After failing to advance a rent control bill into law in 2017, Oregon Democrats are optimistic a favorable political landscape will change the result in Salem this session.

With strong majorities in both chambers, House and Senate leaders are moving aggressively on a host of policy priorities.

“I think it will be an activist session,” said John DiLorenzo, a lobbyist for More Housing Now, a trade group of large-scale apartment owners.

A bill co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson and House Speaker Tina Kotek would cap annual rent increases at 7 percent plus inflation, tied to the Consumer Price Index‘s West region. At current rates, that would limit rent hikes to about 10 percent annually.

“We want to prevent the kind of extreme rent increases we’ve seen throughout the state that lead to displacement and frequently, unfortunately, homelessness,” said Danny Moran, a spokesman for Kotek.

Senate Bill 608 would also protect tenants from eviction without cause, with some exceptions.

The stage was set for rent control by Shemia Fagan’s 2018 primary win over longtime incumbent Sen. Rod Monroe, a landlord who was widely viewed as a roadblock for tenant-protection measures. Fagan now serves as chairwoman of the Senate Housing Committee. She has indicated she intends to move quickly on SB 608.

Political groups are still studying the 2,000-plus bills that were posted to the Legislature’s website ahead of the session’s start on Tuesday. 1000 Friends of Oregon, a Portland nonprofit that runs the pro-housing group Portland For Everyone, has not taken a position on SB 608, Deputy Director Mary Kyle McCurdy said.

The bill would likely have little effect on large, institutional apartment owners, DiLorenzo said.

“If you’re a landlord who’s attentive to the market, you’re probably not going to be raising rents 10 percent,” he said.

Rents in Portland have stabilized after sharp increases in recent years. Average rents slipped 0.2 percent in January compared to a year earlier, according to Apartment List. Median rents for January were $1,120 for a one-bedroom apartment, and $1,320 for a two-bedroom. Statewide, rents fell 1.9 percent during the past year, according to Apartment List.

The rent control bill would most affect landlords who have been leasing their properties at well below market rates, DiLorenzo said, a situation he characterized as “no good deed goes unpunished.”

While some municipalities across the nation have some form of rent control, Oregon could be the first state to implement it. While setting a statewide cap, the bill would leave in place a statewide pre-emption on local rent control programs.

Economists have been broadly critical of rent control, saying such measures tend to depress housing production. Democrats said the bill would provide a level of stability, preventing only major rent spikes.

Other provisions of SB 608 include:

• extending protection from eviction to tenants who have been in place for 12 months or longer,
• limiting rent increases to one per year,
• allowing evictions after three documented violations of the rental agreement in a 12-month period, and
• allowing evictions with 90 days’ notice and payment of one month’s rent if the landlord has agreed to sell the property, if the landlord intends to demolish or convert the rental from residential use, if the landlord intends to undertake major repairs or renovations, if the landlord or a family member intends to occupy the property as a primary residence, or if the unit is unsafe or unfit for occupancy. Landlords with four or fewer units would be exempt from the requirement to pay one month’s rent.

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Sweeping legislation to break the dominance of single-family zoning in Oregon cities has the backing of some of the state’s most powerful politicians.

The proposal, House Bill 2001, would require cities to allow more housing options. For each single-family lot, neighborhoods would have to allow one alternative dwelling unit, or ADU.

Also, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes would be allowed in single-family zones. Perhaps most notably, municipalities would not be allowed to ban middle housing types within their urban growth boundaries.

Backers of the legislation say traditional single-family detached houses are an increasingly poor fit for a large segment of the population, as millennials have shown a preference for having smaller families and living in urban cores.

“One of the disconnects we see is in the types of housing that’s available to buy or to rent,” said Mary Kyle McCurdy, deputy director of 1000 Friends of Oregon. “Over half of households consist of one to two persons, and yet well over half of our land is zoned just for detached single-family homes on one lot.”

HB 2001 has bipartisan support, McCurdy said. The legislation is sponsored by House Speaker Tina Kotek.

“The housing crisis throughout the state has continued, and it continues to be an urgent issue that needs to be addressed,” said Danny Moran, spokesman for Kotek.

The proposal bears some similarities to Portland’s Residential Infill Project. The proposed draft of changes to zoning in many of the city’s single-family neighborhoods to allow middle housing types is being examined by the Planning and Sustainability Commission. The proposed changes are expected to go before the City Council by summer.

In both cases, policymakers are breaking with decades of zoning practice that protected single-family neighborhoods from apartments, condos and duplexes. An increasingly vocal tenants’ movement has challenged the status quo, saying single-family zoning results in segregation by race and class.

Advocates for tenants’ rights have scored some notable victories, helping elect Sen. Shemia Fagan, D-Portland, to replace Rod Monroe, a landlord, to the Oregon Legislature as well as tenant-friendly commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly to the Portland City Council.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis recently became the first city to abolish single-family zoning and allow middle housing types throughout. Democrats in Oregon are seeking to essentially supersize the Minneapolis approach by taking it statewide.

HB 2001 would apply to Oregon cities with populations of 10,000 or more, and counties with 15,000 or more residents within their urban growth boundaries. The statewide approach could result in more middle housing options in cities such as Bend and Ashland.

“It’s not a panacea, but it’s one option to really create more housing within the state’s urban growth boundaries,” Moran said.

The bill is likely to be controversial among residents in some Portland neighborhoods such as Eastmoreland, which has historically resisted multifamily and middle housing types.

The multifamily landlord group More Housing Now has not taken a position on the bill, lobbyist John DiLorenzo said.

“We’re looking at it carefully,” he said. “We realize we need more housing in the city. There are lots of ways to do that.”

If HB 2001 were enacted, local governments would have until Dec. 31, 2020, to bring their zoning into compliance.

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Plans to build a fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery in St. Helens were dealt a blow late last month when the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals upheld an appeal of a decision by the Columbia County Board of Commissioners to rezone 837 acres of agricultural land for industrial use.

The decision by LUBA remands the decision to Columbia County for the second time; LUBA in 2014 rejected an attempt by the county to rezone the Port Westward property to allow numerous potential uses. This time, just five proposed uses – processing, storage and transportation of forestry and wood products, dry and liquid bulk commodities, natural gas products and break bulk cargo – would’ve been allowed.

But LUBA still found those uses inconsistent with adjacent agriculturally-zoned land. Columbia Riverkeeper and 1000 Friends of Oregon had appealed to LUBA.

The county and the Port of St. Helens had sought to rezone the property – 17 separate parcels – as Rural Industrial Planned Development (RIPD) land. Currently, the property is zoned for exclusive farm use, though it is adjacent to 905 acres of industrial land. That property is served by a 1,250-foot-long dock along the Columbia River. Most of the land is occupied by Portland General Electric, which operates three gas-fired electrical generating plants there, as well as a 1.3-million barrel tank farm, a biomass refinery facility and electrical substation.

The Port of St. Helens in February 2018 reached a lease agreement with Northwest Innovation Works for construction of a fracked gas-to-methanol refinery at Port Westward.

The LUBA decision was based on an analysis that the broad range of proposed industrial uses at Port Westward are incompatible with adjacent agricultural uses, and that the county failed to adequately analyze the impacts of those proposed uses.

The decision means the Port of St. Helens will now be required to disclose the specific uses it intends to employ at Port Westward, as well as potential impacts on adjacent property and environmental resources.

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A bill making its way through the Oregon House could breach a wall in the state’s urban growth boundaries.

HB 4079 would create a pilot program for two Oregon cities to enable developers to build on land adjacent to existing urban growth boundaries.

Supporters, including the Oregon Home Builders Association and affordable-housing advocates, say the bill would address a pressing need for affordable housing.

