Anchorage takes another run at its missing-middle housing rules

Anchorage builds a few hundred homes a year and, by the city's own math, needs about a thousand. A zoning ordinance now before the Assembly aims at that gap, for the second time in as many years.

The Missing Middle Housing Opportunity Overlay, introduced June 9 by Assembly Members Erin Baldwin Day and George Martinez, would let owners along major transit corridors opt into building duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts and townhomes, under relaxed rules for height, design and permitting. Neighbors who don't opt in keep their existing zoning. Height caps at 30 feet in R-1 zones, 40 elsewhere.

It's a rebuild of the 2025 Transit Supportive Development Overlay, which drew enough neighborhood pushback that the city paused it for more dialogue before the Planning and Zoning Commission sent it forward with amendments. This version is opt-in rather than blanket, and the sponsors tie it to the plans Anchorage has already adopted: the 2020 Comprehensive Plan, the 2040 Land Use Plan, the Assembly's Housing Action Plan and the LaFrance administration's goal of 10,000 homes in 10 years.

Each of those plans calls for more density along the corridors. The zoning to deliver it has been slower to arrive, and stalled outright last year. Whether this version passes rests with the same corridor neighborhoods that stopped the last one.

The measure, AO 2026-85, is still a draft. The public hearing opens Sept. 15, with input sessions over the summer.