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For better or worse, Oregon has long differed from other states in land use law, particularly for housing. For over 50 years, housing has been a significant element of state policy. In the past 10 years, however, the state legislature has repeatedly taken up housing to respond to a shortfall that overshadows almost all other urban issues.

The notion that housing be subject only to 鈥渃lear and objective standards, conditions and procedures鈥� and that those conditions, and the land use process itself, must not discourage needed housing through 鈥渦nreasonable cost or delay鈥� resonates through the system. Housing is given special treatment in terms of legislative incentives for low- and moderate-income units 鈥� unlawful denials or unsuccessful challenges to housing are met with attorney fee sanctions, urban growth boundary amendment rules have been eased to accommodate more housing, strict decisional timelines are provided, landlord tenant laws are strengthened, and responses to homelessness are mandated. The 2025 Oregon Legislature has continued this trend as this survey attests.

More recently, urban areas must allow density increases to accommodate ambitious goals for new housing. Smaller cities must allow accessory dwellings, duplexes, and single-room occupancies wherever single-family homes are permitted, while larger cities must, in addition, allow on those lands a suite of alternative housing types such as duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhouses, and cottage clusters. Changes in the law also allow applicants for middle housing projects to divide their lands so as to accommodate those higher densities. Those local governments that fail to rewrite their zoning regulations to allow middle housing are subject to state sanctions, including imposition of a state model code that would allow those uses.

Among all these changes was the authorization, and later adoption by the legislature, of the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (OHNA), which provided for a means of assessing housing needs on a statewide basis, allocating those needs by local jurisdiction, and providing housing targets for each of them. To assure that state housing expectations were not ignored, the legislature established a Housing Accountability and Production Office (HAPO), with support of those state agencies involved with housing and land use. HAPO would assist housing developers and local governments and would also process complaints that local governments were not permitting development as required by law. Moreover, HAPO was given enforcement tools by the legislature, in addition to those already provided under state land use laws.

Cities are now obliged to prepare a Housing Capacity Analysis (HCA) to determine if it has sufficient land to meet projected housing needs for a 20-year period. If there is a shortfall in housing capacity, the city must either amend its urban growth boundary (UGB), allow more housing development within the existing UGB, or combine both approaches. In addition to providing housing expectations, allocations and targets, the state now seeks to require cities with populations greater than 10,000 to report periodically on their housing actions through a Housing Production Strategy (HPS), which must be adopted within a year of its HCA. The HPS must include specific actions the city plans to take, like changing regulations or offering financial incentives, to encourage the development of the necessary housing types identified in the OHNA.

Enforcement of housing obligations includes a Housing Acceleration Program that may require an audit of a local government housing program if it appears to be underperforming on its production targets or equity metrics. If the audit concludes there is a deficit, the state and local government must enter into an agreement to take actions within their respective control, with state financial and technical support, to address identified barriers. If the local government fails to enter into or abide the terms of an agreement, the state can issue an enforcement order to require compliance. Until the city complies, the order can impose a developer鈥檚 remedy in the form of a model code and ministerial review process that supersedes local land use regulations.

The state has provided local governments with a list of tools, actions, and policies that would help them increase housing production. They range from amendments to land use regulations, financial and tax exemptions and abatement, and various real estate initiatives to meet the targets. The state has combined these creative efforts with financial incentives in the form of support for loans for infrastructure (although at fairly paltry levels), incentive programs to facilitate housing for those with disabilities, and provision of additional density for lower-income homeowners and renters if a certain number of units are bound by long-term covenants to sell or rent at levels commensurate with their incomes.

Lowering housing costs is a significant driver in the campaign to increase housing production. Moreover, more local housing decisions are steered to a template where there are fewer hearings and little local discretion over such matters as design. The state also encourages housing designs from templates.

Thus, a combination of funding (which is likely to be more difficult to continue at current levels, given state government financial projections), development incentives through the easing of regulations, and a willingness to require local governments to approve more housing are likely to make more housing possible. However, just as King Canute could not command the tides, interest rates, higher costs of construction materials, and the lack of construction personnel (in part due to immigration raids) may render the deregulation efforts less effective. Nevertheless, these efforts are significant and a model for other states to lower zoning barriers to housing.

Edward Sullivan is a retired practitioner of land use and municipal law with more than 50 years of experience. Contact him at [email protected].

Carrie Richter is an attorney specializing in land use and municipal law at Bateman Seidel. Contact her at 503-972-9903 or [email protected].

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the preceding commentary are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Daily Journal of Commerce or its editors. Neither author nor the 91视频 guarantees the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein.