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Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson have announced a city initiative to usher in the development of 5,000 new housing units as an early action of their Multifamily Housing Development Workgroup that was launched earlier this year.

A proposed Portland ordinance will go before the Revenue Committee in early June and then the City Council, according to city spokesman Cody Bowman. If passed by the City Council, the ordinance would waive System Development Charges (SDCs) in Portland until either 5,000 housing units are built or three years pass.

The city of Portland has applications for projects totaling over 6,000 housing units in the queue; however, many projects don’t move forward because their costs are slightly too high for developers to attain financing, according to a press release.

The Oregon System Development Charges Study, the press release states, found that the average total SDC charges for projects in Oregon is roughly $15,000, and can be as high as $50,000. These charges can be the equivalent of 3 percent to 6 percent of the total development cost.

On March 6, Kotek and Wilson formed the Multifamily Housing Development Workgroup, which was convened to recommend potential actions to facilitate more multifamily projects in Portland. The proposed ordinance originated from one of the draft recommendations.

The initiative is intended to be an expedient action that lowers developers’ costs during the crisis.