young and old. They can also create gentle density that supports public transportation and local businesses. They can be designed to be compatible with residential communities through form-based codes. They can also provide equity options. For example, a duplex can be owned by one family who rent the second unit to supplement their mortgage or household costs.
Multiplexes are housing with up to twenty units that can maximize sites too big for other missing middle housing but too small for the ubiquitous multifamily housing wrapped around parking. They can also be the most appropriate housing for small or challenging sites that are in higher density and mixed-use districts.
Cottage Courts are multiple units clustered around common green spaces, typically with parking located at the perimeter. They are an increasingly popular means to achieve gentle density, which can support neighborhood retail and services and public transportation. They are also attractive to those who want to live in car free environments. Cottage courts can make use of innovative equity and ownership options to reduce housing costs, such as Community Land Trusts (CLT). A CLT owns the land of the cottage court and residents either buy or rent the units. Because CLTs are always the result of community organizing they often retain their advocacy roles and communitarian framework. They can reduce the price of housing because one only buys or rents the unit itself, not the land. (There is typically a minimal maintenance fee.) Housing affordability of CLTs is maintained through deed restrictions that limit sale prices while owners of a house in a CLT can still build equity.
Live work and shop houses are another ownership and use model that has enjoyed a long history in US cities and towns. A traditional shop house has a street-level retail space with a living unit above. Contemporary uses include home businesses such as beauty salons, accountants, or small retail, and also creative spaces for artists and craftsmen. The building is typically owned by one family, who either uses or rents the shop space. They can reintroduce neighborhood businesses that were once prevalent and create income for homeowners.
Accessory Dwelling Units (also known as backyard cottages, granny flats, etc.) are a historical housing type that used to be common but beginning in the mid-20th c. increasingly were zoned out and thus in many cities are illegal. They are second, smaller living units typically placed in the backyards of single-family homes. Like other forms of missing middle housing, ADU’s can be a low-impact means of creating housing diversity, particularly in inner city and first ring suburbs. ADU’s can also provide rental income to homeowners to subsidize their household costs making housing they might have been priced out of affordable. ADU’s can also provide stable adaptable housing as family needs and make-up change over time, including: rental income when starting out, housing for a parent or boomerang kid, or a unit for a caregiver allowing the homeowner to age in place. The homeowner can also live in the ADU as empty nesters, and rent the primary unit, allowing them to trade down without moving out.
Duplexes
Jack Dalton
The site is adjacent to the Tarboro Recreation Center and the future New Bern Avenue Bus Rapid Transit Line. The project optimizes the small site by a compact plan of duplexes and Accessory Dwelling Units. Even though there is a densiity of housing the project also includes community spaces and a common building. The latter includes a bike shelter for BRT riders.
Site context and plans
Aerial View
Accessory Dwelling Unit
Duplexes + Triplexes
Lakkshita Indrabanu
This project transforms a difficult site in the Mordecai neighborhood into a community of duplexes, triplexes and live-work units, and a welcoming courtyard on the street. The site plan retains suffcient open space to qualify as Conservation Development, thus maximizing the number of units allowed on the site.
Duplexes + Accessory Dwelling Units
Purvij Munshi
In the Mordecai neighborhood most undeveloped proporties are small or challenging sites. More often, older, smaller houses are being replaced by larger ones, This project joins two small sites and demonstrates how missing middle housing can effectively add gentle density in residential areas. The outcome is 6 units in an R-10 zone. An array of sustainability strategies increase their affordability.
Interior of ADU
Townhouses
Roozbeh Salehi
This 1.1 acre flag lot on Oberlin Road provides a potent opportunity for infil housing in a rapidly growing area of Raleigh. Clusters of townhouses create an urban street and green courtyards. Parking is limited and located at the periphery. The compact units open to the exterior and include rooftop patios.
Townhouses + Attached Accessory Dwelling Units
Danytza Cisneros
This site on Church Street behind Ligon MIddle School is in an area that traditionally had a diversity of housing types. The design transforms conventional townhouse planning to create expressive forms and residential scale. The spatially-complex units include townhouses and attached accessory dwelling units and multiple rooftop terraces.
