Advancing Infill and “Missing Middle” Housing in Manchester
Manchester’s participation in the 802 Homes initiative reflects a growing focus on infill and missing-middle housing as part of a broader, multi-pronged approach to addressing housing shortages. By looking at how additional homes can be thoughtfully integrated into existing neighborhoods—using vacant or underutilized land already served by infrastructure—this work aims to expand housing options while maintaining community character. Modular and small-scale development strategies also offer opportunities to reduce costs, shorten construction timelines, and lower barriers for local builders and homeowners. This effort aligns with ongoing work by the Selectboard and Housing Task Force to identify practical, community-supported pathways that help ensure Manchester remains accessible to working families now and into the future.
“One of the ideas behind this project is also to lean on modular development, which takes a lot of the onus away from stick-built construction here locally… Our hope is that we can expedite that process.”
Reposted from Manchester Journal
MANCHESTER — A project designed to facilitate infill housing construction in communities across the state made a stop in Manchester on Thursday, Nov. 20, when a team of housing planners visited several neighborhoods and locations around the town to get a sense of what types of housing might fit in with what’s already there.
802 Homes, as this phase of the “Homes For All” project is known, hopes to build on two earlier phases which developed a toolkit for potential homebuilders containing possible designs for housing and training for such construction. The state Agency of Commerce and Community Development is spearheading the effort.
Manchester was one of three communities selected for an on-the-ground assessment of what might be possible for developing home designs that would integrate into existing neighborhoods by building on vacant lots between homes as well as creating a roadmap for identifying the required steps for necessary administrative approvals, according to the agency’s website.
Hartford and Essex Junction are the other two communities currently involved in the project.
The team of housing planners walked through or looked over three different parts of town to get a sense of local housing as they begin a longer process which will continue on into next year, said Jeff Dube, a community planner and project manager with the Department of Housing and Community Development, a division within the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.
“The purpose of today was … to look at sort of the characteristic development patterns that might be conducive to what we're referring to as gentle infill, where there might be a wide lot with some extra space between homes or a vacant lot that might be able to support density within our existing neighborhoods in a way that's compatible with the current development pattern,” he said.
An online “virtual” tour had preceded the in-person one earlier in the week. They had done a similar walkabout in Hartford earlier that morning. These in-person visits helped give a sense of the style of homes that would target multifamily, “missing middle” homes they could incorporate into home designs that would reflect not only Manchester and the other communities but Vermont in general, he said.
“Missing middle” homes is a term describing housing types that have multiple units compatible in scale and form with single-family homes. These could include accessory dwelling units, duplexes, townhouses and mixed-use commercial and residential structures, according to the housing department’s website.
It’s part of what will take a multi-pronged approach to help resolve the state’s housing shortages, Dube said.
“What we're trying to target with infill development is available land that's already served by municipal infrastructure and in areas where there's existing space within existing neighborhoods that could promote more density,” Dube said. “This is more of a scattered site approach where we might be able to infill a little bit more to build upon some of the investments that communities have already made within their municipal infrastructure.”
The visits to Manchester, Hartford and Essex Junction will be followed up with more in-depth design “charettes” - workshops that bring together various stakeholders for discussions over the coming winter, he said.
Out of the first phase of this effort - which included a tour of Arlington as part of the development of the Homes For All Toolkit two years ago - came several possible housing designs which would allow small scale developers to quickly gear up to build them and which would be largely pre-approved by local zoning boards. The design charettes would be an opportunity to test drive some of those designs and get public feedback, Dube said.
“A running current of the Home for All initiative is trying to build our base of small-scale developers, and so this could be folks with experience in the building trades, they could be an architect, or they could just be a homeowner with extra space that are looking to build within their communities,” he said. “So the strategy really is trying to find an easy pathway for folks through the training that we're offering, but also a construction-ready document set for the home designs where it's a little easier to enter the development space for folks.”
The in-person visit by the Homes For All team, along with the virtual session that preceded it, had been useful and promising for future housing development in Manchester, said Jonathan West, a select board member who is also the chair of the town’s Housing Task Force.
Infill housing development may face some of the same roadblocks in other types of housing development, such as construction costs and labor supply, but it was one pathway among others that could provide more options for working families to be able to afford housing in Manchester, he said.
Simply making people more aware that infill housing, by filling in gaps between existing housing parcels, is one route forward was a good start, he said.
“One of the ideas behind this project is also to lean on modular development, which takes a lot of the onus away from stick-built construction here locally, where most of that can be done off-site, brought on-site, and erected at a much faster pace with all the same quality standards that they might have on a stick-built home, if not better,” he said. “So really it's a matter of cost, having the people to do it, and the time to do it. Our hope is that we can expedite that process.”
https://www.manchesterjournal.com/local-news/infill-housing-explored-in-manchester/article_4864b053-522e-4951-9e00-583348d2ca0d.html
As always, I can be reached directly at (802) 768-7900 or at west.j@manchester-vt.gov
