Hello Dear Neighbors,
When I heard that duplexes and townhouses are allowed by right in New Bedford due to a recent update to city ordinances, I was pleasantly surprised. Now residents in single family zones had multiple options to add more housing to their property because Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are allowed by right in Massachusetts. Homeowners could choose to expand for a growing family, upgrade to earn rental income, or downsize to age in place. It was the beginning of a new age of small-scale development in New Bedford.
But then just as quickly, it was gone… with city councilors voting to revert the text back to its old wording. I am quite confused by this logic as the u.s.a. Is short 4.5 million housing units. In the face of the precarious great american housing crises, this decision looks incredibly short-sighted. Duplexes and ADUs are among the roughly 8-15 different shapes of housing that exist between single family detached houses and mid-rise apartment buildings. We call this portion of housing the missing middle because it is frequently rendered illegal by modern zoning codes.
Duplexes, triple deckers, and cottage courts all fit the smaller human scale of residential urban neighborhoods and historically, it's what cities built. The missing middle is the next step in incremental development allowing neighborhoods to thicken naturally and absorb more people. The added benefit is that they are small scale development projects that can be financed and built by individual property owners. Single family zoning makes up roughly 20% of the buildable land in New Bedford and caps the total amount of housing we have. If residents were able to build what they wanted, think of the housing it could produce.
to be fair I do not know why yellow includes parks, cemetaries, water, & golf courses…
Something to ponder,
~ B
