Planning Director Pat Young states that a driver for Missing Middle is housing affordability, but Raleigh’s Missing Middle ordinance doesn’t seem designed to achieve affordability unless you believe in trickle down and their metrics haven’t looked at affordability.
To paraphrase Myrick Howard of Preservation NC, you can’t tear down an existing structure and expect to get affordable housing in its place. If we continue this process of tear downs, Raleigh will become a city where only citizens working in the professions and other highly compensated tech workers will be able to live.
Mayor Baldwin knows the most important goal of City Council’s upcoming 2-day retreat is to set strategic priorities for action in the coming term. She also knows that the chances of her priorities prevailing will depend on her ability to prevent other competing Council priorities from being adopted. That is why the first line of defense in Baldwin’s retreat agenda this year is to make sure it is chock-full of plausibly interesting things to see and do, minimizing the time available for other Councilors’ ideas about the future of Raleigh.
Whatever aspirations Raleigh has for the Missing Middle, affordable housing is not one that will be realized. As a principal catalyst, the Missing Middle in other cities has shown the opposite effect—higher taxes, less affordable housing, higher land costs, rent increases, and higher house prices.
Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin really stepped in it at the first City Council meeting of 2023. It was announced that Day One of the council’s retreat, an annual event of team-building and setting their collective direction for the year, will be held at an undisclosed location in Durham that has no ability to live stream the event for public access. Worse yet, the venue can’t even record the event for viewing after the fact. So much for improved community engagement!