The problem of housing affordability continues to grow, and Thursday the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN) hosted a summit inviting public officials and private developers to argue the need for middle-sized housing.
"A lot of communities are slow to develop the missing middle," EDAWN President and CEO Mike Kazmierski says. "That's two housing units to 50 housing units."
Keynote speaker Steffon Lehmann, director of the UNLV School of Architecture, says the area needs to be densified, but he also doesn't want very tall buildings. He says they should be maybe three or four stories tall.
"Stacking buildings on top of each other," Lehmann says. "See how we can use townhouse duplexes a mix of that, not just free standing houses that take up too much land."
He says the first step to densifying the city, is to stop spreading out.
"We need to say enough is enough and stop that," Lehmann says. "And have a gross boundary a tight gross boundary. And you need to densify and grow inwards rather than outwards."
He says building high-density housing improves traffic conditions and reduces cost.
"We don't have to drive for everything like buying milk or bread or butter but we can walk," Lehmann says. "Or we can walk to the pub in the evening or we could even walk to work. I mean how ideal would that be?"
"So it helps you on traffic but it also makes a difference on cost," Kazmierski says. "If you take a square mile of land and build four houses or you build condos or townhouses, you can put a lot more people on that land at a lower cost."
"If you have a higher population density you can run buses and people can walk and you have a more compact city," Lehmann says.
