I am so proud of Portlanders. Tuesday night’s Planning Commission work session was a three-hour marathon of public testimony—I know, I know, that might be a special ring of hell for many of you—but at some point during the first hour I just kicked back and said to myself, “Portland benefits immensely from such an engaged and informed public.”
How did we get that way? Well, we have a culture of volunteerism in this town—all the government advisory committees, the neighborhood associations, the advocacy groups, the PSU/PBOT Transportation class … I know that some BikePortland readers have strong feelings about various groups, but you can’t deny that they contribute to Portland having an engaged community.
Tuesday’s testimony was about the draft package of Housing Regulatory Relief (HRR) amendments to city building code being proposed by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS). The proposal targets numerous regulations for amendment (the document is 187 pages long) in an attempt to close the gap between the number of new housing units Portland is projected to need in the coming decades, and the rate at which they are actually being produced. Some changes call for a five-year suspension of the regulation, others permanently strike the regulation from code. The commission will consider the amendments and vote in November to forward a recommendation to the Portland City Council about adopting them.
But this is not an easy decision or political lift. Many of those regulations come with committed supporters and are the product of years of study and outreach. An engaged community is not only a resilient community, it also creates resilient city code. A lot of the public testimony was technical and was from informed people who have worked on their issue for decades.
Several critics of the rollbacks found them to be short on the data and analysis needed to show they would effectively boost housing production, and HRR proponents did not make a strong case why the code modifications would promote affordable rather than market-rate housing increases.
Let’s dive into the issue and what went down Tuesday night.
Portland’s housing problem
Jill Chen, the Portland Housing Bureau’s (PHB), Housing Investments & Portfolio Preservation Manager, presented a slide which showed that the city will need 120,000 new units over the next 20+ years, which averages to 5,200 new units a year. Chen continued,
PHB, or the city, needs to produce about half of that as affordable. As a benchmark, so far, even with the housing bonds—the Portland housing bonds, and the Metro bonds—PHB, on average, has produced under 1,000 housing units. So there is a huge amount that is still needed.
She pointed out that costs to build have increase 50% since 2016, but that incomes have only increased 29%, and rent rates 24%, during that same period. Rent rates are significant because they “pay for your debt.”
Chen ended by talking about the levers the city has to influence housing production. Although PHB is focused on building affordable housing, regulatory changes are an important tool because they “impact every income bucket” of housing needs. She called for more flexibility in ground floor activation and bike parking. In particular, she said that units for the elderly or disabled do not have the bike parking needs for which current code mandates they build.
Sandra Wood, from the Portland Bureau of Sustainability (PBS), spoke next, and reminded the commissioners of why the HRR effort was undertaken. “We are trying to influence what we can at this time to close the development feasibility gap.” In other words, lessening the regulatory costs of building to make it “pencil out” as being attractive to more developers.
The public response
The Planning Commission received a whopping 200 written testimonies, two thirds of which were about the proposed rollbacks to bird-protective glazing on windows and also eco-roof requirements. The Audubon Society and other environmental groups did an impressive job turning out their supporters. Those commenters were well-informed and persuasive, and several had technical knowledge that called into question the framing of eco-friendly building as being in tension with housing affordability.
Regulations covering Bike Parking and Neighborhood Contact also received sizeable public response. I’ll summarize those comments further below.
Developer comment
Developers did an admirable job of presenting why they need regulatory relief. One woman in particular, Stephanie Kondor, Senior Vice-President of development at Related Northwest, was allowed to speak at length. Her company has been active in developing affordable housing, with 1,200 units completed or in construction/design.
I’ve experienced the impacts of code and policies that are diminishing the delivery of housing, and in my opinion the recommendations before you are largely fair, balanced steps that are necessary to get housing production back on line.
I appreciate everyone’s testimony here and their perspectives. I do however feel that our housing and homelessness crisis has been an ongoing and desperate problem, so we need to prioritize housing our people.
Housing in the Portland area has all but stopped. I’m getting calls weekly from market-rate developers who are selling their permitted projects because they can’t make their deals work under current conditions and policy.”
