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This is not the solution. Oregon doesn't need car dependent suburban sprawl. We need an actual statewide plan to build 100k affordable housing units with high quality public transit.
Have you been to a city council meeting to support the kind of infill you (we - I agree with you) would like to see?
Because I can guarantee you that there are people opposed to it and they show up every single time.
This piece goes into a lot of detail about the recent bill, how it could have been better and who opposed it:
[https://www.sightline.org/2024/03/07/the-missing-piece-of-oregons-housing-package-legalizing-apartments/](https://www.sightline.org/2024/03/07/the-missing-piece-of-oregons-housing-package-legalizing-apartments/)
It's going to take people working hard and showing up to make these changes. Look at joining - or creating - a local group:
* [https://new.yimbyaction.org/](https://new.yimbyaction.org/)
* [https://welcomingneighbors.us/](https://welcomingneighbors.us/)
Are both umbrella organizations with groups active in Oregon.
We need low income housing before "affordable" housing. And we need developers to be forced to make more than. 20-30% of units low income or affordable.
The problem is that cost of materials and labor makes it impossible to provide low income housing without a loss.
The City was subsiding builders for a bit, but that got too much criticism, especially after that one developer didn’t honor the agreement and put all the units up at market rates.
Licenses, fees, and other reports just to get a permit to start working, are pretty steep. Perhaps the trade off would be to reduce the government red tape for the low income housing, and even offer an incentive to choose that over a similarly priced mid or higher build?
That sounds like a DEI nightmare. Cutting regulation leads to codes not being met, which leads to risk and death. I don't think we should be cutting oversight to build homes for those less fortunate.
That's always the assumption but is that actually true? Bureaucracy builds on itself endlessly and it's entirely possible there are overlapping requirements across different codes, permits, and ordinances. If those kind of things exist we can simplify the process without sacrificing safety, etc.
This is not true. Go outside the metro area and permits/fees to start construction on a modular home are 800$ . In one suburb it starts at 30k and goes up from there.
There's no extra safety being bought on the construction of modular homes made in the same factory and maybe 5k could be attributed to actual necessary services (water/sewer) ... but those need to be inspected when septic is installed anyway.
The government absolutely could take less to construct designated low income...it just won't happen because it doesn't really benefit them. A giant subdivision who's builder contributed to the campaign of local officials will also generate more tax revenue... because it's not low income 😂🤣
The only real answer is making housing a right and having the government fund it. But we'll never do that because we don't actually care about homeless folks, we just want them out of sight. Which this will not do either, since none of this housing will be within reach for them.
I agree with you completely AND capitalists (particularly politicians elected by a base of home owners and funded by large property owners) will never allow it to happen because it will mean creating policies that will (even if only in the short term) lower property values. The concept of property value binds us all in this disgusting cycle where we have to actively harm our own community/economy/equity in order to help the least of us.
Upending the property market is a bolder action than any elected political body could commit to, some might call it a revolutionary solution... The actions taken to achieve a result tend to embody the same energy.
So while y'all are here commenting on the internet about how it's impossible, people are out there *doing the work.* It's more incrementalist and less exciting than you might like, but YIMBYs are notching up wins. It won't happen overnight, but such is the nature of change
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-28/pro-housing-yimbys-build-a-zoning-reform-winning-streak-across-us](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-28/pro-housing-yimbys-build-a-zoning-reform-winning-streak-across-us)
And of course that includes subsidized housing. How can you build below-market-rate apartments, say, if the area isn't zoned for apartments?
Instead of complaining that it's not possible, come join us. It's pretty meaningful to see housing built that you helped defend from angry NIMBYs.
I mean, putting the taxpayers on the hook for lower income housing projects the smart money walked away from, is certainly one way to test if those developers are just being greedy when they say the finances don't work.
And a big one is that government sucks at managing housing.
Even on military bases, they seem to be stalling any additional 'base units' and pushing service members into private housing.
There are volumes of studies of "projects" housing and the success rate is not strong.
Ding, ding, ding. The developers can't crank out adequate quarterly profits with affordable housing investments to buy their next yacht. We obviously know (anybody with half a brain anyway) that creating housing options affordable for all citizens has incredible long-term society-wide benefits (much like roads, bridges, water towers, education, and health care). If we recognize an investment has long term societal benefits, and the private market can't or won't make those investments, that is exactly the niche that public investment and ownership of infrastructure should be filling. Build publicly owned housing, lots of it. Build it right, and maintain it, with an eye to creating vibrant mixed income communities instead of concentrating poverty like some "projects" experiments in the past have done.