Opponents decry the legislation as a way to end-run Oregon’s urban growth boundary system, which they say has reduced sprawl and encouraged density while providing certainty to developers.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Duane Stark, R-Grants Pass. Some legislators have discussed linking the bill with others as part of a package of legislation to address affordable housing, tenant protections and inclusionary zoning.

“It has been a concern of many of us that the urban growth boundary has a connection to high land costs and rents,” said Jon Chandler, chief executive of the Home Builders Association.

Chandler said policy makers won’t know if UGBs restrict development of affordable housing unless they make exceptions and see what happens.

“What we’re trying to do with this is create a fairly modest experiment to test to see,” he said.

The bill does not identify the two cities that would host the experiment. Instead, the legislation says the UGB exception areas would be nominated by local governments according to rules promulgated by the Land Conservation and Development Commission.

The legislation specifically excludes Metro-area governments – Chandler said there are “too many moving parts” in the Portland area – as well as those in Marion, Polk and Yamhill counties, and a portion of Jefferson County.

“Affordable housing might look completely different in southern Oregon than it looks on the Oregon coast, or in Eugene,” Stark said.

Stark said he wrote the bill in consultation with John VanLandingham, a well-known Lane County attorney who has served on the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission, the Eugene Planning Commission and the Housing Policy Board for Lane County.

Stark said the bill is a “small risk,” envisioning only two UGB exceptions of 50 acres each.

“We designed the bill in a way that encourages communities to be innovative,” he said.

Mary Kyle McCurdy, policy director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, criticized the bill, saying it contains no definitions or requirements for affordable housing. Also, UGBs are regularly expanded with little controversy, she said, so a question is raised: Why should a loophole be created?

“Most of them are not appealed and they go through fine,” she said.

McCurdy said building advocates also tend to underrate the difficulty and expense of building roads, pipes and other infrastructure outside an urban growth boundary.

“We think that would be money and energy better spent within urban growth boundaries to provide affordable housing,” said McCurdy, who testified against the bill.

Metro has waded into the debate. A report on Feb. 12 looked back at UGB expansions and the resulting construction in those areas. Metro argued that UGB expansions have resulted in little affordable housing construction.

In 2011, for example, the Metro Council brought 1,062 acres of south Hillsboro into the UGB. The expansion was approved by the state Legislature in 2014. Yet not a single home has been built in the area. Metro pointed to similar results in Cornelius, Forest Grove and elsewhere.

In other cases, such as North Bethany and Wilsonville’s Villebois area, homes were built, but they did not address the affordable market.

Meanwhile, developers are building in Portland. In Metro’s coverage area, about 90 percent of housing growth has occurred within Portland’s original urban growth boundary.

“We frequently hear from a variety of different interests about the need for more land,” Metro spokesman Jim Middaugh said. “What we’ve found, although land is an important component, it’s not a panacea. We’ve actually approved significant expansions of the urban growth boundary and not achieved the growth we’d hoped for.”

Chandler called Metro’s report “disingenuous.”

“Metro is cherry-picking statistics, and I’m fairly aggravated with the approach they’re taking,” he said.

Chandler also cautioned that the bill targets rural Oregon, not Metro’s area.

“The state is full of cities where the urban growth boundary is 500 feet from downtown,” Chandler said.

The bill has attracted a strong response through public testimony.

Russ Dondero, a Forest Grove resident and Pacific University professor emeritus who has advocated for affordable housing, called the bill a “retreat from good land-use policy and also evidence of pandering to the developer and real estate lobby.”

And the Oregon Farm Bureau said the bill doesn’t require local governments to show a need for more land to participate in the UGB pilot program.

“OFB is concerned that relaxing land use laws in an attempt to facilitate housing will only result in urban sprawl into rural areas,” said Mary Anne Nash, public policy counsel for the Farm Bureau.

But several affordable housing advocates backed Stark’s bill.

