Proposed Housing Initiatives Back at City Council May 8
Proposed Housing Initiatives Back at City Council May 8
A call for separation, clarification, and fitting the tool to the task
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Please take a moment to educate yourself about this popular but often misunderstood holiday and then let’s jump right in.
Next week’s calendar of Current and Upcoming Meetings can be found here. In addition to City Council (5/8), they include meetings of the Reno City Charter Committee (5/6); Ward 3 NAB (5/7); Financial Advisory Board (5/9), and Civil Service Commission (5/9). Click on the meetings page to access all agendas and materials.
A Packed City Council Agenda
City Council meets on Wed., May 8, and you can view that agenda here. As usual, I encourage you to browse through it for issues that interest you. Aside from the Housing Initiatives item I’ll discuss below, here are some others that caught my eye:
D. 2 - Presentation, discussion, and potential approval of trash cans, animal waste receptacles, paint, and wayfinding projects identified along the Truckee River Corridor using $266,000 in ARPA funds. Staff Report here.
D. 3 - Presentation, discussion, and potential approval of activation, infrastructure, and maintenance at West Street Plaza using $300,000 in ARPA funds. Staff Report here.
D. 5 – Presentation, discussion, and potential direction to staff regarding the recruitment process to hire a City Manager. Staff Report here.
Item D.1 – Initiatives to Promote Affordable Housing and Building Density
As I mentioned last week, the proposed changes to Title 18 (the City’s land development code) pertaining to housing and affordability initiatives will return at this meeting, under item D.1. I feel like this is the big-ticket item this week, because it has the potential to impact so many residents, present and future.
The Staff Report can be viewed here, and the supplementary materials include the draft (redlined) ordinance; materials from the February 7 Planning Commission meeting (Staff Report and Minutes); and received public comments.
In this meeting, City Council will be discussing the rounds of input, presentations, and recommendations that have transpired on these topics so far and will likely provide direction to City staff to help them formulate language for the ordinances, which would then have to come back to City Council twice for formal adoption.
Right off the bat, I’m skeptical of the many “intensifications” proposed in February by the Planning Commission. Those weren’t vetted through months of discussion with committees or introduced as recommendations from City staff or in response to community demand. Rather, they seemed to have been introduced out of a general desire on the part of individual commissioners to “do more.” And in my mind, they could pose more of a detriment than benefit. You can read through the Minutes of their February 7 meeting yourself, of course, and draw your own conclusions.
I have been tracking these initiatives since they were first brought to public attention last fall. On November 1, 2023, a whole slew of proposed changes were brought forward under the umbrella of “Zoning Code Clean-Up.” Then after some Council and resident input, they were separated out into “Zoning Code Clean-Up items” on one hand and on the other hand, new initiatives related to housing. A potential ordinance governing Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) was proposed separately.
But the City has continued to group together the proposed initiatives to promote more affordable housing and to promote higher density housing. And I think that may have been a mistake. Why? Because these are very different types of initiatives intended to produce different outcomes to benefit very different groups of people.
The City even acknowledges this. On the Q&A page for these initiatives (which is still called “Zoning Code Clean-Up” although most of these initiatives are new) is the question, Why is the city making changes to the Zoning Code that are specific to affordable housing projects?
And the answer (below) is that the Affordable Housing initiatives specifically were spurred by the 2023 passage of a bill by the Nevada Assembly, but the others were not:
“Separate from the affordable housing changes, the city is also looking for opportunities to increase the housing supply and to provide different housing products. This is in response to the broader national housing crisis that communities across the country are struggling to address.”
I’m afraid that continuing to group together the much-needed (and legally required) Affordable Housing initiatives with the slew of other more questionable, contentious (and optional) initiatives intended to increase Reno’s housing supply (at all price points) has done a disservice to thorough discussion of each one.
So let’s go through them again, starting with those Affordable Housing Initiatives.
Category #1: Affordable Housing Initiatives
As the City’s website explains, Assembly Bill 213 passed in 2023, requiring local jurisdictions to complete a number of tasks by July 1, 2024. You can read its text here.
The bill (and now law) is exclusively about Affordable Housing, responding to what no one can deny is a dire need in our communities. The state’s requirements include a great deal of analysis, planning, and reporting, which I assume is well underway.
These housing initiatives stem from the section requiring cities to adopt at least six of twelve listed measures that include the following:
Selling City-owned land to developers exclusively for affordable housing at not more than 10 percent of the appraised value of the land.
Donating City-owned land to a nonprofit to be used for affordable housing.
