Oakland has proposed Objective Design Standards (ODS) that would place costly requirements on new small-scale apartments, i.e. one-to-four story buildings. Some of the more expensive rules include:

• Requiring massing articulations that break up the facade of the building (even though small-scale projects don't need to be broken up!)
• Banning exterior-access corridors, which have been used to get more homes onto long, skinny lots

Planning needs to hear from us! While we applaud anything that makes the permitting process clearer and more streamlined, these ODS would make it more expensive to build apartment buildings. With the housing crisis, and with construction costs as high as they are today, we need to find ways to make home construction more affordable, not less!