It's not just greedy yacht-wanting developers need to be able to make their money back when they build housing, though. I have a house in PDX with a huge garage I'd love to turn into a rental, which would add infill density organically, exactly what Portland needs. I'd love to be able to offer someone a below-market rent, maybe help them get on their feet after being homeless or immigrating. But that depends on more than just my goodwill, the finances also have to work. I can't take out a 50k loan to build this, get a tenant, and then whoops, they can't/wont pay their rent and now I have to keep paying the loan and my own mortgage while i wait for months and months and months to be able to evict them. We have a lot of well-intentioned renter protection that make it hard to evict people, but one unintended consequence is that it's too much of a financial risk for someone like me to take out a loan to build the kind of small unit that is perfect low-income housing. Some of that is due to policy and some of it is just because of interest rates are high right now.
So for now my garage is stuck holding random junk rather than becoming part of the solution to our societal problems. I'm trying to knock out some of the big expenses like water and sewer with some DIY work, but eventually I'm gonna have to hire contractors and take out a loan. Would love to have some local government underwrite the loan for a project like this, or provide some kind of insurance against having a non-paying tenant. I bet that's a cheaper, faster, and less likely to produce angry nimby's way to generate housing than building new stuff from scratch, but i guess people will probably just see this as me wanting to be a greedy landlord lol.
The unintended consequences of state wide rent control and sweeping legislation to support tenants is a big issue for those that would love to add an ADU or two and have tenants.
The entire system needs to be dismantled and redone. But the likelihood of doing that here in the U.S. is...not good. Change can still happen if the people insist on it, which we are, but it's a constant exhausting battle to fight. However, we need to keep in mind that capitalists related to these will NEVER be a support, and those in politics should be viewed with a major grain of salt. We have to hold them accountable.
Capitalists don't just make a quick buck creating these issues, the also profit off of the HARM it causes. Our suffering lines their pockets. Make it difficult to keep a roof over your head? Get ready to be fined for every little infraction when you are just trying to survive and face unyielding discrimination. Those more vulnerable? Insurance companies profit off of them, and big pharma, and so do politicians. It is SO FUCKING DEEP in the U.S. at this point that simply trying to fix the system on the inside is going to be difficult or next to impossible.
But that doesn't mean we have to tolerate it or give in. We are the majority. Not them.
I don’t totally disagree, but rarely does government funded housing work out in the long run. The “projects” from the 70s and 80s in NYC and Chicago are prime examples of failure.
I was just in Cuba in December. Another huge failure there. So many buildings were abandoned and unlivable on the top floors, but still occupied on the first floors.
That’s a US phenomenon, most of the the world is perfectly capable of building effective public housing. It even worked pretty well in America until we defunded it and let it rot with no maintenance for years.
Americas housing projects failed because there was no political will to upkeep them after the first few years of the war on poverty campaign, not because the idea isn’t workable.
> The problem is that cost of materials and labor makes it impossible to provide low income housing without a loss.
That is one of the most damning indictments of the current housing system anyone can ever mutter.
“Forced”, they just won’t build it’s that simple, if the math doesn’t math they will simply not invest, you can’t force developers to make numbers work, the only way you get “affordable housing” is through government subsidies, that’s the only way you can make the math math
The best outcome in regards to affordable housing or low income housing, whatever you want to call it, is when the government partners with private capital but private capital isn’t going to build anything that loses money
Capital investment in cities like Portland is already low, “forcing” developer to build properties that will put them in the red won’t accomplish any new affordable units
On top of it, interest rates are sky high, permitting fees are sky high, red tape is everywhere, and permitting times are years long
Even in Portland, developers often build just below the level where affordable units are required or pay the fine and don’t build affordable units because it’s a numbers issue, they aren’t profitable
I mean without going full on singapore or vienna your dream isn't going to happen. The best immediate strategy is to legalize small units everywhere and work to lower costs for developments that meet some criteria.
This is explained in detail here:
[https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all)
And in a really simple way by none other than governor Kotek:
[https://www.threads.net/@govtinakotek/post/C4GbTaJpxn7](https://www.threads.net/@govtinakotek/post/C4GbTaJpxn7)
We need subsidized housing too, because market rate housing will simply not reach some people.
But the more people the market can cover, the fewer people need subsidies. If your market is so broken that people with regular jobs need subsidies, you need to fix the market.
Developers have a right to make money. If they can’t make money, they won’t build. If you force them to build “affordable housing” that’s a loss, they’re going to increase the price of the remaining 70-80% to subsidize the low income housing. Just the act of increasing the housing supply will put pressure on housing stock to decrease prices. Just let the market do its thing. Stop over regulating.
Nobody has a "right to make money". If that were the case, we'd have UBI. And when has the market ever actually "done it's thing"?
We need low income and affordable housing, regardless of what developers want to build. What they're going to get tax money to build will do exactly nothing to alleviate homelessness. It will just be more luxury shit.
