They’re ultra-slim and towering tall, and their neighbors give these controversial homes, wedged into narrow alleyways between otherwise “normal” houses, names like “monster” and “middle finger.” More commonly, they’re known as “pop-up” or “skinny” homes, and they’ve become an urban infill staple for builders and homeowners who want to build in a city where there’s just no more room.
The notorious homes, as tall as 50 feet and as narrow as 10, were once known as “spite houses.” They originated in the 1700s when dueling neighbors built them on slender swaths of property next-door or across from the house of a nemesis in order to obstruct a view, block the light or create an eyesore. Today, skinny houses allow homeowners to live in the hottest downtown neighborhoods where there’s precious little land for sale—without the expense of buying a normal-size existing home, tearing it down, and rebuilding on the lot.
Bad neighbors
The owners might be happy to be able to squeeze onto their favorite city block, but the neighbors don’t like pop-ups, largely for the same reasons those bickering 18th century enemies didn’t: they block the sun and their views. In fact, District of Columbia residents are so fed up with the pop-up phenomenon that they took their grievances to the city’s Zoning Commission last month for a lengthy public hearing over the future of the soaring structures—towering rowhouses that builders often divide into several cramped condo units.
Builders, real estate agents, small developers and investors were also at the hearing, defending their many-storied creations, which, because they’re squeezed onto trendy city blocks, sell for prices that return great profits.
The commission is considering limiting residential building heights to 35 feet, altering the current cap of 40 feet, and preventing builders from dividing homes in certain neighborhoods into more than two condos. In other neighborhoods, where zoning laws allow for even taller buildings, residents are asking for rezoning so the 35-foot cap applies to their blocks, too.
Builders, developers and Realtors defend skinny houses, saying they’re not as ugly as the neighbors say they are, and that the extra space in the clouds is attractive to homeowners with children.
A global phenomenon
The District isn’t the only city where the super-slim buildings are irritating residents, and the U.S. isn’t the only country where the phenomenon is, well, popping up.
In Long Beach, CA, the owner of a 500-square-foot lot built an extra-tall, extra-thin home to win a bet that he couldn’t fit a house on his tiny parcel. An apartment building in Amsterdam measures 1 meter wide—just more than three feet. Scotland is home of an 11-foot-wide building that its owner named “the wedge.” And Tokyo perhaps has the most skinny houses, with some as narrow as 5 feet across.
The DC commission is set to meet next week to decide whether to impose restrictions on home height. In the meantime, the $800,000 middle condo unit in DC’s most notorious skinny rowhouse—which neighbors have deemed so ugly that they call it “The Monster,” has been empty and unsold, even though it’s located in one of the city’s most coveted communities—the V Street corridor. There, the average time on the market is only 19 days for regular-size homes.