rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/petition/support-missing-middle-housing-across-tucson?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-petition-area-support-missing-middle-housing-across-tucson' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> Tucson for Everyone https://actionnetwork.org/groups/tucson-for-everyone https://actionnetwork.org//images/generic_facebook.jpg Tucson for Everyone, representing 3,700 supporters of our vision for a more affordable city, is excited to voice our support for the proposed Missing Middle UDC Code Amendment and related amendments, and request immediate city-wide applicability rather than a phased approach. Our support for the measure is based on: The close alignment of the text of these amendments to many of our group's pillars, including missing middle, housing stability, expanding legal housing options for both affordable and market rate projects, and reductions to arbitrary barriers during permitting. Our participation in conveying community feedback during the original drafting of HB2721, and signing onto the letter of support for the final version. We are extending our support for immediate city wide adoption for the following reasons: The analysis finds that the public wanted these changes applied city wide as of May 2025. We believe these changes move the city firmly in the direction its residents have voiced support for in the recent two-year long Plan Tucson 2025 process, and other feedback-gathering efforts like the Prosperity Initiative and the HAST. We expect the community's desire for measures which improve the affordability of housing and transportation will grow over the coming years alongside concerns over cost of living. Our group's experience from working groups and other community events informs us that residents become disengaged from civic participation when their input does not lead to action, and instead lead to future rounds of feedback.   We believe that, even if adopted to their fullest extent, these amendments will not result in any rapid changes or provoke backlash. This is informed by our previous experience with Tucson's ADU ordinance which resulted in only a few dozen completed projects within a four year timespan due to the slow adoption even after legalization. We believe these amendments make progress toward most major goals our community supports, and ask that you address: Land Use & Housing, by allowing more diverse housing options. Our City’s studies have identified an 8,000 home shortage as a root cause for housing cost issues, and projects that number will expand to 30,000 over 10 years. Barriers to building that housing include both the current 7,000 sq.ft. minimum lot size, which precludes the construction of townhomes on 1,500 sq.ft. lots, and parking minimums because covered parking spots contribute up to $35,000 to the cost of newly-built homes which are passed along to home buyers. Climate, Water, and the Environment primarily by allowing the housing our city needs to be built within our city rather than by cutting into pristine desert lands, and also by allowing housing to be built near places of employment to reduce the largest source of pollution: transportation. Wellness & Transportation, by allowing neighborhoods compact enough to be traversed on foot, bike, and public transit, which are active ways of moving that promote healthy living and produce negligible pollution compared to cars. History & Culture, by legalizing new housing to be built in the pattern of Tucson's earliest and most historic neighborhoods, which are often more accommodating and affordable to inter-generational households than more recent suburban development, and which have only been illegal to build in the last 50 years of Tucson's 250+ years of urban settlement. Equity, by recognizing that Tucson contains the only zip-codes in the USA where residents are more cost-burdened by transportation than housing, and taking this as a sign that many working people are presented with a no-win deal between expensive-housing/affordable-transportation within the city, or affordable-housing/expensive-transportation on its fringes; and that those burdened neighborhoods represent the populations pushed to the outskirts of the city by the legacy of racially-regressive policies like red-lining and urban renewal. Economy, by recognizing that between gas, maintenance, insurance, injuries, accelerated wear on roads, road-widening projects, and remediation of negative health effects caused by pollution, cars are the most expensive type of transportation to burden household and public budgets, and that the most prosperous cities in the world are built on a foundation of multi-modal transportation and robust public transit which is most viable in the denser areas these amendments will legalize. Finally, residents have consistently ranked responsiveness of local government in their top three priorities. We ask you to remember that despite government timelines being measured in the months or years, our lives are lived one day after another. Realistically, projects made legal by these amendments will take years to be completed. Delays in addressing the crisis of housing affordability today cascade into worse homelessness, cost of living, and quality of life tomorrow. Thank you, Tucson for Everyone https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-missing-middle-housing-across-tucson