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Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s office plans to move forward a draft proposal of a construction excise tax as a possible way to address the city’s scarcity of affordable housing.

Little more about the idea was released by his office Wednesday, though a spokesperson for Saltzman said a panel of stakeholders would review the plan next week, and it wouldn’t be added to the City Council’s regular agenda.

It’s the most serious effort to tax new construction in Portland since the Oregon Legislature earlier this year struck down a ban on inclusionary zoning and construction excise taxes. Senate Bill 1533, which will take effect next month, requires that half of construction excise tax revenues go toward affordable housing.

Mayor Charlie Hales previously floated a similar idea, though his plan directed the remaining half of revenues toward initiatives tied to law enforcement and homelessness. Under the plan proposed by Saltzman — the commissioner in charge of the Housing Bureau — all revenues would go toward affordable housing.

Sara Hottman, spokeswoman for Hales, said his idea failed to gain 鈥渢raction鈥� with the rest of City Council, though the mayor still supports it.

Late last year, the City Council declared a 鈥淗ousing State of Emergency鈥� in Portland to redirect focus to the deepening issues of housing unaffordability and homelessness. The council passed several policy revisions, including upping the amount of time landlords must give when evicting tenants without cause, from 30 days to 60, and waiving zoning rules to allow people to camp on city property.

SB 1533 gives communities a powerful tool to provide affordable housing to families earning close to a living wage.

And the removal of the 17-year-old ban on construction excise taxes has the potential to generate millions of dollars, according to some observers. Few construction excise taxes are on the books in Oregon; those in Bend, Canby and Newberg, for instance, were all passed prior to 2007, when a loophole was closed by the Legislature.

As land prices have soared in Bend, the city’s affordable housing fee 鈥� one-third of 1 percent of total valuation of all building permits submitted to the city 鈥� has helped pay for a number of low-income rental housing projects, and other efforts.

Hales recently studied what a construction excise tax would look like in Portland. The tax would be collected from developers and property owners by the city’s Bureau of Development Services, according to an internal city study first released to the Portland Mercury. It would be imposed on building permits for new construction and add-on construction for residential and commercial property.

BDS already collects construction excise taxes on behalf of Metro (for use in planning the urban growth boundary) and Portland Public Schools. According to the study, a 1 percent construction excise tax for five years ending in 2021 would generate $15 million from residential development and $57 million from commercial, assuming historical BDS permit valuations.

Portland-area economist Joe Cortright is skeptical that SB 1533 is the magic bullet to fix the housing crisis. The director of the urban policy think tank City Observatory wrote recently that increasing supply is the only real way to meet affordable housing needs, regardless of the taxes in place.

鈥淚 think there’s this misperception that somehow it’s free, that we can force developers to build affordable housing and it won’t cost anybody anything,鈥� he told the 91视频. 鈥淭hat’s not the way the market works. If it’s done wrong, there will be some unintended consequences that in many ways could make the problem much worse.鈥