Kip Santos is a trained civil engineer and construction manager who quit his job to build Local Conversations full-time. Now he splits his time between the U.S. and Canada, nurturing the groups he's founded and building missing middle housing. (Transcript included.)
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A couple in Arkansas are showing how small-scale projects can breathe life into downtown and make homeownership more attainable for the next generation.
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Back in September, Sacramento became the first city in California to allow multiunit housing in all residential neighborhoods. Here’s what that means for residents seeking housing.
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Allowing housing units to be built on small or irregular lots is a gamechanger for cities that are fighting the housing crisis. Here’s why that allowance is so important and how three developers are using small units and creativity to bring more housing options to their communities.
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Modern zoning, building and fire codes make it impossible to build many of the types of housing that people actually want to live in. Reforming those codes to allow for single-stair construction can help undo some of this damage.
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North America is facing two widespread crises at the same time: housing and loneliness. This group is proving that cohousing might be the solution to both.
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In 2017, California passed a law that was supposed to open up new levels of incremental development. But in many cities, zoning codes still make that development near-impossible. The city of Ukiah is working to change that.
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When housing is scarce, the affordability and quality of it tend to go down. If we want to solve this, we need more housing supply—but how do we make that happen? (Hint: Not necessarily through large-scale federal programs!)
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A bill to legalize certain forms of “missing middle” housing statewide in Minnesota appears dead in the legislature. Yet, here are 4 reasons why it’s still not a total loss.
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Here’s one important question to ask about how your city regulates housing.
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Downtowns are the symbolic heart and soul of a city, and the economic center, writes Emma Durand-Wood. To build a resilient one, you need diversity in housing, jobs, shops, services, and more.
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The rhetoric around housing can get pretty heated, so here’s how one advocacy group in Winnipeg, MB, decided to show a little love and positivity to the residents of some new infill housing.
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Spokane, WA, has finalized its year-long effort to legalize more housing choices across the city—and their new code is something other cities should be paying attention to.
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Restrictive zoning can make it so that smaller residential developments face the same prohibitively expensive restrictions as larger commercial units. But the state of North Carolina has passed a new bill to address this issue.
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The momentum for ADUs gets a big boost from the federal government with a new policy to encourage homes with rental units.
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New Zealand has proven what stateside housing advocates have been theorizing for years: Loosening restrictive zoning rules can increase housing supply and stabilize rents.
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On July 20, 2023, the city council of Austin, TX, passed resolutions that advocates hope will help ease the city’s ongoing housing crisis.
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Houston has long been a poster child for urban planning ills—but now it’s set to pass a revision of its land-use ordinances that could trigger a wave of construction for missing-middle housing.
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The single least expensive way to produce a lot of new housing is to follow a template that was once used in virtually every city. Unfortunately, most North American cities effectively prohibit it today. Does yours?
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Housing affordability in places like Austin, TX, has reached an unacceptable zenith. This local teacher—who works two jobs just to afford her family’s rent—makes the case for zoning reform.
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