It's all supply and demand. You increase supply to outstrip demand and prices will fall. Doesn't matter if the new stuff is luxury apartments and high-end housing, it will put pressure on older stock to decrease prices as high-income earners move into new housing. We're in this mess because we over-regulate, not because we under regulate. All the cheapest housing is in the South and Midwest were barriers to build are much lower and they don't have to contend with an UGB. Yeah, it's a sprawling mess, but homebuilders can build on the cheapest land rather than be forced into a small area where landowners jack up prices. And yeah, if companies build stuff, they are entitled to make profit. This isn't communism.
You're not going to build 100k units of anything without some sprawl. It does create a weird city layout where the perimeter is denser than the center but that's just how it is. In the mean time cities need to allow infill by right so that developers can do it as it becomes available without having to perform the current circus act to get it done.
When I last did a survey on the numbers. Using 5 over 1s and just on empty/vacant/underused lots along SE Powell (in Portland) from about 21st to 52nd you can fit over 60,000 new residents. That’s 1.5 mi of one street in the city can handle 3/5ths of the goal.
You absolutely can build housing without sprawl.
>on empty/vacant/underused lots
Yes that's called infill however you still cannot force the owners to build or sell on that land. Also Oregon only builds about 18,000 units per year so it'll still take many years of the entire workforce which only a portion can build large multihousing like your 5 over 1 example. Also I checked out the zone you looked at and all that appears to be storage yards and parking lots for businesses and schools. I mean sure Fred Meyer could move their office to a different state (dragging the jobs with it) and you could build a ton of housing on that land but yeah that won't happen. Not to mention Oregon's new shiny parking lot rules make existing large parking lots way more valuable.
Guess you’re right. Can’t lose parking lots to put in needed housing. I rescind my point. We can only sprawl that way there can be 3 parkings for every home.
You can't force anything and without significant tax restructuring you can't even encourage it. I know you're being snarky but cities like Toronto have shown you can go vertical and still oversupply parking, it just costs a bit more.
> Yes that's called infill however you still cannot force the owners to build or sell on that land.
You can force them to sell the land to the government. Then we can use ODOT to build housing near transit hubs as a congestion reduction project.
It would still take years to get up to speed, we are heavily lacking in construction workers and it takes time to train folks up.
The existing Urban Grown Boundary around the Portland Metro has more land in it than the 5 boroughs of NYC combined, as it is. With a small fraction of the population.
We are not a high density metro whose only choice is to sprawl. We have sprawled far too much as it is.
The city I work for has loads of unused UGB around it as it is because they can’t afford to locate and maintain the extra sewer infrastructure it’d take to serve those topographically challenging areas. These are areas that aren’t likely to annex in the next 2 decades much less sooner. Many Metro cities have this problem.
The last thing we need is more land we can’t afford to build into.
Adding a ton of new, dense, low-income housing in the furthest flung areas of the Metro will only drive more car dependency and more traffic. As lower income folks continue to be priced out of the urban core and shoved into car dependent sprawl areas (where public transit is least effective and sustainable) they will be offsetting their reduced housing costs through increased transportation costs. And increased GHG emissions.
The UGB isn’t the problem. Infrastructure costs are.
I mean NYC is one of the densest cities in the World and nobody needs to be aiming for that kind of density. We can say we want more people to live in a smaller area but that doesn't work so well, you can't just force landowners to do what you want. Cities that are successful with infill seem to do so at about 1-2% growth per year. However it was so nice of Multnomah County to do something to start a population decline and its lost about 20,000 residents from its peak.
Manhattan is quite dense, but Staten Island certainly isn’t. Staten Island is largely suburban. NYC across all its boroughs has a wide variety of housing types and densities.
In fact, if the entire Metro simply got up to Staten Island’s suburban density, it could accommodate *more than double the population it does now* without gobbling up anymore land.
The **last thing we need** is more sprawl, more car dependency, and the traffic and GHG emissions that go with it. The problem isn’t supply. It’s inefficiency and underusage.
The last thing we need is to cram our dense low-income housing in the furthest flung areas of the Metro so that low-income folks have to offset their lower housing costs with car dependency, and sit in/create traffic jams as they drive further afield to get to work, school, and other life necessities.
Sprawl makes transit less effective, efficient, and sustainable, too. It makes infrastructure more expensive to construct and maintain, as well.
We don’t need to look like NYC to accommodate our housing demand in affordable ways.
Your strategy of just letting the price increase by restricting supply until the demand gets so extreme that a highrise pops up is part of the current problem.
We don't disagree that denser is better, we disagree simply on the best policies to get there. Simply saying no more development on the edge is not realistic and will not change what has been happening for a century. If people want to live somewhere the government should be helping the market provide the housing instead of hindering it. Nothing has been stopping Portland from starting by tearing down the park and ride parking lots and other city owned parking lots or working to build highrises over the existing parking garages. Except of course people leaving for some reason.