“HB 4079 is an opportunity for a creative pilot that would help smaller communities address their lack of affordable housing,” said Peter Hainley, executive director of the Community and Shelter Assistance Corp.

“While some may say that this is an assault on the state’s strong land use system,” he added, “properly implemented it could be the answer to the need for affordable housing throughout the state.”

Lincoln County Commissioner Bill Hall said a lack of affordable housing comes up often in discussions on the coast.

“We have to create incentives and remove barriers to private investment as well,” he said.

The bill was assigned to the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

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Two of Portland’s open drinking water reservoirs will be shut down, following a recent mandate from the Oregon Health Authority.

Officials representing Mayor Charlie Hales’ office announced Monday that they will disconnect a reservoir at Mount Tabor and one at Washington Park, after an unsuccessful appeal to the OHA. That action was triggered by an unfunded federal mandate (the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, or LT2) that outlaws the use of uncovered reservoirs to store finished drinking water. The rule is intended to reduce the risk of exposure to contaminants.

City officials made numerous attempts to obtain a variance or delay in rule compliance because of cost. OHA refused the latest request in May.

The 75-million-gallon Mount Tabor facility won’t be disconnected until Dec. 31, 2015, when the $138 million Powell Butte reservoir and the $70 million Kelly Butte reservoir are expected to be complete. While one reservoir is being decommissioned at Washington Park, another will be renovated and covered with a reflecting pool.

In the past, the Friends of the Reservoirs advocacy group has contended that replacement projects are wasteful and unnecessary. In lieu of new construction, the group favored the idea of placing synthetic rubber covers over the open-air facilities.

Officials made no mention of the synthetic rubber covers concept, but said they would work with community members to preserve the historic structures at each reservoir. They also claimed that they would “heighten scrutiny of all capital projects and contracts to keep rate increases as low as possible.”

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Far from Wall Street, a Ponzi scheme is unfolding in Portland’s backyard, according to Jason Miner, executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon. Many people know it as urban sprawl.

“You can see the Ponzi scheme playing out across the landscape, when a current development pays into local government coffers to a certain extent in (system development charges) and other fees, but those fees don’t cover the long-term costs of sprawling,” Miner said. “They don’t cover the long-term costs of the development.”

A new 1000 Friends of Oregon report calls out sprawl development as a major reason why the region has such a massive infrastructure funding deficit. The report – “More Extensive is More Expensive: How sprawl infrastructure bankrupts Oregon communities, and what we can do about it” – contends that sprawl is inherently costlier than infill development, and that municipalities create unsustainable communities when they trade short-term stimulus for neighborhoods they can’t afford to maintain in the long run.

According to a Regional Infrastructure Analysis completed by Metro in 2008, Portland’s three-county area needs between $27 billion and $41 billion for infrastructure improvements to accommodate anticipated growth by 2035 – traditional funding sources are expected to cover only half of that amount. Meanwhile, the region faces a $10 billion deficit for repairs of existing infrastructure.

“We have a lot of infrastructure needs facing the region for growth that we expect to occur and haven’t really sorted out how that’s going to happen (and) how that’s going to get paid for,” said Tom Imeson, public affairs director for the Port of Portland.

Imeson is one of the business leaders spearheading the Community Investment Initiative, a civic effort to identify new funding sources for infrastructure projects. He is developing the framework of the initiative’s Regional Infrastructure Enterprise, in which infrastructure investment will be facilitated via project identification and partnerships with industry stakeholders.

Efforts to bridge the infrastructure gap are already under way at the state level. In November, Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler announced creation of the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange, a regional partnership between Oregon, California, Washington and British Columbia. Their combined need for infrastructure projects is estimated at $1 trillion over the next 30 years. The hope is to leverage private capital by bundling similar projects together.

At the national level, the American Society of Civil Engineers identified an investment need of $2.2 trillion over the next five years.

For its part, 1000 Friends estimates “quality growth,” or development serving existing communities or built areas, could cut infrastructure-related costs by 47 percent.

