Three Housing Reforms That Asheville Could Complete This Year

It’s summertime, which means everything slows down. Asheville City Council meets just once per month in July and August, and it’s less likely to see big sweeping matters put before them.

Additionally, there appears to be a sense in the air that because the Council passed some genuinely promising housing-related UDO amendments in March, additional changes can wait a while. And we’ve heard through the grapevine that given some of the recent split votes on housing, some people in leadership are now reluctant to take up any more UDO changes this year.

At Asheville For All we think that’s a mistake. While the commercial district improvements that were passed on March 11th were positive steps, as were the “flag lot” and “cottage court” reforms passed on that day too, I think it’s still uncontroversial to say that the magnitude of the pro-housing reforms coming out of Asheville City Council does not meet either the magnitude of the region’s housing shortage and affordability crisis or even the magnitude of the rhetoric of city councillors themselves when they’re asked about the issue.

So, while things might be slow, I thought I’d provide a list of things that I think the city could pass, sooner rather than later, if the will were there.

1. Repeal Costly Parking Mandates—City Wide!

Parking reform is sweeping the country, but as usual, beneath its progressive veneer, Asheville remains conservative on material matters. I’ve written about the need for comprehensive repeal of parking mandates before, so I’m not going to lay out all the points again.

Still, I think it’s notable that just the other day, I read that Connecticut has eliminated its parking mandates statewide. This from one of the most “NIMBY” states in the union!

When we last checked in on residential parking reform, the city was insisting that it couldn’t happen because of “displacement” fears. (For the record, Asheville For All believe those fears are misplaced, and the research on the subject concurs overwhelmingly.) But since then, city staff devised an “overlay” that would prevent residential UDO changes from affecting certain neighborhoods.¹

Remember also that our city’s “Missing Middle Study and Displacement Risk Assessment” from 2023 made clear that costly parking mandates were the number one obstacle to more attainable housing and more walkable neighborhoods. As every sitting Asheville City Council member has, in one way or another, expressed a commitment to seeing “missing middle” reforms, it sure seems like eliminating parking mandates in residential areas is the obvious next step, even if exempting the “overlay” regions is necessary to make it politically feasible.

One more note on parking reform: There’s a bill in the General Assembly to ban costly parking mandates statewide. At this point in the legislative session, I can’t tell you what odds this bill has, but you can show support for that bill here.

2. Legalize Quadplex Conversions

Last year, the North Carolina Assembly gifted the state a new tool in combating the housing crisis. It reformed the state’s building code to allow buildings with up to four homes in them to be built under the same standards as single family homes. (The change takes effect this summer.) For example, whereas the state requires large apartment buildings to have sprinkler systems for fire safety, duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes don’t need those kinds of things anymore, and that’s good for the viability of these kinds of homes.

But here’s the rub. In order for this building code tool to be put to use, cities like Asheville need to reform their zoning code to allow quadplexes to be built in more places.

I’ve made the argument before that making such a small change and allowing it to occur across most or all of Asheville’s neighborhoods—especially if you include the high-value, high-demand, high-amenity ones—will not bring about a flurry of teardowns in precarious communities. In fact, the national Strong Towns organization has recently made the case that the primary benefit of allowing duplexes and triplexes by-right would be that existing single family homes could be converted.

Cities such as Minneapolis and Arlington, Virginia have implemented more modest and limited “missing middle” reforms where triplexes or quadplexes are allowed, but only in the confines of the existing rules that determine a building’s overall height, size, and siting. While these kinds of reforms may not lead to a building boom, they may allow existing homeowners to make better use of the homes that they own. Theoretically, an empty-nester could convert their home while never having to leave.

Just as with this spring’s “flag lot” amendment and the city’s yet unrealized “backyard lot” proposal, this is a pro-housing reform that seems tailor-made to helping existing residents tap into their home equity, as they may be adjusting to shocks in their property valuation.

There’s also an appeal to NIMBYs here. With conversions, what you see when you drive around your neighborhood doesn’t even have to really change!

A Technical Aside

Closely related to this idea of “unit maximums” in residential neighborhoods is that of density limits.

For example, in East West Asheville, where a lot of the land is zoned “RM-8,” which is supposed to be relatively multi-family friendly, density standards still dictate that a lot cannot have more than “two dwelling units for the first 4,000 square feet of lot area,” and there can only be one additional unit for each additional 1,000 square feet of lot area.

Asheville’s 2023 Missing Middle Housing Study describes density as “an unpredictable factor” (11). If Asheville were to eliminate unit caps below quadplexes, density limits would still prohibit quadplexes in some instances, even if those quadplexes would take the same built “form” as a large single family home!

