YIMBYana

Introduction

Like many cities across the country, Bloomington faces a pressing need for affordable housing. The 2020 Housing Study noted a rental vacancy rate from a landlord survey of around 2%, far lower than a healthy range of 5-6%, which ensures adequate supply and demand while avoiding price inflation. Many people are priced out of Bloomington and face difficulty finding housing. Meanwhile, homelessness, which has been closely linked to rising housing costs, is a persistent problem. This status quo makes people’s lives financially more burdensome and encourages sprawl and greenhouse gas emissions from car dependency. The primary driver of this affordable housing crisis is the lack of adequate housing supply, particularly “missing-middle” housing—the housing options between single-family homes and large apartment complexes, such as duplexes, triplexes, and townhomes, which often serve as dense walkable city infill development. The leading cause of this supply shortage is restrictive zoning and building regulations codified in our city’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). This proposal identifies the most problematic issues in Bloomington’s UDO and suggests changes to allow sufficient housing supply and more gentle density to secure our community’s future. It accomplishes this by extending property rights in Bloomington by reducing unnecessary regulations that impede the housing market. This proposal focuses on policies to increase missing middle housing, create more walkable and vibrant mixed-use neighborhoods, better pair affordable and market-rate housing, and relax height limits and parking minimums.

Legalize missing middle housing

Missing middle housing is medium-density, moderately priced housing that includes duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, and rowhouses. It provides people with affordable family-sized homes that are energy-efficient and easy to maintain. Missing middle housing is the most affordable housing type because it is simpler and easier to build than high-rise towers and requires less land than single-family homes. However, current regulations make it extremely hard to build missing middle housing, and sometimes, these options are outright banned.

Problems in the UDO

According to an analysis of Bloomington’s UDO and conversations YIMBY-ana has had with city staff and residents, it is prohibitively difficult to build this type of housing in most of Bloomington's residential zones due to excessive requirements and complicated approval processes for conditional use.