Greg Malinowski, a Washington County commissioner, said he sees the impact of sprawl often.

“Our roads are not really safe for pedestrian traffic,” he said. “We have schools out here that are providing buses to haul kids 50 feet to school because there’s no safe way for them to cross the street. They can see the school, but they can’t get there and we can’t put a crossing in because we don’t have the funds.”

Malinowski added that streetscapes are deteriorating in some unincorporated areas with older houses from the 1950s and ’70s. Cities won’t annex those communities, he said, because they don’t receive enough taxes to cover the cost of providing infrastructure.

Meanwhile, development is forging ahead in the county’s North Bethany area – 800 acres of farmland slated to receive between 3,755 and 4,653 units. Arbor Custom Homes, Oregon’s largest private homebuilder, is acquiring entitlements to build 700 new units there. It’s hoping to break ground in May or June on developments featuring 125 single-family homes, 131 townhomes and 420 condominiums or apartments.

A Washington County law passed in 2008, requires developers like Arbor to cover 28 percent (up from 10 percent) of the cost of infrastructure associated with new development. That leaves taxpayers on the hook for 72 percent. In the case of North Bethany, Malinowski said there is a gap of approximately $96.2 million between what is needed for road improvements and what development will pay for.

Malinowski said Washington County’s infrastructure deficit is approximately $2 billion. Rather than add to that with sprawling development, the county should reinvest in communities it has already built, he said.

“To me what adds wealth to a community is that you can live in an older neighborhood and every year your property values go up,” he said. “If we just abandon the older communities and just keep building newer ones, then after a while the property values don’t go up.”

Miner agrees. 1000 Friends of Oregon, in its report, contends that communities should be required to conduct fiscal impact analyses that weigh the relative benefits of infill versus sprawl before they are allowed to create new development plans. Current law, for instance, requires municipalities to evaluate multiple sites for potential urban growth boundary expansions, but does not require that those sites be compared to brownfields within the UGB that could be cleaned.

The idea is to motivate transparency and better-informed decisions, Miner said. 1000 Friends of Oregon, for now, is presenting its concept as food for thought.

“We are trying to prevent sprawl or leapfrog development and the great inefficiency that that leads to in our communities,” Miner said. “I see a change in community values (that favors) fixing what we have first, and realizing that public investment in large infrastructure projects, the way it has been done in the past, isn’t possible in the future and isn’t happening today.”

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After a brief detour on the traditional route to expanding an urban growth boundary, Scappoose officials are back on track.

Slightly more than 53 percent of the Scappoose voters who turned out for a special election on Tuesday voted in favor of a citizen-driven referendum that asked whether they supported a city plan to expand its urban growth boundary by 365 acres. The plan is scheduled to now go before the Columbia County Board of Commissioners. Final approval would come from the state Land Conservation and Development Commission.

The UGB expansion would include 339 acres east of the Scappoose Industrial Airpark and 26 acres on the city’s southern boundary where Old Portland Road meets U.S. Route 30. Portland developer Joe Weston is the major property owner and has plans to use the land for employment purposes and potentially for a Portland Community College satellite campus.

Details aren’t worked out completely yet, but supporters of the expansion plan – including local business groups, Mayor Scott Burge and state Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose – believe it could lead to the creation of hundreds of family-wage jobs.

This belief led a group of citizen activists, with the support of statewide land-use watchdog group , to fight the UGB expansion proposal. The group, , contended that citizens don’t support the plan, which was approved by both Scappoose’s planning commission and City Council.

The group’s main gripe with the proposal, according to one of the main opponents, Pat Zimmerman, is with claims that it would create jobs. She noted that the southern end of Scappoose has nearly 200 acres of vacant industrial land considered shovel ready and not creating jobs.

Mia Nelson, a member of 1000 Friends of Oregon, pointed to flaws in the city’s justification for expansion. Under state law, cities must prove they need land for their 20-year supply before they expand UGBs.

