How a flexible “plex” design could add lower-cost homes, green space, and walkable, vibrant neighborhoods—fast—across housing-strapped cities.

As people across Cascadia buckle under soaring home prices and rents, leaders are scrambling to legalize, or try to legalize, more “middle housing” options amid their single-detached-dominated stock. While options like laneway homes and backyard cottages, duplexes and triplexes, may get the job done in some locales, bigger cities will need bigger solutions—and fast.

Vancouver, British Columbia, has perhaps an over-lauded reputation for transit-oriented development, given its mere handful of tall neighborhoods. The city was early to legalize laneway homes in 2009, seen then as an incremental way to add more compact, environmentally friendly housing “without incurring the wrath of. wealthy homeowner groups,” some of whom expressed shock that a person might be able to look from a modest laneway home balcony into the primary home’s garden. About 4,500 laneway homes have been built there since, with another 4,000 planned by 2028. They’re popular, and as of 2018, fully 45 percent of newly constructed houses included a laneway home, and many of them also incorporated attached mother-in-law suites.

Fourteen years later, Vancouver planning staff have now proposed legalizing four and sixplexes across the city, including in areas currently restricted to single-detached houses. The new proposal would allow a modest 16 percent increase in building size across the city’s low-density zones. It would also permit more units: four or six homes would be allowed, depending on the lot size. Right now, only three units are allowed in most detached house areas (the main house, plus an attached in-law suite and a laneway house).

The proposed 16 percent increase in housing density is not enough to make up for decades of inaction. Detached home prices in the once-affordable East Vancouver have increased 100 percent in just the past ten years. Yet nothing but these homes is permitted on 81 percent of Vancouver’s residential land, effectively excluding anyone who can’t afford the high price of a stand-alone house and freezing even a relatively dense city like Vancouver in a predominantly suburban state.

The results aren’t surprising: Vancouver’s population has grown more slowly than that of its surrounding suburbs, with detached home prices ballooning to $3.3 million on the city’s west side, well out of reach for most families.

If we faced a less daunting housing challenge, then this 16 percent increase in allowable density might make sense. But our problems are bigger than that, and our solutions are going to have to be, too. It’s time to end detached-house zoning—and give Vancouverites more ways to call the city home.

INTRODUCING “THE PLEX”

Fourteen years after laneway homes were legalized, the results are in, and prices are way, way up. Whatever we do next, let’s not make the same mistake of doing too little, too late. In the spirit of doing enough, and fast enough, we set out the following goals, looking to bridge the gap between the city’s towers and its single-detached-dominated neighborhoods:

Make it dense—and build up, not out.

Make it affordable.

Make it fast.

Do it everywhere.

Make it accessible.

What would a new housing form that does all of these things look like? We propose: “the Plex,” a modular, repeatable apartment building of six, eight, or ten homes.

The Plex is a place for people to raise families, meet friends, and live their lives on quiet streets in the neighborhoods they love. They combine the large units and yard space that people associate with detached homes, with the walkability and affordability of apartments.

Include a shared rooftop patio and solar panels, plus front and rear balconies to liven the streetscape and allow neighbors to mingle. Ensure full accessibility for residents of all abilities, design to energy-efficient passive house standards, and preserve or even add tree can...