Raleigh approves ‘gentle density’ measure to add duplexes, townhomes to neighborhoods
Duplexes and townhomes will now be legal to build by right throughout most of the city.
The Raleigh City Council approved new rules Tuesday night to allow different types of housing in traditionally single-family neighborhoods without a rezoning.
The vote was 6-1 with Council member David Cox voting against the measure. Council member Jonathan Melton was excused and absent from the meeting.
The point of the change is to provide “different choices and new choices in neighborhoods,” said Ken Bowers, deputy director of Raleigh’s Planning and Development department.
“It’s a very complicated, interlocking thing,” he said. “And I am not going to claim that this is a solution to the affordability problem because it clearly is not. It’s a component of how to try to adjust the housing market for the fact there are many more people who want to live in neighborhoods than there are house to accommodate them today.”
There still has to be publicly funded and publicly subsidized housing, he said. But if there are more duplexes, backyard cottages and townhomes in neighborhoods like Boylan Heights and Five Points, it can take some of the pressure off of neighborhoods that are being gentrified, Bowers said.
Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin called the change a chance to add “gentle density” to neighborhoods.
“It will allow for more homes to be built in our city,” she said previously. “It’s a positive thing.”
Cox disagreed, calling it a change that will cause sprawl, gentrification and more traffic.
This text change legalizes missing middle housing that used to be legal and helped build Raleigh’s “most charming neighborhoods,” said Jenn Truman, an area architectural designer, during the public hearing Tuesday night.
James Demby described living in a triplex when first moving to Raleigh, one of the few affordable options available to him. This change isn’t going to drastically change neighborhoods by doubling or tripling the density. In reality, he said, single-family homes will still be what is mostly built, with just a few new duplexes and townhomes.
Former Council member Stef Mendell stated her opposition with a single sentence “Density does not equal affordability.”
Density doesn’t provide equity for low-income residents, said Wanda Gilbert-Coker.
“You’re asking for the missing middle, while the low income are dying on the streets,” she said.