Nelson believes the city is relying too heavily on the figures in an economic opportunities analysis, and that statistics from the Oregon Employment Department might be more accurate.

“We recognize and commend the city of Scappoose’s efforts to plan for its future,” Nelson wrote in a letter to the Columbia County Board of Commissioners. “We support economic development, including provision of land necessary for that development, when it is based on accurate facts, and realistic future assumptions and projections, and takes into account a jurisdiction’s unique attributes.

“But … the proposed employment growth rates are neither realistic nor based on sound factual information.”

Burge agreed that jobs aren’t created from a UGB expansion directly, but added that an expansion is needed for Scappoose to be competitive in the regional economy.

“If you want to be hyper-technical … adding land to the UGB doesn’t directly create any additional jobs,” he said. “But it does indirectly help create the jobs for our future by giving companies looking for a place to (locate) more options to locate and thus helps create more jobs.

“Not adding the land guarantees no new jobs over the next 20 years and guarantees turning this land into a gravel pit and only residential development. More homes and no more jobs.”

Burge added that if the land wasn’t added to the UGB, then both taxes and rates would likely rise, and less money would likely be spent on public services, which would lead to more crime.

The election resulted in 609 votes in support of the expansion, and 536 in opposition.

If the expansion plan was to receive approval from the Columbia County Board of Commissioners, it would then go before the LCDC. Also, the UGB expansion could be appealed, but none has been announced.

Even if the UGB expansion was approved, the property would need to be annexed into the city, which would require approval of voters, before development could occur.

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By bringing a data center to Prineville, Facebook hasn’t just helped the city; it’s been a boon to almost all of Central Oregon.

And therein lies the problem, officials in Cook, Jefferson and Deschutes counties say.

Facebook is the only one of its kind in the area and county officials say it’s time the large-lot industrial employer had company. Toward that goal, Deschutes County officials last week took the first step to implement a region-wide economic opportunities analysis that will help towns and cities in the county justify urban growth boundary expansions or zoning changes for industrial sites of more than 50 acres.

Not everyone is pleased with the plan, however. Local land-use advocates admit industrial companies like Facebook that require large tracts of land do help the area’s economy, but they think counties in Central Oregon would be better to focus on creating local jobs by courting businesses that don’t require as much land.

For more than a year, the tri-county area has been working with Economic Development for Central Oregon to compile the analysis, which will be entered into each county’s comprehensive plan and used to justify land-use decisions. It’s a move that was sparked by Facebook’s decision to come to the region, said Nick Lelack, Deschutes County’s planning director.

“The outcome (of the document) basically states that in the short term, about a five year period, we need six sites with a minimum of 50 acres each that are located within three different jurisdictions in the region,” Lelack said. “That way we will have an inventory and variety of suitable lands when a company came looking, and would be able to make a much more compelling pitch.”

The Deschutes County Planning Commission last week held its first public hearing about adding the analysis results to the comprehensive plan, and will take the issue up again at its next meeting on Aug. 25. Once the analysis results are part of Deschutes County’s comprehensive plan, which is expected to be done by the end of this year, Crook and Jefferson counties – and all of the cities within their boundaries – will follow suit.

The Central Oregon wing of the statewide land-use activist group 1000 Friends of Oregon agrees with county officials that economic development and land management are issues that should be dealt with at the regional level. But the organization has concerns about some of the assumptions in the analysis document.

According to Pam Hardy, a Central Oregon advocate with 1000 Friends of Oregon, the document simply states that large-lot industrial businesses are good for the economy, but never provides justification. She points to Facebook as a prime example. The company, Hardy says, used more than 100 acres in Prineville and only created 35 long-term jobs, a figure confirmed by Economic Development for Central Oregon.

“By placing the assumption that large lot employers create a strong and thriving economy in the vision statement, the document tries to avoid the task of making the case that employers that require large lots would actually improve the local economy,” Hardy wrote in a letter submitted into the record of the final document. “The document simply assumes that this is true.

