Who Will Build the Housing-Ready City? How Cities Can Grow an Ecosystem of Incremental Developers
“Cities across North America are working hard to reform their zoning codes, streamline permitting, and remove the barriers that make small-scale housing development difficult. That’s essential work that many places are finally getting done.
But legal reform is only the beginning. Even when the rules are fixed, most of the people who might act on those changes still don’t. They don’t build a backyard cottage. They don’t convert a single-family home into a duplex. They don’t rehab the fourplex next door. Not because they don’t want to, but because they need support — or even just an invitation.
These people aren’t real estate insiders. They’re not national builders or institutional investors.
They’re your neighbors. They’re homeowners, tradespeople, small landlords, and community-minded entrepreneurs. They care about their block. They have skills. Some have experience. But what they don’t have — yet — is clarity, support, and confidence.
Strong Towns published “The Housing-Ready City” to help cities make incremental development legal.
This followup, “Who Will Build the Housing-Ready City” will help you make it real.
This guide, “Who Will Build the Housing-Ready City?,” is about growing an ecosystem of people — developers in the broadest, most human sense of the word. Our goal isn’t to attract big players. It’s to empower the local talent that’s already present in every city. Because if we want more small-scale development, we need more people willing and able to take that first step.
They’re already here. We just haven’t invited them in.
If we want a local housing market that is responsive to local needs, we need to create an ecosystem where these incremental builders and developers can thrive.”
Incremental Development
The Nonprofit Homebuilder is a member of The Incremental Development Alliance (IncDev).
Their Bio:
”The Incremental Development Alliance began in 2015 as a collaboration between small developers who found themselves overwhelmed by the number of people asking them the same question: how do I build a small building in the place I love? In order to share their mentorship and hard-won knowledge far and wide, the Alliance was created to structure a suite of classroom-based and hands-on coaching tools that could be scaled across the country for the benefit of municipal clients and developers alike.
The Alliance part of our name celebrates the many individuals, institutions, foundations, and grassroots groups that are our allies in this work. We are an Alliance of doers dedicated to our neighborhoods across this continent.
IncDev was created by a small and mighty few of radically committed thinkers and doers. Our Founding Members are credited with establishing the foundation the Alliance builds upon today. Although our Founding members are not active, each one leaves a lasting impression on the cities and neighborhoods that we know and love from the east coast to the west. We are certainly proud of all our Founders have supported the Alliance through and the work they continue to do independently. We are grateful to our founding members for making this Alliance a reality.”
To learn more about the organization, here’s a short video:
Strong Towns & “The Housing Trap”
Strong Towns is an education and advocacy organization that works with towns and residents to stregthen the stability and sustainability of communities. Here is a good video overview of “The Housing Trap”, the topic of their most recent book.