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Portland is growing fast, but affordable housing must be part of the regional planning conversations, says Emily Lieb, project manager for Portland Metro‘s newly-created Equitable Housing Initiative.

Portland Metro Council heard details at a work session last week and allocated $200,000 to fund a two-year effort by the Housing Initiative to develop a regional approach to providing affordable housing for low-income residents.

Initially, the effort will include a $30,000 allocation to Oregon Opportunity Network, a statewide association of affordable housing and community development organizations.

Oregon Opportunity Network will hold a series of stakeholder conferences, 鈥渓ooking at local best practices and documenting case studies,鈥� Lieb said. Stakeholders will include local and regional government staff and officials, funders and developers.

鈥淲e will have a series of conversations about what stakeholders think are the biggest opportunities and will then convene a working group on where we might want to focus for the two-year initiative,鈥� she said.

Those efforts will lead to summit on affordable housing this fall that will bring together interested parties from all Metro jurisdictions, she said. The summit will look at local and national success stories and will include presentations of the work group recommendations and research findings with the goal of developing unified understanding of ways to make affordable housing more accessible in the entire region.

鈥淲e hope we will have some exciting research to share in the fall and next spring, but right now we are trying to focus on where the biggest opportunities are and what role Metro should play,鈥� Lieb said.

According to a staff report to Metro Council, the goal of the Equitable Housing Initiative is 鈥渢o develop a shared understanding of regional housing challenges and opportunities, build momentum through short-term implementation strategies and lay a foundation for long-term funding and policies to support equitable housing.鈥�

Equitable housing is defined by the Housing Initiative as 鈥渆nsuring diverse, quality, affordable housing choices with access to jobs, schools and transportation options.鈥�

The Equitable Housing Initiative is important, according to the work plan, because vacancy rates in the Metro region are among the lowest in the country and rents are going up rapidly. And according to Enterprise Community Partners, about 143,000 households in the region are spending more than half their income on housing, with an 81 percent increase from 2000 to 2012.

Lieb said housing choice and affordability must be part of the region’s conversation about growth because demographers and economists are expecting the Portland region to grow by 200,000 households in the next 20 years.