“Actually, research shows that the opposite is true. The vast majority of job growth comes from existing small businesses.”

Lelack says the counties aren’t ignoring small local businesses. They’re just trying to diversify the types of employers in the region.

“This doesn’t replace any other efforts,” Lelack said. “It’s simply meant as a parallel effort in order to maximize the economic opportunities available.”

By using a region-wide economic opportunities analysis, Lelack said, local governments will have more authority to make sure land being rezoned or added to the urban growth boundary as large-lot industrial isn’t converted to another use, as often happens. Anytime the document is used to justify a land-use decision, there will be a stipulation that the land being considered must keep the large-lot industrial designation for a period of at least 20 years, he said.

Land-use activists aren’t convinced those large tracts of land will be enough to attract more companies like Facebook, however. Hardy says most companies like Boeing or Intel that require large tracts of land also usually need to be located near population centers of more than 300,000 people. Other factors they seek out: an interstate highway or seaport in close proximity.

Central Oregon’s tri-county area has a population of around 200,000, and while it has several regional airports, it doesn’t have access to an interstate or seaport.

Despite concerns about the direction the counties are taking with large-lot industrial land, 1000 Friends of Oregon earlier this year came out in support of the effort to try to plan on a regional level, said Mary Kyle McCurdy, 1000 Friends of Oregon’s staff attorney. It’s a good example of how regional planning can occur under current state land-use policy.

Lelack says the regional effort can help achieve another goal. Conducting such an encompassing analysis helps out of town employers realize that the area isn’t as small and rural as it may seem.

“We want to be more compelling from the 10,000-foot level, and this helps us do that,” he said.

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A “jumping off point” was established for discussions about how much land for housing should be included in an urban growth boundary expansion, if Metro Council were to green-light one.

During a work session last week, Metro Council determined that if it chose to expand the UGB, the incoming land would need to be able to accommodate the addition of 15,000 homes or living units. Meanwhile, land-use activists oppose any UGB expansion at this time.

“Our view is not now,” said Mary Kyle McCurdy, attorney for land-use advocacy group 1000 Friends of Oregon. “It’s not a ‘no’ forever, but with uncertainty around population growth and the economy, which these numbers are based on, we think it’s best to pause and wait.”

Metro Council won’t vote whether to expand the UGB for the Portland-metro area – Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties – until Oct. 20; however, councilors needed a number that it could use as a base for discussions.

“Consider it a placeholder figure to put into the draft ordinance,” Metro spokesman Ken Ray said. “It’s like a bill that gets introduced to the Legislature. It’s a jumping off point.”

But 15,000 is not an arbitrary figure; Metro staffers came up with it by using data from both population and employment projections. Last year, staffers released a report showing that depending on growth, the metro area could have from a surplus of 2,900 housing units to a shortage of 79,300 units at the end of the 20-year period.

In a compromise of sorts, Metro narrowed this range to the middle third – between 15,400 and 26,600 housing units. And because undeveloped areas and possible infill spaces exist within the existing UGB, the council decided to start the discussion at the bottom of the middle third.

“They could go up from that number or they could go down,” Ray said. “They could decide not to expand it at all.”

Metro councilors received recommendations for seven areas – totaling 3,457 acres – that could accommodate housing needs for a UGB expansion. But because density varies in metro areas, it is unclear how many acres would be needed for 15,000 housing units.

For example, the 1,063 acres recommended south of Hillsboro could provide between 12,756 and 15,945 units, depending on density. Hillsboro has proposed that the area have 12 units per acre, while Metro has expressed its desire for approximately 15 units per acre, Ray said.

The city of Beaverton, on the other hand, would seek extremely high density for the 543 acres recommended south of Cooper Mountain.

“Not all expansion areas are created equal,” Ray said. “And if we did include an area in an expansion, the council could put a stipulation on what sort of density standard the area must have.”