Those current conditions include rising interest rates and cost escalations that are beyond Portland’s control.
Bike Parking
Chris Smith (former Planning commissioner and key author of existing bike parking codes), Victor Duong (board member of The Street Trust), Nic Cota (chair of BikeLoud PDX) and Paul Buchanan (board member of The Street Trust) spoke in defense of bike parking.
These advocates acknowledged that bike parking regulations could be adjusted, while also emphasizing that affordable housing and affordable transportation go hand in hand. Housing availability and affordability was in crisis, but they viewed cycling as part of the solution and secure parking as being a requirement for getting people to use bicycles for transportation.
Paul Buchanan was a new voice for me, and he described himself as having “the rare distinction of being a bike parking professional. Every day I work with Portland code, as well as code in cities from Los Angeles to Bellingham to Astoria on the design and implementation of bike rooms.”
He went on to assert that there are a number of code aspects that can be adjusted to “maintain functionality [and] reduce friction in the review process.” He mentioned removing the alcove requirement entirely, eliminating the 50% in-unit cap for buildings of 20-units or less, as well as the 15 ft rule. Those changes would “eliminate over 75% of conflicts.”
Chris Smith pointed out that progressive housing and cycling organizations are on the same page and he referenced the joint letter from Bike Loud and Portland Neighbors Welcome. He joined those groups in recommending that the commission move ahead with the bike parking provisions in the HRR, but then to
follow up with a more nuanced process. We believe there are two benefits to that. One is to find additional space-savings … but also to make sure that the parking being produced is usable. The policy you are dispensing with was literally six years in the making with PBOT …
I want to particularly focus on the in-unit parking standard. In removing the alcove standard, you are reverting to a standard which was in place from 2009 to 2019 and which we know did not produce a lot of usable bike parking. I really want to see a followup group go back and see if we can keep looking for ways to make that in-unit standard work … before the current code we ended up with units with hooks over the bed where you could never actually put a bicycle.
Neighborhood contact and transparency
If you were playing a game of “which one of these does not fit with the others,” the correct choice would be the Neighborhood Contact changes.
Keep in mind that the purpose of the BDS survey which informed this regulatory relief effort was to identify “the top five requirements the City of Portland should consider suspending or modifying to support increased housing production.” “Neighborhood contact” ranked 16th of the 25 code requirements surveyed. It was not near the top of anyone’s list.
This issue gets even deeper into the insider baseball of code change, but it matters for transportation. Neighborhood associations are often the loudest voices advocating for bike lanes and sidewalks in the parts of town which are not fully built out. Having timely access to information about proposed developments is crucial for them to join the process early enough to be effective advocates. The Neighborhood Contact requirements ensure that developers inform adjacent neighbors and neighborhood associations of their plans early in the review process.
But the HRR code modifications exempt residential development from notification requirements for five years, “Development that includes a residential use is exempt from the neighborhood contact requirements until January 1, 2029.” This five-year notification holiday is being proposed without any evidence that it would result in more housing.
As a reporter, however, I was most concerned by the strikethrough of this code, about putting information online. This amendment would be permanent:
The Bureau of Development Services must make the information required by Subparagraph A.3.a available in an accessible online format and as an open data set. The bureau will also provide a way for community members to subscribe to get proactive notification of new information.
I rely on online development information, including architectural and infrastructure plans, for my reporting. Maybe I don’t fully understand the ramifications of this, but it looks like it might make my job more difficult. (It would be helpful to have an independent land use lawyer look at some of the amendments to explain their impact.)
Both code changes strike me as being blows to transparency.
What’s next?
One can imagine a rush to get approvals during the five-year exemptions HRR proposes to many regulatory requirements. This could be a bonanza of regulatory relief. But as one man testified Tuesday night, if we are going to have a building boom, isn’t that when you most want your regulations to be in play?
It is not obvious if the Planning Commission will recommend the Housing Regulatory Relief plan to the City Council unaltered, but the excellent public testimony in opposition to the HRR amendments will hopefully encourage the Commission to think carefully.
— Watch the full commission meeting on YouTube.