Providing a mix of housing options to address the county’s housing crisis
Montgomery County, like many high-cost jurisdictions, has struggled with how to ensure its housing is affordable and attainable for residents at all income levels. The county’s housing affordability crisis is the result of multiple converging factors, including market forces, policy decisions, declining federal housing resources, stagnant income growth, the increased cost of development, the diminishing availability of land, and demographic shifts. These shifts, including a growing population, create more demand for housing, but we have not built enough housing units over recent years to meet the demand.
“Missing Middle” housing refers to a range of building types that are compatible in scale, form and construction with single-family homes, but include multiple housing units. Missing Middle housing is typically a two-to-four story multi-unit, clustered housing such as smaller townhouses, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, detached courtyard cottages, attached courtyard apartments, or smaller apartment buildings (typically with fewer than 20 units) that are typically in walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods.
Missing Middle housing was common during the pre-World War II era, but largely disappeared in recent decades with most new construction comprised of either single-family homes or taller multi-family apartment buildings.
Missing Middle housing provides housing options affordable to a range of incomes for an increasingly diverse population of downsizing seniors, professionals without children, young families and newcomers to the region. However, developing these projects is challenging due to market and economic obstacles, unfavorable neighborhood perceptions and burdensome regulatory requirements. Generally, many of the existing Missing Middle housing structures could not be built under the current standards of the single-family zones in Montgomery County.
Missing Middle housing can provide a transition from low-density single-family neighborhoods to high-density apartment, retail and office districts. In these transition areas, there are opportunities to provide zoning in the more commercial areas that will encourage Missing Middle housing. In addition, there are opportunities to make changes to single-family zones in these transition areas to allow Missing Middle housing production. These actions will not eliminate single-family neighborhoods. It may result in some single-family homes being replaced in a compatible form, if a property owner decides to take advantage of future zoning changes or if a developer combines multiple properties. The goal of Missing Middle housing is to allow Montgomery County residents to access more choices in housing to meet their needs.
Recent Missing Middle Housing Initiatives in Montgomery County
Montgomery Planning has undertaken several planning initiatives that have a significant focus on Missing Middle housing.
- Thrive Montgomery 2050 is the update of the county’s General Plan, a long-range policy framework for guiding future land use and growth for the next 30 years. Thrive Montgomery 2050 provides the opportunity to look for new tools such as Missing Middle housing, to increase our housing production to meet the needs of current and future residents. Thrive Montgomery 2050 was adopted in 2022.
- Attainable Housing Strategies is an initiative the Planning Department oversaw through a planning process that evaluated and refined various proposals to spur the development of more diverse types of housing, including Missing Middle Housing, in Montgomery County. The Planning Board’s recommendations on Attainable Housing Strategies were transmitted to the County Council in June 2024.
Planning staff also completed master plans (the Veirs Mill Corridor Master Plan and the Forest Glen/Montgomery Hills Sector Plan) where they introduced creative solutions to encourage Missing Middle housing. Some previous approaches to Missing Middle housing in these plans include rezoning to the CRN zone (the least dense zone in the Commercial Residential family of zones), capping the building heights to align with the typical Missing Middle product, and providing guiding language in the master plans such as “greater variation in housing types” or “medium-density housing.”
Frequently asked questions
Missing Middle housing is common in places like Washington, DC, East Silver Spring, Takoma Park, Chevy Chase, Kentlands and King Farm and is commonly found in the form of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), duplexes, triplexes and small apartment buildings.
| Montgomery County, MD Housing Units by Units in Structure | ||
| Total | 390,673 | |
| 1 building, detached | 182,936 | 47% |
| 1 building, attached | 67,425 | 17% |
| 2 units | 1,803 | 0.5% |
| 3 or 4 units | 5,447 | 1% |
| 5 to 9 units | 20,417 | 5% |
| 10 to 19 units | 37,155 | 10% |
| 2-19 units (Missing Middle) | 64,822 | 17% |
| 20 to 49 units | 11,602 | 3% |
| 50 or more units | 63,508 | 16% |
One of the most common forms of Missing Middle housing that already exists in Montgomery County is accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Currently, there are hundreds of ADUs in the county. Visit the Department of Housing and Community Affairs’ website on ADUs to view a map of existing and pending ADUs. Please refer to the Department of Permitting Services (DPS) zoning website and the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) website on ADU licensing to find ADU requirements.
Montgomery County’s communities have diverse needs in terms of housing—including affordability, the size and type of housing and proximity to transit. Missing Middle housing, which provides more housing types for multiple households at a similar scale to single-family homes, can provide a transition between single-family neighborhoods and commercial business districts (CBDs).
Montgomery County has a current population of 1.06 million and we are projecting 200,000 more residents by 2045. The county is already experiencing a housing shortage. We have not built enough housing to keep up with demand, and current housing options are often not affordable for low-income families and middle-income residents, making it difficult for existing residents to remain in the county. Missing Middle housing can provide new options for existing and new residents to find homes at the right size and price point for their needs and help Montgomery County grow its housing supply.