Leasing City-owned land to be used for affordable housing.
Establishing a trust fund for affordable housing.
Expediting the approval of plans and specifications relating to maintaining and developing affordable housing.
Offering density bonuses to encourage the development of affordable housing.
Providing direct financial assistance to qualified applicants for the purchase or rental of affordable housing.
You can read the rest of them in the bill. I’m not sure precisely how many the City has already adopted (my sense is quite a few, based on past meetings and discussions, but I’ve never seen that clarified).
These new proposed initiatives to be discussed on Wednesday include several introduced in direct response to that bill, as explained on pages 3-4 of the February 7 Planning Commission Staff Report:
Exemption from Entitlement Review (minor conditional use permits, conditional use permits, site plan review, and major site plan review application requirements)
Expedited Building Permit Processing
Increased Density Bonuses
These changes could make a big difference in how quickly Affordable Housing can be built and can undoubtedly help provide housing for those with the fewest resources.
As I’ve stated before, I’m not personally in favor of exempting more projects from public review (by eliminating the conditional use permit requirement) because I think that review can help to improve projects, making them better for their inhabitants and the surrounding environment. But I see the advantage in eliminating such review for Affordable Housing, to reduce costs and get it up and running more quickly.
However, these Affordable Housing initiatives comprise just a handful of the initiatives currently being proposed in this lump effort. The rest of these initiatives are dedicated to increasing the overall housing supply, at price points ranging all the way up to market-rate housing—and that’s where the need and potential benefit (and for whom) is less straightforward, as City staff admit (there’s a lot of acknowledgment that most are likely to have minimal if any impact).
So let’s look at those other three categories.
Categories #2 & 3: Density Bonuses for Market Rate Projects and Allowing Multifamily Projects “By Right”
The proposed initiatives in these two arenas basically augment policies that already exist in the code but are not focused on Affordable Housing per se.
Density Bonuses
A density bonus does not refer to giving anyone a financial bonus. As the City explains, “This bonus allows developers to build more units than would ordinarily be allowed on a site by the underlying zoning.” It’s a “bonus” of additional units.
The City already allows a density bonus for infill projects, both officially “Affordable” up to market rate. The proposed new initiatives in this category include measures that would boost the latter considerably. While the greatest boost is still for the smallest units of under 1,000 square feet in size (increasing the “bonus” from 45% to 80%), this proposal would also raise the bonus for units up to 1,800 square feet (from 15% to 35%).
Something to consider is whether providing these incentives for larger (i.e. more expensive) units of housing actually reduces the incentive for developers to build housing at lower price points. That, I hope, will be part of the discussion this week.
Allowing more Market Rate Multifamily Projects “By Right”
This is discussed on page 5 of the February 7 Planning Commission Staff Report, and I don’t think I need to say much more about it. City staff is proposing that “Multifamily projects with more than 100 units would still require approval of a conditional use permit, but no entitlement would be triggered for less than 100 units.” An accompanying chart shows how this change would bring Reno in alignment with many other jurisdictions in Nevada and elsewhere.
Category #4: “Missing Middle” Development
These last initiatives are clearly inspiring the most impassioned responses, both from residents who feel the City is proposing unwanted changes to their neighborhoods and from those who charge those folks with being NIMBYs (or worse).
Before anyone (else) jumps on either of those bandwagons, I’d like us all to take a deep breath, step back, and think about why the City proposes ordinance changes in the first place. The Development Code governs the logistics of land development. If it’s working, there’s no need to change it. If it’s not working, a change might be warranted.
This proposal specifically targets two single-family-only zoned districts, known as SF-3 and SF-5, and proposes to allow duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to be constructed there, with the approval of a conditional use permit (i.e. a public hearing by the Planning Commission). City staff state that “This is a minor change that is not anticipated to have significant impacts on the housing supply and still allows for the public review process within the two additional single-family zoning districts” (page 6 of the February 7 Planning Commission Staff Report).
The argument here is that enabling higher density development in additional parts of the city will help to increase the housing supply at all price points.
Okay. So can we get real for a minute?
Reno is and has always been a low-density city. I’m not saying that it should be; I’m just stating a fact. In seeking out some recent stats, I came across this 2013 study of population density of U.S. cities. Ten years ago, Reno had a population density of 2,381 people per square mile. Compare that to cities like Portland, Oregon (4,795 people per square mile), Salem, Oregon (3,495); Spokane, Washington (3,645), Fresno, California (4,663), or Las Vegas (4,660). Another source indicates that Reno’s population density was projected to hit 2,511 by 2023.
