Buckeye duo fights to bring duplexes back home
Their film explores how a 1954 zoning shift erased duplexes—and why restoring them could ease Columbus’ housing crunch.
Alumni Carlie Boos and Anita Kwan created the documentary “United: The Hidden Story of the Humble Duplex.” (Photo by Jodi Miller)
With a new documentary, two Ohio State graduates hope to return the once-popular duplex home to Central Ohio to help add more affordable housing. “A zoning change in 1954 largely made duplexes illegal in Columbus,” says Carlie Boos ’07, ’07, executive director of the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio (AHACO). “Duplexes were historically the foundation of the middle class, and we want to bring them back like they’re doing in cities like Minneapolis and Denver to help dig us out of this housing hole.”
“United: The Hidden Story of the Humble Duplex” premiered in June to a sold-out audience at Studio 35 in Clintonville—a section of Columbus where there’s a duplex or two on many blocks.
The movie was filmed by Anita Kwan ’10 and produced by Boos and AHACO. “United” explores the history of this once-popular type of house and makes the case for Columbus to change its zoning laws to allow the revival of homes with side-by-side living.
“At the premiere and the public and private screenings since then, so many people have come up to me with a duplex story they wanted to share,” Boos says. “I didn’t realize how many people this quirky architectural style had touched.”
Boos recruited Kwan to work on the project. “This documentary is coming out at a perfect time and will make people more aware of how important duplexes can be in creating more affordable housing,” says Kwan, founder of Reel Hoot, a Columbus video production company she launched after Ohio State.
Columbus is in the midst of revising its citywide zoning laws, a complicated and lengthy process.
“Our next big project is an economic impact study on duplexes,” Boos says. “My dad was a small-business owner, and we lived in a duplex in Wadsworth, Ohio. Looking back, there were some rough years and our family might not have made it [financially] without the extra revenue from renting out the other half of our duplex.”
