Tempe city staff will hold two neighborhood meetings on August 4th to take input on a proposed missing middle ordinance, which will allow duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes to be built on single family lots near downtown.
MISSING MIDDLE MEETINGS (Monday 8/4)
- Virtual meeting at noon, register here to attend via Zoom
- In-person meeting from 5:30 – 7 p.m. at the Clark Park Recreation Center, Cypress Room, 1730 S. Roosevelt St.
You can submit comments here.
The ordinance would bring Tempe into compliance with state law passed last year, which aims to expand housing options and supply to improve affordability. However, the city’s approach would limit the effectiveness of this law in addressing housing affordability.
Just Plane Wrong
Frustratingly, city staff have written the “airport vicinity exclusion area” into the proposed ordinance. There are two problems with this.
First, the law does not require cities to allow missing middle homes in this area but it does not prohibit them from doing so.
Second, the airport exclusion area already contains many single family homes (shown in yellow), apartments, and townhomes. Given the large number of existing residential areas in the exclusion boundaries, this provision makes little sense.
The city is either misinterpreting the law or working to slash how many new homes could be built as a result of it. Regardless, it’s disappointing to see Tempe take an opportunity to build the homes we need to tackle our housing shortage and instead find ways to whittle down where badly needed housing can be built.
Go Big and Build Home
There’s another option as well: Tempe could expand the proposed Middle Housing Overlay District to cover the entire city, or at the very least expand the boundaries of the overlay.
Allowing duplexes and townhomes to be built is a beneficial but incremental reform that requires scale to create the number of new homes our city needs.
We think every pro-housing Tempe resident should ask for two things that would vastly improve the ordinance:
- Remove the Airport Vicinity Exclusion Area.
- Expand the Middle Housing Overlay boundaries to allow missing middle homes across Tempe.
You can leave a comment here and then attend one of the two August 4th meetings.