Site Context
Adaptable Duplex + Accessory Dwelling Unit
Veronica Wyatt
This flag lot on Hargett Street adjacent to New Bern Avenue provides adaptable housing close to public transit. The panelized construction system is designed to be incrementally built and adaptable to respond to changing family needs. The assembly systems would be premanufactured reducing construction time, costs and waste.
Panelized System
Townhouses
Jennifer MacDonald
This 1.17 acre site on East Lane Street at Idlewild Avenue is in the New Bern - Idlewild NCOD district. It deploys conventional townhouse organization and site planning while providing generous, light-filled interior spaces with rooftop terraces. The compact townhouses line the streets of the corner lot to crerate ample community spaces. Parking is on the interior and city streets.
Multiplex
LIndsay Medbury
The steeply-sloped site at 416 East Cabarrus Street is zoned RX3-UL, commercial mixed use. This project demonstrates the suitability of multiplexs for challenging sites in higher density areas. It also illustrates how neighborhood retail, social spaces, and sustainability strategies can be effectively incorporated into this type of housing.
Site and Context
Multiplex
Paige Kanipe
The site at 115 Wakefield Avenue is zoned RX-3 and located between large scale apartment buildings and a single family neighborhood. Four clusters of housing are arranged around courtyards. The project demonstrates the advantages of multiplex housing including a variety of unit types, gentle density, community and retails spaces, and a range of sustainability strategies.
Site and Context
Cottage Court
CeCe Boudwin
The .96 acre site at 606 Rock Quarry Road is zoned R-10 and is located on a frequent transit corridor adjacent to a small-scale residential neighborhood. 30 duplex and tripex units ring a central courtyard. The cottage court housing type was chosen for its capacity to provide social spaces, including a community house, and a range of housing types. A community land trust is also propsed as a means to achieve affordability while providing gracious, generous living.
Cottage Court
Chelsea Leland
Two deep lots that together comprise 1.49 acres is adjacent to the Little Rock greenway and Chavis Park and on a frequent transit corridor. The project demonstrates how cottage courts can effectively utilize difficult sites to achieve transit-supportive density and create local identity and sense of place. Twenty stacked or side-by-side duplex units with porches line a central street allowing the rest of the site to be preserved as greenspace.
Transverse section showing stacked and side-by-side units.
Longitudinal section showing connection to the greenway.
Live Work + Shop Houses
Alankrit Ganesh Rajagopalan
This project illustrates how particular sites can offer unique opportunities for missing middle housing. The .5 acre site is zoned R-10 and located at 310 East South Street adjacent to Shaw University. Four two bedroom units are located above a variety of retail and work spaces that form a series of community courtyards. The mix of uses and community spaces are designed to serve the Shaw University and neighboring communities.
Material Palette
Live Work + Shop Houses
Shruthi Manivannan
The site on South Wilmington Street is located in a transitional zone between downtown and residential neighborhoods. It responds to this condition by providing a variety of housing and retail and work spaces. Four live work units create a series of public community spaces and private courtyards and roof terraces and are designed to provide services to an area severed by busy roads and infrastructure.
View from Wilmington Street showing retail and co-working spaces.
Accessory Dwelling Units
Emily Lewis
Accessory dwelling units provide housing options and transit-supportive density where it is often most needed – in inner city and first ring residential neighborhoods. Too often, however, design and construction costs and lengthy, complicated approval processes have been impediments. This project proposes to solve this problem by preapproved kit houses that offer a full range of living space, levels, materials and finishes.
Studio One Bedroom
Two Bedroom
Accessory Dwelling Units
Katherine Brooks
Housing is well-suited for modular or panelized pre-manufactured construction systems. Contemporary architects and builders have demonstrated that Accessory Dwellings units provide potent opportunies for standardized, affordable, and sustainable units. This project proposes panelized systems that provide a range of unit types, material choices, and sustainability strategies.
