Northwest Arkansas cities have zoning districts that mostly deal with the number of residential units allowed per acre. A broader approach may be needed to solve the region's affordable housing problem, regional and national planning professionals say.
Northwest Arkansas is the 100th most populated metropolitan statistical area in the United States, and the 13th fastest growing in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. An average of 36 people moved to the region every day from April 2020 to July 2022, according to the Northwest Arkansas Council, a business group.
The Walton Family Foundation in its 2019 Our Housing Future report said nearly 80,000 families will move to the four major regional cities by 2040. Household income growth has fallen behind rising rent and home sale prices for the last several years. Employees often can't afford to live in the cities in which they work, pushing residents beyond city limits and increasing transportation costs.
Zoning is one tool city leaders can use to increase housing production. However, neighbors often oppose increases in residential density, even incrementally, for fear a change to allow more units per acre may disrupt the character of their neighborhoods.
City leaders must resist political pressure and allow higher density zoning, said Emily Hamilton, director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which researches land-use policy. Leaders must help residents understand that neighborhoods are made of the people living in them, not the structures lining the street, she said.
Cities in Northwest Arkansas could reduce their residential zoning districts, Hamilton said. Instead of having one zoning district each for a single-family zone allowing up to two units an acre, or four, or eight, a city could just have low, moderate and high density residential zones. That way, cities could increase housing supply with a higher number and wider variety of housing types within a single zoning district, she said.
'Missing middle'
Single-use zoning, known as Euclidean zoning, is extremely common throughout Northwest Arkansas and the United States. The practice results in strictly residential areas and strictly commercial areas, creating a need to travel farther for goods and services.
Fayetteville may be recognized as the city in Northwest Arkansas that's most willing to entertain higher density and variety in residential land uses, but the zoning makeup is still largely limited, said Jonathan Curth, the city's development services director.
For instance, the city has 31 zoning districts. About 60% of the entire city is zoned exclusively for single-family homes or agricultural use, Curth said.
"The inherent character of zoning is that it limits the number of housing units to a set amount of land. When you do that, you're running right up against one of the primary drivers of housing costs, which is land," he said.
"Lumber and labor both fluctuate, but land is often the one element that cities have some say over because we regulate the zoning code, which sets the parameters and framework for land development."
Fayetteville's Planning Commission recently discussed during a retreat the possibility of cutting down on the number of zoning districts in city code and consolidating land uses.
Other municipalities have adopted similar zoning measures and were met with intense public debate.
The Arlington County Board in Virginia in March approved a "missing middle" zoning policy, according to online newspaper ARLnow.com. The move allows construction of duplexes through sixplexes in neighborhoods previously zoned only for single-family detached homes, depending on lot size.
Smaller lots are capped at quadplexes. Buildings must have the same height and footprint as single-family homes. There are also limits on how many such structures can be built in a year and extra regulations on parking.
County leaders considered the proposal for years and had multiple days of public hearings and discussion leading up to the vote. Hundreds of residents spoke for and against the proposal.
Supporters said the move will help desegregate neighborhoods and help create more affordable units.
Opponents said the move will fundamentally change the character of the county and doubted its impact on housing affordability.
Other cities, such as Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., adopted similar policies in 2018 and 2020, respectively. For the amount of resident attention the policies got, the results have been minimal, Hamilton said.
The new policies for previously single-family exclusionary neighborhoods resulted in 128 new units built over just more than two years in Minneapolis and 89 new units built over a yearlong period in Portland, according to a separate article from ARLnow.com. Both represented a small fraction of all new housing units built in that time in both cities.
That's the nature of a "missing middle" policy, Hamilton said. Replacing one single-family house with a duplex or other similar structure that only adds a few more units is a slow process, she said.
"Allowing one or two or three more units to be built on a lot relative to what's already currently there, in most cases, probably isn't going to have as much of an effect on housing supply as legalizing serious multifamily housing," Hamilton said.
The new reality
Rogers has spent the last five to 10 years trying to allow a wider variety of land uses in largely commercial areas and major intersections, said John McCurdy, the city's community development director. The city rezoned about 30 intersections a few years ago to allow more housing types and services near single-family neighborhoods, he said.
Leaders are now turning toward rezoning the entire city and giving the development code a major revision, McCurdy said. Less emphasis would be placed on density limitations and more on the size and scale of buildings, he said.
Rogers also has more than 30 zoning districts. Many of them could be consolidated to about a dozen total, McCurdy said.
The goal is to bring the entire city into compliance with its future land use map and comprehensive plan. That way, fewer rezonings should come through City Hall, and city leaders can take a more active planning role, rather than reacting to constant rezoning requests, McCurdy said.
People who want to live in a single-family home will still be able to do so, he said. The city has plenty of them. But the city also has an unmet need for housing that's less expensive, more compact and closer to services, he said.
"Even though people might feel stressed about this reality, we're getting to the point right now where land in Northwest Arkansas is so expensive you're just not going to see the kind of suburban subdivision development we've seen in the past, because it's not going" to be profitable, he said.
"Whether people like it or not, we're going to see more and more compact housing types, like duplexes, quads, townhomes, clustered housing, and more apartments and condominiums."
Speeding up the process
An expedited approval process for developers helps get projects from the planning stage to construction and becomes more crucial the faster an area is growing in population, Hamilton said.
Projects will get off the ground faster with fewer regulations. Projects that follow all of a city's rules and require no variations to code should pass through to construction in a matter of weeks, not months or years, she said.
Rogers also tries to expedite the development process, McCurdy said. For instance, development plans that meet all of the city's rules typically get put on the Planning Commission's consent agenda, meaning they are passed without discussion.
The city also has relaxed certain standards, such as requiring buildings to be set back a specific distance from the right of way or parking requirements that didn't "serve a good, clear public purpose," he said.
Prices alone don't tell the whole story about the effect of new construction on affordability, Hamilton cautioned.
Local families usually move into new housing, not out-of-towners, Hamilton said. When a local family moves, it frees up the old home to someone else. That home is usually less expensive than the new home, she said.
"This leads to what's sometimes called a 'vacancy chain,' where one new house being built might go through a chain of freeing up other less-expensive housing units in the region," Hamilton said.
"It's not only the house that gets built that we should be looking at, but the invisible chain through which new construction improves affordability."