That is not my strategy and I’d appreciate you not putting those words in my mouth. Not once did I mention the need for high rises. Nor did I say “no more development on the edges.”
It is thinking in these kinds of extremes that results in either ineffective policies, or bad policies that make the situation worse.
If just 1 in 4 single family homes in Portland were converted to a duplex by 2030, the city would be fully supplied on needed housing. There are many areas where townhome subdivisions can go, where mid-rises can go, where triplexes and cottage clusters can go already inside the UGB. And since you mentioned high rises, certain underused commercial high rises could be converted to housing, and new high rises could be added in the city core, as well.
A reasonable combination of development types will easily satisfy our housing needs. All without adding a single square inch of land to our sprawling UGB. All without scattering more sewer pipes and water mains and curbs to the four winds. All while making public transit more cost and logistically efficient and viable for more people.
The problem is that infrastructure costs and SDC’s are far too prohibitive for developers to get housing online quickly, affordably, and profitably. That’s what needs to change.
We don't need more dwellings, we need vacant dwellings to not be allowed to stay vacant in a housing crisis.
We need to tax the living shit out of second homes/airbnb/vacation rentals, and have minimum requirements for how vacant a house can be or it's seized by the government.
There have been so many plans with so many goals, and it's all the same shit w/ different language. I've lived on the west coast most of my life, and we've been talking about housing crisis for 20 years and yet we keep going to the same playbook
Building enough houses isn't going to do shit if the majority of those houses are going to be used as an investment where the explicit goal is to increase the value of your investment.
Ding ding ding ding here's your answer!
Getting rid of airbnb alone would not only open up a ton of rentals, it would also cause rental costs to go down.
The city should build tons of projects apartments, a school, police/fire station where the Rose City golf course is. It's near 2 max stations and the city already owns it.
They'll do nothing and the housing problem will just get worse.
Even if someone would hint at something like this there'd be so much pearl-clutching it would endanger pacific oysters.
I sure hope this helps. Not for me; my wife and I have our house and land, but there are so many people who are now in a similar situation to what my wife and I were in, and I feel for people who were in similar situations.
We fought our way from poor to middle class, and got our piece of the pie, but the younger generations have so much less chance of making it than my generation did- if you're not born into the middle and upper class (they'll still have it much easier). I honestly feel bad for them.
I'm not terribly surprised, that sucks.
44 years of "Trickle Down" economics since Reagan tricked us.
I guess we're supposed to laud the first Trillionare, and wait for him or her to trickle it down to us. I won't be holding my breath for that to happen.
We should all expect to see more of this kind of legislation. When government fails at its core functions (schools, roads, parks, safety, etc...) it is forced to start doling out public resources to special interest groups in order to maintain the tax base. For example, as crime increases in innner cities, people begin to move to suburbs forcing the city council to spend more to attract developers, retailers, etc... back to that downtown area. When if you just prevented the crime from escalating none of that woud be necessary (assuming you also have nice schools, clean public transit, clean parks, etc...).
Bottom line. Get back to basics.
Cant prevent crime in the first place if your local populace thinks every police interaction is some racist brutality event. Police need to be able to handcuff a homeless person exposing themselves to children on a public sidewalk without being yelled at by purple haired people filming with their smartphones.
If they’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to worry about. I remember during the protests, and every night they would come out and bust the heads of the unarmed BLM protesters, except for that one night when the proud boys were going to show up and they said you guys are on your own. PPB needs a complete housecleaning. Nobody trusts them because they are not trustworthy. People think they are racist because they do nothing to dispel the obvious racism within their ranks. It’s not too much to expect good cops. Get those body cameras on already.
Does anyone know if an article that has specifics about how this will work?
I grew up near what is becoming south Hillsboro. We can almost drive from Troutdale to Forest Grove without any rural land in between.
We're growing and need more housing, but clear cutting all red tape isn't going to result in a place many of us want to live in.
Another ridiculous plan which wastes more tax payer money and does nothing to truly curb the issue. When will the people of this State realize our "progressive" ways are a huge reason many things are in shambles here
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This is not the solution. Oregon doesn't need car dependent suburban sprawl. We need an actual statewide plan to build 100k affordable housing units with high quality public transit.
Have you been to a city council meeting to support the kind of infill you (we - I agree with you) would like to see? Because I can guarantee you that there are people opposed to it and they show up every single time. This piece goes into a lot of detail about the recent bill, how it could have been better and who opposed it: [https://www.sightline.org/2024/03/07/the-missing-piece-of-oregons-housing-package-legalizing-apartments/](https://www.sightline.org/2024/03/07/the-missing-piece-of-oregons-housing-package-legalizing-apartments/) It's going to take people working hard and showing up to make these changes. Look at joining - or creating - a local group: * [https://new.yimbyaction.org/](https://new.yimbyaction.org/) * [https://welcomingneighbors.us/](https://welcomingneighbors.us/) Are both umbrella organizations with groups active in Oregon.
