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Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek on Wednesday announced details of her $500 million proposal for housing production. The provisions in Senate Bill 1537 are based on months of broad engagement with stakeholders, she stated in a press release. The bill is the only one she plans to introduce in the session that starts Feb. 5, she added.

鈥淒ecades of underbuilding have left Oregon with a severe housing shortage that is driving up rents, home prices, and worsening our homelessness crisis,鈥� Kotek stated. 鈥淧eople that are ready to transition out of homelessness struggle to find housing. Meanwhile, employers 鈥� both public and private 鈥� in Oregon struggle to hire due to a lack of workforce housing for rent or purchase, harming local economies across the state.鈥�

SB 1537 is Kotek鈥檚 top priority in the short session, she stated.

Key provisions in the bill include creating a Housing Accountability and Production Office (HAPO) to support housing production in local communities with a more definitive structure and process to address complaints, concerns and issues from local governments and developers about compliance with state housing law; providing a one-time tool for cities in need of land and affordable housing to add land for housing within the urban growth boundary; requiring 30 percent of all housing units in new development to be legally restricted for affordable housing; and funding grants for new affordable housing construction to incorporate energy-efficient design, reduce energy costs for low-income residents and stabilize operational costs for owners.

The $500 million investment package in SB 1537 would come from existing state resources requested by Kotek. That funding includes $200 million in housing infrastructure financing, $200 million in moderate-income housing financing, $40 million in site acquisition, $20 million in climate-friendly incentive funding, $10 million in site mitigation and readiness funding, $10 million in local housing planning technical assistance funding, $5 million in local housing infrastructure planning capacity, and $5 million for the Housing Accountability and Production Office.