Density Vs. Affordability: If We Can’t Have Both, Which One?

Last week’s City Council meeting avoided the extreme acrimony of the previous one, but, as I predicted last week, the sharpest policy divide was highlighted in the relatively obscure issue known as small lot amnesty. At issue is whether existing legal plots of land across the city can be “disaggregated” – split into constituent smaller-than-standard lots, so that existing housing can be removed, and redeveloped as two or more smaller properties. This was recently ruled to be legal as an unintended consequence of an ordinance allowing the development of existing undersized lots which would otherwise be too small to…