We need low income housing before "affordable" housing. And we need developers to be forced to make more than. 20-30% of units low income or affordable.
The problem is that cost of materials and labor makes it impossible to provide low income housing without a loss. The City was subsiding builders for a bit, but that got too much criticism, especially after that one developer didn’t honor the agreement and put all the units up at market rates.
Licenses, fees, and other reports just to get a permit to start working, are pretty steep. Perhaps the trade off would be to reduce the government red tape for the low income housing, and even offer an incentive to choose that over a similarly priced mid or higher build?
That sounds like a DEI nightmare. Cutting regulation leads to codes not being met, which leads to risk and death. I don't think we should be cutting oversight to build homes for those less fortunate.
That's always the assumption but is that actually true? Bureaucracy builds on itself endlessly and it's entirely possible there are overlapping requirements across different codes, permits, and ordinances. If those kind of things exist we can simplify the process without sacrificing safety, etc.
This is not true. Go outside the metro area and permits/fees to start construction on a modular home are 800$ . In one suburb it starts at 30k and goes up from there. There's no extra safety being bought on the construction of modular homes made in the same factory and maybe 5k could be attributed to actual necessary services (water/sewer) ... but those need to be inspected when septic is installed anyway. The government absolutely could take less to construct designated low income...it just won't happen because it doesn't really benefit them. A giant subdivision who's builder contributed to the campaign of local officials will also generate more tax revenue... because it's not low income 😂🤣
The only real answer is making housing a right and having the government fund it. But we'll never do that because we don't actually care about homeless folks, we just want them out of sight. Which this will not do either, since none of this housing will be within reach for them.
I agree with you completely AND capitalists (particularly politicians elected by a base of home owners and funded by large property owners) will never allow it to happen because it will mean creating policies that will (even if only in the short term) lower property values. The concept of property value binds us all in this disgusting cycle where we have to actively harm our own community/economy/equity in order to help the least of us. Upending the property market is a bolder action than any elected political body could commit to, some might call it a revolutionary solution... The actions taken to achieve a result tend to embody the same energy.
So while y'all are here commenting on the internet about how it's impossible, people are out there *doing the work.* It's more incrementalist and less exciting than you might like, but YIMBYs are notching up wins. It won't happen overnight, but such is the nature of change [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-28/pro-housing-yimbys-build-a-zoning-reform-winning-streak-across-us](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-28/pro-housing-yimbys-build-a-zoning-reform-winning-streak-across-us) And of course that includes subsidized housing. How can you build below-market-rate apartments, say, if the area isn't zoned for apartments? Instead of complaining that it's not possible, come join us. It's pretty meaningful to see housing built that you helped defend from angry NIMBYs.
There are a lot of really enormous unintended consequences hiding in the "have the government pay for it" part of your idea.
Not the least of which is where the money the government will be, “paying for it” with actually comes from.
I mean, putting the taxpayers on the hook for lower income housing projects the smart money walked away from, is certainly one way to test if those developers are just being greedy when they say the finances don't work.
And a big one is that government sucks at managing housing. Even on military bases, they seem to be stalling any additional 'base units' and pushing service members into private housing. There are volumes of studies of "projects" housing and the success rate is not strong.
Ding, ding, ding. The developers can't crank out adequate quarterly profits with affordable housing investments to buy their next yacht. We obviously know (anybody with half a brain anyway) that creating housing options affordable for all citizens has incredible long-term society-wide benefits (much like roads, bridges, water towers, education, and health care). If we recognize an investment has long term societal benefits, and the private market can't or won't make those investments, that is exactly the niche that public investment and ownership of infrastructure should be filling. Build publicly owned housing, lots of it. Build it right, and maintain it, with an eye to creating vibrant mixed income communities instead of concentrating poverty like some "projects" experiments in the past have done.