Meanwhile, 1000 Friends of Oregon is taking a hard stance against any expansion.

“The U.S. Census data already shows that we are growing at a slower rate than Metro predicted,” McCurdy said. “Add that to the recessionary effects that we are feeling and will be feeling moving forward, (and) it’s not an appropriate time.”

McCurdy added that a multibillion-dollar backlog of proposed infrastructure projects for the metro area should be considered before a UGB expansion.

If Metro Council were to decline to expand the UGB, then the discussion would not resume until 2015.

But according to David Nielsen, CEO of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland, the area could experience a shortage of developable lots before that time.

“You need to look at these things in the long term,” Nielsen said. “It takes five years, minimum, to get new land developable, and that is if everything goes just right. Just because the population and employment data is off right now doesn’t mean it will continue to be. You can’t play with those types of projections.”

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Growth in the Portland-metro area often is a heated topic. As the deadline approaches for the Metro Council to determine whether to expand the urban growth boundary, opposing sides may be as far apart as ever.

The council is considering seven possible expansion areas – a total of 3,457 acres – to meet needs housing and employment needs for the next 20 years. Some land-use activists want the council to postpone expansion for at least four years. But local home builders believe a delay would create a housing shortage in the metro area in the near future.

The state requires the Metro Council to review the UGB every five years. The council deferred a decision last year when officials plodded through the process to designate urban and rural reserves; now it must make a decision by October.

Metro staffers earlier this year studied 9,800 acres around the tri-county area for potential UGB expansion. A report released earlier this month by Metro Chief Operating Officer Dan Cooper recommended that 3,767 acres – 3,457 for housing and 310 for industrial employment – be considered. Most of the areas are in Washington County, and a few are in Clackamas County.

Metro spokesman Ken Ray said all seven areas are being evaluated by the council.

“Anything could happen,” he said. “But from the discussions so far it seems unlikely that they would all be brought in.”

Jason Miner, executive director of land-use advocacy group 1000 Friends of Oregon, says the council should pass on the expansion altogether and resume the conversation in four years, when Metro is next required to examine the UGB.

“We have a limited pool of resources to provide access to the places that are already in the UGB,” he said. “Why spread those resources even thinner when we haven’t even reached the population growth for right now that Metro had projected?

“With the information we have right now there is no reason we couldn’t wait for the next discussion.”

Miner believes Metro should wait to expand the UGB because of the uncertainty of the economy and recent stagnation of population growth. Moreover, he said, the housing being built these days is urban infill, and a UGB expansion wouldn’t help accommodate that.

“Housing developments on the urban fringe aren’t working right now,” he said. “Market demand is for close-in neighborhoods.”

Renaissance Homes, owned by Randy Sebastian, formerly built about 450 homes a year in new developments in the suburbs. But since the most recent downturn, the company has focused almost exclusively on infill projects in established Portland neighborhoods.

“I want to build 150 (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified) homes a year in the great neighborhoods of Portland,” Sebastian said. “That’s a big strategy for us right now.”

Nevertheless, home builders believe the UGB expansion decision must be made based on long-term projections.

“It takes five years, minimum, to get new land to a point that’s developable, and that’s if everything works out just right,” said Dave Nielsen, CEO of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland. “We are going to have a developable lot shortage in the next two to four years, so we need to have land working through that process.”

Nielsen said he likes the areas that Metro has decided to consider because they are all close to areas and jurisdictions already developed, so provision of services wouldn’t be as challenging as in the past. In these areas, housing demands could be met in a much shorter timeframe than previously, he said.

“1000 Friends (of Oregon officials) never change their argument,” he said. “They aren’t a land-use advocacy group; they’re an anti-growth group.

“We need to respond to growth needs every five years. It’s been nine years since we have and now they want us to push it out another four.”

The Metro Council presently is preparing to engage the public to receive comments.

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