Reno is a low-lying town with a horizontal, suburban-style growth pattern. That pattern is enabled and perpetuated by housing developments (many built in the 1970s or later) that are governed by Planned Unit Developments (PUDs) protecting them from higher density development.
In response, the City of Reno has done a great deal to encourage higher density urban infill. The current Master Plan and zoning code highly promote higher density inside the McCarran loop, in particular.
In her presentation about these new initiatives, Angela Fuss showed a map to indicate where duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes are currently allowed and where this new initiative would add them. But it’s very small and virtually impossible to make out.
A much better resource is the City’s own Community Development map, which indicates zoning district by color and allows you to zoom in to the parcel level.
You’ll initially reach a landing page that asks you to check a box indicating that you have read and understand the stated announcement. Click OK and it will take you to the map (I highly recommend doing this on a screen larger than your phone).
You can see on this map where the SF-3 and SF-5 zones are located, but for now I want you also to look at all the places that are currently zoned Mixed-Use, Multi-Family, or the denser single-family zones of SF-8 and SF-11 [corrected from SF-9 and SF-12]. Consult the key at the right, or zoom in further, click on various parcels, and pull up the box that tells you what each one is zoned (click the little arrow at the top of the box to see the second page of each entry, and if you’re having trouble, click on the parcel number). Also note the outlying areas (the peachy color) that are governed by PUDs.
Almost all of central Reno is zoned to allow for multifamily apartment buildings, as well as duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes. Those zones are near public transit, grocery stores and other services, and are generally the closest thing Reno has to “walkable neighborhoods.”
If you can think of a place where you think a duplex, triplex, or fourplex would make sense, they’re probably already allowed there, either with or without a Conditional Use Permit, specifically because they are dense, walkable areas.
And yet builders still aren’t constructing many higher density buildings there. And yes, one reason is that a lot of developers favor building in “greenfield” areas that have never been developed before. But also, as my last Brief discussed, we’re currently in a period where we’re not entirely sure what types of new housing Reno residents want and need (we just know they want all of it to be cheaper).
I highlighted two planned new developments—in Rancharrah and along Idlewild Drive— where developers have actually REDUCED the previously approved density of their projects, clearly a market-driven decision.
I cited a Reno Gazette-Journal article questioning whether the area has too many rental units right now and in the pipeline, citing the high number of vacancies.
There are large vacant parcels downtown where no construction is occurring, whether it’s the sites of the projected Kimpton Hotel, the east side of N. Center Street/University Way, the riverfront parcel near the ballpark, or the former site of the Masonic Building adjacent to Whitney Peak.
Some talk about needing to “use every tool in the toolbox” as an argument for why we need to do everything possible to increase the housing supply. But have we exhausted or even implemented all of the tools available to encourage more density in the areas where it makes the most sense?
I’ll give you an example. One of the most powerful tools in the City’s toolbox is the Development Agreement. The City’s Master Plan identified all of West 4th Street as an “Urban Corridor” where dense development was the most desirable. And how many residential units did the City of Reno require Jacobs Entertainment to build on the near-100 parcels they have purchased there? Zero. Even the requirement that Jacobs build the one new housing project they are constructing (on the corner of Arlington and West Second Street) predated that agreement. And need I remind you that the City also sold Jacobs a parcel at 290 Keystone Avenue with the requirement that they construct a multifamily building there? That sale was finalized two years ago.
If a builder or developer is interested in constructing a duplex, triplex, or fourplex in a desirable central location, there are plenty of sites available to do so.
So why aren’t they building denser housing in the areas where it is already allowed?
I’m sure there are many explanations for that, having to do with economies of scale, financing, the high cost of materials, etc., but I guarantee that it’s not because those builders would rather build duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in the single-family neighborhoods zoned SF-3 and SF-5.
So why make these changes? Are residents of those two districts demanding higher density? Are these zones especially close to amenities and public transit. No.
I’m just saying there should be a good reason—and not just so you can claim that you ended all single-family-only zoning in the City of Reno (without actually saying so).
A Few Words about Upzoning
On the topic of language, it appears to me through the many conversations I’ve had and watched that the “Missing Middle” portions of these initiatives are engendering not just the most concern, but the most confusion, and partially due to terminology.
Now, before anyone gets defensive, I want to be very clear that I am not suggesting any deliberate intent on the City’s part to confuse or obfuscate.
But we have to talk about the word “upzoning.”
In the Q&A on the City’s webpage about these initiatives is the question, “Do any of these text amendments upzone or change the zoning on any properties?” And here is the City’s official response:
"No, the proposed changes will have no impact on anyone’s zoning designation, nor will these changes modify anyone’s zoning."