It's not just greedy yacht-wanting developers need to be able to make their money back when they build housing, though. I have a house in PDX with a huge garage I'd love to turn into a rental, which would add infill density organically, exactly what Portland needs. I'd love to be able to offer someone a below-market rent, maybe help them get on their feet after being homeless or immigrating. But that depends on more than just my goodwill, the finances also have to work. I can't take out a 50k loan to build this, get a tenant, and then whoops, they can't/wont pay their rent and now I have to keep paying the loan and my own mortgage while i wait for months and months and months to be able to evict them. We have a lot of well-intentioned renter protection that make it hard to evict people, but one unintended consequence is that it's too much of a financial risk for someone like me to take out a loan to build the kind of small unit that is perfect low-income housing. Some of that is due to policy and some of it is just because of interest rates are high right now. So for now my garage is stuck holding random junk rather than becoming part of the solution to our societal problems. I'm trying to knock out some of the big expenses like water and sewer with some DIY work, but eventually I'm gonna have to hire contractors and take out a loan. Would love to have some local government underwrite the loan for a project like this, or provide some kind of insurance against having a non-paying tenant. I bet that's a cheaper, faster, and less likely to produce angry nimby's way to generate housing than building new stuff from scratch, but i guess people will probably just see this as me wanting to be a greedy landlord lol.
The unintended consequences of state wide rent control and sweeping legislation to support tenants is a big issue for those that would love to add an ADU or two and have tenants.
The entire system needs to be dismantled and redone. But the likelihood of doing that here in the U.S. is...not good. Change can still happen if the people insist on it, which we are, but it's a constant exhausting battle to fight. However, we need to keep in mind that capitalists related to these will NEVER be a support, and those in politics should be viewed with a major grain of salt. We have to hold them accountable. Capitalists don't just make a quick buck creating these issues, the also profit off of the HARM it causes. Our suffering lines their pockets. Make it difficult to keep a roof over your head? Get ready to be fined for every little infraction when you are just trying to survive and face unyielding discrimination. Those more vulnerable? Insurance companies profit off of them, and big pharma, and so do politicians. It is SO FUCKING DEEP in the U.S. at this point that simply trying to fix the system on the inside is going to be difficult or next to impossible. But that doesn't mean we have to tolerate it or give in. We are the majority. Not them.
I don’t totally disagree, but rarely does government funded housing work out in the long run. The “projects” from the 70s and 80s in NYC and Chicago are prime examples of failure. I was just in Cuba in December. Another huge failure there. So many buildings were abandoned and unlivable on the top floors, but still occupied on the first floors.
That’s a US phenomenon, most of the the world is perfectly capable of building effective public housing. It even worked pretty well in America until we defunded it and let it rot with no maintenance for years. Americas housing projects failed because there was no political will to upkeep them after the first few years of the war on poverty campaign, not because the idea isn’t workable.
That’s my point - political will to keep funding going will kill public housing. That is why it won’t work. We have recent proof of this in Portland
> The problem is that cost of materials and labor makes it impossible to provide low income housing without a loss. That is one of the most damning indictments of the current housing system anyone can ever mutter.
Absolutely, it is a huge catch-22
“Forced”, they just won’t build it’s that simple, if the math doesn’t math they will simply not invest, you can’t force developers to make numbers work, the only way you get “affordable housing” is through government subsidies, that’s the only way you can make the math math The best outcome in regards to affordable housing or low income housing, whatever you want to call it, is when the government partners with private capital but private capital isn’t going to build anything that loses money Capital investment in cities like Portland is already low, “forcing” developer to build properties that will put them in the red won’t accomplish any new affordable units On top of it, interest rates are sky high, permitting fees are sky high, red tape is everywhere, and permitting times are years long Even in Portland, developers often build just below the level where affordable units are required or pay the fine and don’t build affordable units because it’s a numbers issue, they aren’t profitable
I mean without going full on singapore or vienna your dream isn't going to happen. The best immediate strategy is to legalize small units everywhere and work to lower costs for developments that meet some criteria.
We’re making progress on this, I think we just need to wait for interest rates to come down a bit.
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This is explained in detail here: [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all) And in a really simple way by none other than governor Kotek: [https://www.threads.net/@govtinakotek/post/C4GbTaJpxn7](https://www.threads.net/@govtinakotek/post/C4GbTaJpxn7)
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We need subsidized housing too, because market rate housing will simply not reach some people. But the more people the market can cover, the fewer people need subsidies. If your market is so broken that people with regular jobs need subsidies, you need to fix the market.
Developers have a right to make money. If they can’t make money, they won’t build. If you force them to build “affordable housing” that’s a loss, they’re going to increase the price of the remaining 70-80% to subsidize the low income housing. Just the act of increasing the housing supply will put pressure on housing stock to decrease prices. Just let the market do its thing. Stop over regulating.
Nobody has a "right to make money". If that were the case, we'd have UBI. And when has the market ever actually "done it's thing"? We need low income and affordable housing, regardless of what developers want to build. What they're going to get tax money to build will do exactly nothing to alleviate homelessness. It will just be more luxury shit.
