Carmen makes major progress to spur housing
Last week Portland City Council unanimously passed a pair of ordinances that I introduced to advance housing production in response to the ongoing challenges in the housing market.
This legislation sends a strong signal to non-profit and for-profit developers and homebuilders that Portland is serious about building more housing!
The passed legislation was shaped by a diverse set of community development stakeholders. Last spring, I asked stakeholders what local codes and rules were making it more expensive and challenging to build housing in Portland. Changing development rules is not easy business, and I’m proud of the end result, which aim to spur housing production without sacrificing environmental sustainability.
The regulatory relief package makes strategic changes to zoning code, covering 15 issues that will help move the needle on housing production. Those issues include adjustments to regulations related to bike parking, ground floor active use/height, non-conforming upgrades, ecoroof standards, design review, and neighborhood contact.
The other ordinance makes key changes to the Inclusionary Housing program, which was designed to create sustainable, mixed-income communities by requiring some of the housing units to be affordable to low-income Portlanders in new developments.
These changes will balance the program by expanding the property tax exemption for projects located in more areas outside of Central City, as well as providing more flexibility and clarity for how the program functions.
The Inclusionary Housing program is doing what it was meant to do: expanding access for low- and moderate-income families to live in some of the most desirable areas of Portland. At a time when development activity has dropped off, these changes will ensure that the City is providing enough financial incentives to adequately cover the costs of complying with the program.
These new ordinances cap off a year of accomplishments from my office to advance housing production. Please click here to learn more.
I would be curious if developers are as enthusiastic as Carmen Rubio. How about clearing a path so that getting a permit to build takes less than a YEAR!
Is the City of Portland ever going to hold the developer of the Ritz Carlton (LOL) tower accountable for blowing off the inclusionary housing obligations that clearly applied to the project?
Something significant is missing in Rubio's breathless, self-promoting campaign announcement. Each requirement that's being temporarily amended was put there for a reason. Portland being Portland, it's highly likely that the reason was spelled out in great detail by the city bureaucracy as part of the approval process. In each case, this action signals that increasing the housing supply is, for the moment, a more important policy objective than the goals behind the requirement. In other words, it's a trade off.
What's missing in Rubio's piece is any mention of a process for evaluating the amendments, determining whether they have advanced the goal of producing more housing and, if so, to what extent. Now, that information may be buried in one of the supporting documents. If it is, Rubio or whoever on her staff did the actual work of putting the Substack message together should have mentioned it in this public-facing announcement. If something as elementary as evaluating the initiative escaped the attention of the many people who worked on these amendments, then it shows that it's still amateur hour at City Hall.
Also, no matter what Ibram X. Kendi says, past discrimination does not justify present reverse discrimination. The provisions of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race and color (among other things) in renting and advertising housing, apply to publicly funded affordable housing.