Ask a Planner: Can planning help with critical issues like access to housing my family can afford?

Access to safe and stable housing is essential to the overall quality of life for residents and directly impacts health, social, and economic outcomes for the entire community. The ability to supply housing opportunities for people of all income levels is the foundation for this. The housing market is influenced by fluctuating factors that require extensive cooperation across plans, policymakers, and private enterprise to manage. Currently, housing shortages are impacting people in communities across the U.S. and around the world. Here in the Tampa Bay region, new high-rise condos, apartments, and single-family homes continue to spring up.

But for most working families, these homes are priced out of reach. Along with growing needs for low-income residents, there is a gap in availability of housing for middle-income households referred to as Missing Middle housing. To create more affordable and diverse housing choices, we need to rethink how we plan for and develop housing and focus on centrally located areas. Can we comfortably add Missing Middle housing to detached single-family home neighborhoods? If we think big, but build small, with a range of housing types that fit into the scale of the existing neighborhoods by adding residences above retail; accessory dwelling units; duplexes or fourplexes; cottage courts or courtyard buildings; or small clusters of condos and townhomes.

Building compact multi-unit, low-rise housing can serve as a transition to more dense multi-family or mixed-use buildings. It also can make walking, biking, and using transit more viable, less costly, and healthier ways to access goods, services, and jobs. The Housing Section of each jurisdiction’s Comprehensive Plan provides policy approaches to reduce current and projected deficits in the public, private, and rental housing supply, like development incentives, finance strategies, equal access, sustainable and innovative housing, and more.

Your voice is an important part in the development of the Comprehensive Plans to ensure a high quality of life for both current and future residents. Find ways to get involved by searching for a project close to your heart or visiting the Be Involved page on our website.

Ask A Planner is a monthly featured column by PlanHillsborough.org. Email your community planning questions to: [email protected]