Support Our Work
Support the work of turning zoning permission into buildable housing.
Why Support Us?
Missing Middles is building a practical body of work to help cities, small developers, and AEC practitioners understand what it takes to deliver neighborhood-scale infill multifamily housing under real-world conditions.
Zoning reform has opened the door to this kind of housing in Sacramento and beyond. But permission is not delivery. Very little of this housing is actually getting built, and the reasons are rarely about design. Projects stall on financing, construction costs, code thresholds, and permitting long before they reach a construction site.
The findings from the Sacramento Three & Up Challenge, including prototype drawings, pro forma templates, permitting pathway documentation, and pattern book entries, are made publicly accessible. That means the lessons don’t stay locked inside one competition or one city. Cities evaluating their own zoning reforms, small developers assessing a parcel, and practitioners working on similar projects can use this work directly.
Supporting Missing Middles supports that public resource. It funds the testing, the documentation, and the research that turns a zoning change into housing that actually gets built.
What Your Contribution Supports
Public-Facing Research
Findings from the Sacramento Three & Up Challenge are made publicly accessible, including permitting pathway documentation and pattern book entries. That means the lessons don’t stay locked inside one competition or one city.
Challenge Administration
Running the Sacramento Three & Up Challenge requires managing entrant registration, submission review, anonymity protections, and Jury coordination across two rounds of evaluation.
Awards
Prize funding recognizes proposals that demonstrate real progress toward buildable, feasible housing, across both the Professional and Student Divisions.
Documentation
Permitting pathway guides, pattern book entries, and process records give future proposals a clearer starting point, rather than starting from zero each time.
Outreach
Connecting this work with cities, practitioners, and communities beyond Sacramento helps the findings reach people who can actually use them.
Feasibility resources
Tools and materials that help test housing proposals against real construction costs, financing assumptions, and site conditions, so proposals move from concept toward something that could actually be built.