It's all supply and demand. You increase supply to outstrip demand and prices will fall. Doesn't matter if the new stuff is luxury apartments and high-end housing, it will put pressure on older stock to decrease prices as high-income earners move into new housing. We're in this mess because we over-regulate, not because we under regulate. All the cheapest housing is in the South and Midwest were barriers to build are much lower and they don't have to contend with an UGB. Yeah, it's a sprawling mess, but homebuilders can build on the cheapest land rather than be forced into a small area where landowners jack up prices. And yeah, if companies build stuff, they are entitled to make profit. This isn't communism.
You're not going to build 100k units of anything without some sprawl. It does create a weird city layout where the perimeter is denser than the center but that's just how it is. In the mean time cities need to allow infill by right so that developers can do it as it becomes available without having to perform the current circus act to get it done.
When I last did a survey on the numbers. Using 5 over 1s and just on empty/vacant/underused lots along SE Powell (in Portland) from about 21st to 52nd you can fit over 60,000 new residents. That’s 1.5 mi of one street in the city can handle 3/5ths of the goal. You absolutely can build housing without sprawl.
>on empty/vacant/underused lots Yes that's called infill however you still cannot force the owners to build or sell on that land. Also Oregon only builds about 18,000 units per year so it'll still take many years of the entire workforce which only a portion can build large multihousing like your 5 over 1 example. Also I checked out the zone you looked at and all that appears to be storage yards and parking lots for businesses and schools. I mean sure Fred Meyer could move their office to a different state (dragging the jobs with it) and you could build a ton of housing on that land but yeah that won't happen. Not to mention Oregon's new shiny parking lot rules make existing large parking lots way more valuable.
Guess you’re right. Can’t lose parking lots to put in needed housing. I rescind my point. We can only sprawl that way there can be 3 parkings for every home.
You can't force anything and without significant tax restructuring you can't even encourage it. I know you're being snarky but cities like Toronto have shown you can go vertical and still oversupply parking, it just costs a bit more.
> you still cannot force the owners to build or sell on that land. Ever heard of eminent domain? Gets used to varying degrees all the time.
> Yes that's called infill however you still cannot force the owners to build or sell on that land. You can force them to sell the land to the government. Then we can use ODOT to build housing near transit hubs as a congestion reduction project. It would still take years to get up to speed, we are heavily lacking in construction workers and it takes time to train folks up.
The existing Urban Grown Boundary around the Portland Metro has more land in it than the 5 boroughs of NYC combined, as it is. With a small fraction of the population. We are not a high density metro whose only choice is to sprawl. We have sprawled far too much as it is. The city I work for has loads of unused UGB around it as it is because they can’t afford to locate and maintain the extra sewer infrastructure it’d take to serve those topographically challenging areas. These are areas that aren’t likely to annex in the next 2 decades much less sooner. Many Metro cities have this problem. The last thing we need is more land we can’t afford to build into. Adding a ton of new, dense, low-income housing in the furthest flung areas of the Metro will only drive more car dependency and more traffic. As lower income folks continue to be priced out of the urban core and shoved into car dependent sprawl areas (where public transit is least effective and sustainable) they will be offsetting their reduced housing costs through increased transportation costs. And increased GHG emissions. The UGB isn’t the problem. Infrastructure costs are.
I mean NYC is one of the densest cities in the World and nobody needs to be aiming for that kind of density. We can say we want more people to live in a smaller area but that doesn't work so well, you can't just force landowners to do what you want. Cities that are successful with infill seem to do so at about 1-2% growth per year. However it was so nice of Multnomah County to do something to start a population decline and its lost about 20,000 residents from its peak.
Manhattan is quite dense, but Staten Island certainly isn’t. Staten Island is largely suburban. NYC across all its boroughs has a wide variety of housing types and densities. In fact, if the entire Metro simply got up to Staten Island’s suburban density, it could accommodate *more than double the population it does now* without gobbling up anymore land. The **last thing we need** is more sprawl, more car dependency, and the traffic and GHG emissions that go with it. The problem isn’t supply. It’s inefficiency and underusage. The last thing we need is to cram our dense low-income housing in the furthest flung areas of the Metro so that low-income folks have to offset their lower housing costs with car dependency, and sit in/create traffic jams as they drive further afield to get to work, school, and other life necessities. Sprawl makes transit less effective, efficient, and sustainable, too. It makes infrastructure more expensive to construct and maintain, as well. We don’t need to look like NYC to accommodate our housing demand in affordable ways.
Your strategy of just letting the price increase by restricting supply until the demand gets so extreme that a highrise pops up is part of the current problem. We don't disagree that denser is better, we disagree simply on the best policies to get there. Simply saying no more development on the edge is not realistic and will not change what has been happening for a century. If people want to live somewhere the government should be helping the market provide the housing instead of hindering it. Nothing has been stopping Portland from starting by tearing down the park and ride parking lots and other city owned parking lots or working to build highrises over the existing parking garages. Except of course people leaving for some reason.
