Carmen Passes Portland’s First-Ever Housing Production Strategy!

City Council today unanimously passed Portland’s first-ever Housing Production Strategy, which Commissioner Carmen Rubio proposed earlier this summer.

In introducing the resolution, Commissioner Rubio offered the following remarks:

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As we learned from staff last summer and fall, we need more housing in Portland – a lot more housing.

Everyone deserves to live in a secure and healthy home, but the reality is that not all Portlanders can access safe and affordable housing.

Economic, social, and physical barriers often limit residents from finding homes that meet their needs. And the rising cost of living has made it even harder for people, straining the budgets of many Portlanders – fueling gentrification and displacement and causing people living on the edge to lose their homes.

This Housing Production Strategy emphasizes equitable outcomes for communities facing bigger challenges to meeting their housing needs – especially low-income households, working families, communities of color, elders, people with disabilities, and people experiencing houselessness.

This proposed strategy builds on several key actions since Council first declared a housing emergency in 2015, and more than a dozen actions the City has taken since I was assigned the Community & Economic Development service area early last year:

• We heard that the Inclusionary Housing Program was out of balance and keeping some projects from moving forward, so we fixed it.

• We heard that a handful of zoning code requirements were big barriers to construction, so we did our homework, then addressed them.

• We heard that it had been years since there had been any cleanup on the zoning code, so we got that done, and made sure that work will happen again next year.

• We’ve heard for decades about challenges with our permitting process, so we did what no one before us would and are getting our house in order.

• We know that homeownership is a critical path toward stabilization and wealth creation, so we expanded our incentive programs and gave out $5 million in grants to buy land to build affordable homes.

• We advocated to change State law so we can approve our homeownership incentives faster, eliminating red tape and shaving off several weeks for nonprofit and other homebuilders.

• We know that choosing between housing our residents and protecting the environment is a false choice, so we found a way to balance those priorities in the floodplain in our Central City.

• We passed legislation that will require us at the City to better understand and acknowledge how our decisions could raise the cost of building homes.

• We adopted legislation to preserve existing affordable housing and to encourage the conversion of office buildings to housing. We froze System Development Charges for a year, and we reduced fees for certain permitting meetings.

• And we heard from folks in Central City and East Portland the need for a new generation of public funding for housing and economic development, so we got the ball rolling to explore new Tax Increment Financing districts there.

It has been a very eventful last year and a half. With a seamless handoff and foundation-setting from Commissioner Ryan, I took up the next challenges assigned to me and acted with urgency – because our housing emergency requires it. But we are not done yet.

There are 35 items in the Housing Production Strategy – 35 ways that we can adjust the levers we control and use the tools in our toolkit. Some of them are big, complex lifts that will take years. Others are smaller and more discrete.

But here’s what they all have in common: These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas that will sit on a shelf for years and years until there’s the political will to do them. This is a very real list of work that we fully intend to do. And I am grateful to be in a state where we will be held accountable to that promise.

Two of the items we already completed earlier this year. A whopping 15 are currently under way. Four more are kicking off this fall. 

That means that when our new Mayor and City Commissioners start their jobs on January 1st, nearly half of the items in this document will be in progress or already completed.

This list is huge step for Portland and for Oregon. It represents the core of the work that we in City government will be doing to ensure that we have the amount – and types – of housing that our residents will need in the next 20 years.

It will provide clarity for City leadership and staff in the coming years on how to develop their work plans and prioritize their time and resources. It offers the transparency that the public needs to keep us on track.

I also want to be clear that this document represents a body of work that is living, and will continue to expand as needs shift and new ideas come to the table.

As an example, one of those ideas – something that is not specifically listed in this Housing Production Strategy but is absolutely aligned with it – is from our friends in Los Angeles, where their Mayor issued an Executive Directive to reduce the amount of time it takes for affordable housing projects to move through permitting.

We have met with the City of Los Angeles, and we learned some important things: First, we learned that the biggest barrier for them doesn’t apply here – and then that some of their things we’ve already done as separate actions, like offering flexibility from Design Review.

But the main point here is that the there are some clearly beneficial things on Los Angeles’ list that we can do and absolutely should.

My plan – what I would like to see and for us to get moving on now – is for affordable housing and some types of middle-income housing to be approved within 90 City desk days.

This is a conversation I’ve already started with the relevant bureaus – and with our partner in this, Oregon Smart Growth. We also are fortunate to have Portland Housing Bureau Director Helmi Hisserich, who hails from the Los Angeles Housing Department and knows these reforms well. We will be working with them over the coming months to pull together key stakeholders to flesh out a real proposal – so stay tuned.

I am incredibly proud to have been able to shape this work, Portland’s first-ever Housing Production Strategy.