These things can get a little confusing. As the Missing Middle Housing Study notes, Asheville does not have explicit density limits, but “density is effectively regulated by minimum lot area requirements.” The effect is that “tying unit count to lot size ultimately favors large sites, not infill lots within existing blocks, typically resulting in the use of more land than what one building really needs” (53).

The primary point that I want to make here is that the city has all sorts of tweaks that it could make to these rules that would allow more housing in a way that would limit the aesthetic changes of a neighborhood. And if one avenue, such as allowing quadplexes everywhere, doesn’t have the Missing Middle Housing Study’s explicit stamp of approval, removing density limits sure does.

To be clear, I’m still holding out hope for stacked quadplexes in my West Asheville neighborhood! And personally, I feel strongly that aesthetic change is good and necessary for cities to adapt and grow. But if we’re talking about less controversial changes, it seems like there are all sorts of options the city could entertain this year that would be a start in realizing its “missing middle”-related goals.

One final note here: For any of these changes to work, it seems to me, parking reform would have to be passed alongside them.

3. Bring Back the Land Use Incentive Grant

In the housing advocacy space, there’s a distinction made between “supply” solutions and “subsidy” solutions. It seems to me that the city’s Land Use Incentive Grant (LUIG), which was put on indefinite hold in 2024, is potentially both.

I’ve written already, somewhat recently, about why I think LUIG should be brought back.

So what’s new to talk about?

The Turner Amendment

While celebrating the March wins at Asheville City Council, Asheville For All also expressed some apprehension around a late amendment to one of the commercial district reforms, which we dubbed “The Turner Amendment.”

As has been noted previously, Asheville For All is opposed to unfunded mandates on new buildings for income-restricted homes, not because we don’t support below-market-rate apartments, but rather because we believe that the costs of these homes should be borne by property owners (and/or other progressive tax sources) rather than renters.²

Still, I was impressed with the way that the city staff explained their approach on March 11th. Their stated goal was not to penalize home builders, but rather to try to come up with parameters that would make it viable for market-rate developers to include some below-market-rate homes. To this end, they explained, they had conversations with multiple local for-profit developers in order to write those parameters carefully.

I was surprised then, when an amendment was passed which changed those parameters, increasing the requirements for unsubsidized below-market-rate units on any developments with more than nineteen homes, and none of the City Council members asked staff to comment on the amendment before they voted for it.

The amendment may turn out to be harmless. My greatest concern is that specifically, multifamily developments with between twenty and fifty homes may be less viable than they were even were prior to March 11th. In any case, I suppose the jury will be out for some time on the overall effect of this amendment.

What does any of this have to do with LUIG?

Imagine a proposal for fifty homes on a commercial corridor, which would require five percent of the homes to be set aside for below-market rents. Those below-market rents represent an additional cost to a developer (or to a potential buyer of the apartment building), and so it may turn out that the project is too risky to build, or that the developer will have an easier time if they look to build outside city limits.

But the LUIG could present an alternative option. If the developer were to commit to not five but twenty percent of the homes being income-restricted, the LUIG would make it so that the developer would be effectively receiving assistance to potentially make the project viable when it wasn’t before. In other words, the LUIG could, in effect, not only pay for the margin difference of the extra fifteen percent of below-market-rate homes, but for the margin of the initial five percent too.

What was once primarily a stick with the Turner Amendment might be transformed into a carrot with LUIG. The devil is in the details, of course. Carrots only work to the extent that the benefit is clear. But it seems to me that this could be a win-win-win: more housing, more socio-economic diversity, and a sustainably growing tax-base. (Remember that LUIG, at least to a degree, incentivizes infill and transit-oriented development.)

I do want to note that the city’s Affordable Housing Plan, which came out just prior to Hurricane Helene and so was swiftly forgotten about, does endorse the idea of bringing back LUIG. The plan generally described LUIG as “effective,” and suggested that the criticism lobbed at it in late 2023 which led to its cessation was based on a report that is somewhat inconclusive. (The plan calls for better tracking of certain statistics in the future. It also does include a list of suggested changes for LUIG if it is to be revived.)

The Post-Helene Economic Landscape

What else has changed? Hurricane Helene and the election of Donald Trump have both produced economic uncertainties in the private market and possibly austerity in local public spending.

It now seems likely that building materials and labor costs will go up, and that the threat of inflation will keep borrowing costs high too. All of this means that construction could enter a slump, when we still need new buildings in our city as much as before, if not more due to the loss of housing from the storm.

And for those with the greatest need, the city is in a bad place to consider greater funding for housing assistance, and may be in that place for some time.

But LUIG works by promising tax abatements on land improvements. It costs the city nothing up front.

So while we’re still reeling from the costs of Helene, the LUIG may be a way to effectively leverage the potential payoffs of a possible future version of Asheville—one that grows its tax base sustainably—in order to help pay for the costs of our housing shortage today.