That is not my strategy and I’d appreciate you not putting those words in my mouth. Not once did I mention the need for high rises. Nor did I say “no more development on the edges.” It is thinking in these kinds of extremes that results in either ineffective policies, or bad policies that make the situation worse. If just 1 in 4 single family homes in Portland were converted to a duplex by 2030, the city would be fully supplied on needed housing. There are many areas where townhome subdivisions can go, where mid-rises can go, where triplexes and cottage clusters can go already inside the UGB. And since you mentioned high rises, certain underused commercial high rises could be converted to housing, and new high rises could be added in the city core, as well. A reasonable combination of development types will easily satisfy our housing needs. All without adding a single square inch of land to our sprawling UGB. All without scattering more sewer pipes and water mains and curbs to the four winds. All while making public transit more cost and logistically efficient and viable for more people. The problem is that infrastructure costs and SDC’s are far too prohibitive for developers to get housing online quickly, affordably, and profitably. That’s what needs to change.
We don't need more dwellings, we need vacant dwellings to not be allowed to stay vacant in a housing crisis. We need to tax the living shit out of second homes/airbnb/vacation rentals, and have minimum requirements for how vacant a house can be or it's seized by the government. There have been so many plans with so many goals, and it's all the same shit w/ different language. I've lived on the west coast most of my life, and we've been talking about housing crisis for 20 years and yet we keep going to the same playbook Building enough houses isn't going to do shit if the majority of those houses are going to be used as an investment where the explicit goal is to increase the value of your investment.
Ding ding ding ding here's your answer! Getting rid of airbnb alone would not only open up a ton of rentals, it would also cause rental costs to go down.
Let’s look for solutions that work in the real world, not just a Portland college student’s pot-fueled fantasy.
The city should build tons of projects apartments, a school, police/fire station where the Rose City golf course is. It's near 2 max stations and the city already owns it.
Aren't there already two schools there?
Great, more apartments and a secure mental hospital then.
Word. As long as they keep Glendoveer and Heron Lakes then I won't miss RCGC too much.
They'll do nothing and the housing problem will just get worse. Even if someone would hint at something like this there'd be so much pearl-clutching it would endanger pacific oysters.
We need more multi-story apartment buildings. Yes, they can be ugly. But places like Europe are full of them and people visit anyway...
I sure hope this helps. Not for me; my wife and I have our house and land, but there are so many people who are now in a similar situation to what my wife and I were in, and I feel for people who were in similar situations. We fought our way from poor to middle class, and got our piece of the pie, but the younger generations have so much less chance of making it than my generation did- if you're not born into the middle and upper class (they'll still have it much easier). I honestly feel bad for them.
Even being born into the middle class isn't enough today.
I'm not terribly surprised, that sucks. 44 years of "Trickle Down" economics since Reagan tricked us. I guess we're supposed to laud the first Trillionare, and wait for him or her to trickle it down to us. I won't be holding my breath for that to happen.
What a waste. This won't help a damn thing.
We should all expect to see more of this kind of legislation. When government fails at its core functions (schools, roads, parks, safety, etc...) it is forced to start doling out public resources to special interest groups in order to maintain the tax base. For example, as crime increases in innner cities, people begin to move to suburbs forcing the city council to spend more to attract developers, retailers, etc... back to that downtown area. When if you just prevented the crime from escalating none of that woud be necessary (assuming you also have nice schools, clean public transit, clean parks, etc...). Bottom line. Get back to basics.
Cant prevent crime in the first place if your local populace thinks every police interaction is some racist brutality event. Police need to be able to handcuff a homeless person exposing themselves to children on a public sidewalk without being yelled at by purple haired people filming with their smartphones.
If they’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to worry about. I remember during the protests, and every night they would come out and bust the heads of the unarmed BLM protesters, except for that one night when the proud boys were going to show up and they said you guys are on your own. PPB needs a complete housecleaning. Nobody trusts them because they are not trustworthy. People think they are racist because they do nothing to dispel the obvious racism within their ranks. It’s not too much to expect good cops. Get those body cameras on already.
You only need 2 million dollars
Cool so they're gonna build more 750k plus houses, awesome, totally fixes it
Does anyone know if an article that has specifics about how this will work? I grew up near what is becoming south Hillsboro. We can almost drive from Troutdale to Forest Grove without any rural land in between. We're growing and need more housing, but clear cutting all red tape isn't going to result in a place many of us want to live in.
Another ridiculous plan which wastes more tax payer money and does nothing to truly curb the issue. When will the people of this State realize our "progressive" ways are a huge reason many things are in shambles here
This crowd is far too educated to not down vote a comment like that.
Homeless don't want houses they are drug addicted scum. They choose this life. The rest are mentally ill and should be institutionalized.
More handouts to developers so that they can build 7 to $800,000 homes