Racial disparities in wealth and homeownership exist in Montgomery County. These disparities were shaped in part by a legacy of discriminatory lending practices, restrictive covenants and single-family zoning. An important step in how the county begins to address past inequities in housing choice, while also creating more equitable, mixed-income neighborhoods, is by allowing production of more types of housing near transit, including in existing single-family zones. Visit Montgomery Planning’s Equity in Planning website to learn how we are incorporating equity into land use planning for Montgomery County.
Missing Middle housing is not income-restricted affordable housing. Most Missing Middle housing is market-rate housing that generally will be more affordable than the typical new detached single-family home due to its smaller size. For FAQ on how Montgomery County defines and builds various types of income-restricted affordable housing, please visit the FAQ on Montgomery Planning’s housing website.
Missing Middle housing alone will not solve Montgomery County’s affordable housing shortage, but together with other steps it will help make more housing available at lower prices. Missing Middle housing is one of many solutions that Montgomery County can use to address our housing affordability issues.
Generally speaking, many of the existing Missing Middle housing structures could not be built under the current standards in single-family zones. Single-family zoning refers to zones where the predominant or only use allowed is single-family detached dwelling units.
In Montgomery County, the Zoning Code refers to single-family zones as Residential Detached Zones. These zones include the RE-2, RE-2C, RE-1, R-200, R-90, R-60 and R-40 zones. The development standards of these zones vary (i.e. usable area, setbacks, lot coverage), but the predominant use in the Residential Detached Zones is a single-family detached dwelling unit. You can learn more about the standards for development in these zones through our Zoning Fact Sheets or through the Zoning Code.
Many of the single-family zones in Montgomery County do allow for some types of Missing Middle housing, namely duplexes and townhouses, but there are additional requirements to build Missing Middle types in the single-family zones. These additional requirements include:
Process: To build Missing Middle housing types, property owners must go through the optional method of development. Optional method projects generally require more process, including Planning Department review and Planning Board approval. The additional process and time needed often discourages builders to proceed.
Affordable Housing Requirements: The Montgomery County Zoning Ordinance requires optional method projects to fulfill an affordable housing requirement of Moderately Priced Dwelling Units, even if the project has less than 20 units. This added cost to small projects will often make it too costly, or infeasible to build.
Usable Area Requirements: Optional method projects also have usable area requirements that require finding or assembling three to five acres, which is increasingly difficult in most transit accessible neighborhoods south of the I-495 Beltway. For example, the R-60 zone requires 3 acres of usable area.
Density: Even at their densest, many of the single-family zones are significantly less dense than most of the Missing Middle housing typologies. At its densest, the R-60 zone allows around 9 units per acre, which is less dense than the typical Missing Middle housing type, around 10-20 units per acre.
Many of these standards and additional steps are not required to build single-family detached units in these zones, making them easier to build and incentivizing the production of the single-family detached units.
Building Missing Middle housing will require us to reassess the county’s longstanding pattern of exclusively single-family neighborhoods. This will include reviewing existing single-family zone standards, including the usable area, density, and parking requirements, as well as the process for development review and approval. Community involvement and support will play a critical role in enabling Montgomery County residents to access more choices in housing to meet their needs.
Zoning changes would take place in two ways. A countywide zoning change would require a Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) that will entail at least two public hearings (one held by the Planning Board, and one held by the Montgomery County Council). A Sectional Map Amendment (SMA) is the final step in the process for a Sector Plan, which focuses on a specific geographic area. A SMA will implement zoning recommendations included in an adopted Master or Sector Plan and is approved by the County Council.
If a property’s zoning is changed to allow for Missing Middle housing through a countywide ZTA or as part of a Master Plan SMA, this housing would be built only if the property owner chooses to redevelop the property into Missing Middle housing.
Sign up for the Housing eLetter or email Lisa Govoni, housing policy coordinator, at lisa.govoni@montgomeryplanning.org or at 301-650-5624 with any specific housing questions, including any additional questions you have about Missing Middle housing or the Attainable Housing Strategies.
Additional Montgomery Planning Missing Middle Housing Resources
- Missing Middle Housing: Planning’s New Cup of Tea, Planning Director Gwen Wright’s 2017 “The Third Place” blog post on Missing Middle housing.
- The 2020 Housing Needs Assessment provides an analysis of current demographic, economic and housing market conditions in the county and a detailed housing demand forecast for the county through 2045. The Housing Needs Assessment provides a good primer of existing housing conditions in the county.
- Montgomery Planning has undertaken several additional studies of housing and the housing market, which can be found on our housing website.
- Visit Montgomery Planning’s Equity in Planning website to learn how we are incorporating equity into land use planning for Montgomery County.
Missing Middle concept created by Dan Parolek, the founding principal of Opticos Design (OpticosDesign.com).
Staff Contact
Lisa Govoni
301-650-5624
lisa.govoni@montgomeryplanning.org