Really? While I suppose it’s technically true that the zoning designations (SF3 and SF5) would not be changed if duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes were allowed there, the allowable densities within those zones would change. These changes would enable higher density. Which is the literal definition of upzoning.
Don’t just take my word for it. That’s everyone’s understanding of upzoning. Here are just a few examples:
“From the east and west coasts to the Midwest, lawmakers are beating the drum for upzoning, which means changing single-family zoning codes to allow taller and denser housing, like duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and apartment buildings.” (curbed.com)
"Upzoning refers to the process of increasing the zoning density in a particular municipality or neighborhood. Typically, this involves increasing (up) zoning on single residential lots to allow for multifamily units such as duplexes and triplexes." (Motley Fool)
"The newest tool that cities are deploying in the ongoing fight against segregation and housing inequality is to let their streets get denser, in what is known as upzoning." (Bloomberg.com)
“Upzoning: A change in zoning laws that allows for more dense use of an area. An example of this is a city changing a residential district’s zoning from only allowing single-family homes to allowing for multifamily housing as well.” (Quicken Loans)
Is the City arguing that these proposed changes don’t count as “upzoning” because the City is no longer classifying duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes as “multi-family dwellings” (something else I don’t understand)? Isn’t upzoning these parcels the entire point and therefore something to celebrate rather than deny? I don’t get it.
Triplexes and Fourplexes
The last subject I want to discuss today is the grouping together of duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes as the forms of “missing middle” housing that this final initiative would strive to increase. I think they warrant some focused discussion and some actual images to depict and clarify what we’re talking about.
Nationally, triplexes and fourplexes are among the “missing middle” housing types that many want to introduce (or reintroduce) into urban settings. As the “Missing Middle Housing” website explains, “These house-scale buildings fit seamlessly into existing residential neighborhoods and support walkability, locally-serving retail, and public transportation options.”
Now, Reno has a long history with duplexes, stemming not just from its migratory divorce era, but from their graceful integration into dense residential neighborhoods. You’ve probably seen a lot of them in our older neighborhoods—along Plumas Street, California Avenue, Arlington Avenue. There are some triplexes around, too.
Speaking again from a factual standpoint, Reno hasn’t had a lot of fourplexes, which are more common in denser urban environments like Portland or Los Angeles.
The fourplex, as that site explains, “is attractive to developers by generating four units on a typical 50’ lot with alley access.” Although often featuring a small front yard, they are usually located toward the front of a lot in a dense environment, like those Reno areas categorized as SF-8, SF-11, MF (multifamily) or MU (mixed use).
Because fourplexes are increasingly popular real estate investments, contemporary plans for new fourplexes can be found online on sites like the Missing Middle Housing website above; Houseplans.pro; Mashvisor.com, and Fig.us.
This would be a very desirable housing type in a dense area like that shown here. But it’s critical to understand what kind of setbacks, parking requirements, height and lot coverage allowances make them most feasible to build, and match those requirements to areas governed by those same standards. Otherwise you’re enabling the construction of something that can’t effectively be constructed there. And that’s just a pointless act that upsets a lot of people for no good reason.
There’s a lot we can and should do to increase Reno’s housing supply, encourage more infill, and hopefully lower housing costs for all. But it’s important when evaluating all the tools in the City’s toolbox to use the appropriate tools for the task at hand and not let upzoning be the hammer that treats everything as if it were a nail.
What do you think?
Remember, you can always reach out to your representatives individually via the emails listed in my Citizen Guide. You can attend Wednesday’s City Council meeting in person or via Zoom or comment via the following options:
submit an online public comment form at Reno.Gov/PublicComment
send an email to Publiccomment@reno.gov
leave a voicemail at (775) 393-4499
participate via Zoom by registering at https://links.reno.gov/Council05-08, which will provide the Webinar ID and call-in phone number.
Be sure to check out my Citizen Guide for helpful resources and links for anyone hoping to become more informed and engaged in issues related to urban development (& more) in Reno.
As always, you can view this and prior newsletters on my Substack site, subscribe to receive each new edition in your email inbox, and follow the Brief (and contribute to the ongoing conversation) on X, Facebook & Instagram. If you feel inspired to support my writing and research with a financial contribution, you can sign up for a paid subscription through my Substack site or contribute to my Venmo account at @Dr-Alicia-Barber or via check to Alicia Barber at P.O. Box 11955, Reno, NV 89510. Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week.