In 2016, the affordable housing crisis gripping Portland was creating a deep impact on Portsmouth Union Church and the surrounding community. The congregation dwindled as rent increases forced longtime members to move to the far outskirts of the suburbs, and church leaders fielded increasingly frequent calls from displaced North Portland residents looking for places to live.

For years up to that point, the church had been providing housing aid by allowing people to camp on its property, hosting warming shelters and offering assistance with rent and utility bills. According to Rev. Julia Nielsen, one of the church’s co-pastors, members realized their efforts were only putting a Band-Aid on the crisis and that something more needed to be done.

“My faith community realized that we have all this extra space on our land and we have all these folks that we’re not able to help in a systemic way,” she said. “What if we just provided housing for people instead?”

Members of the 125-year-old church, located since 1961 at 4775 N. Lombard St., decided to take bold action to combat the crisis by building as much affordable housing as possible on an unused half-acre portion of their property.

None of the members had any significant development experience, but the mayor had just declared a housing state of emergency the year prior, so they believed the development process would be easy at the city level. They quickly found out that was not the case.

“All of the red tape caught us by surprise,” Nielsen said. “What we experienced in fact was the city had done almost nothing to make it simple for faith communities in particular, but also community-based organizations and nonprofits in general, to have an easy path to doing that.”

The church submitted building permit applications for the project earlier this year after navigating a complicated process to build on its property – including lot line adjustments, a conditional use review, and creation of a ground lease to lease the land back to itself under a newly formed limited liability company. The plan is for ground to be broken this summer on the 20-unit building targeting veterans and displaced North Portland residents earning 30 percent area median income or less. Nielsen estimates that city regulatory hurdles set the project back nearly two years and $50,000.

“That’s time and money that would have allowed us to be housing the people – displaced neighbors and homeless veterans who are currently living either on the edge or on the streets,” she said.

Now, the city of Portland is seeking to amend its zoning code to make it easier for groups like Portsmouth Union Church to build affordable housing on their land. The Expanding Opportunities for Affordable Housing (EOAH) project seeks to capture the momentum of such groups’ desire to help fight the housing crisis by using surplus space on their properties for affordable housing.

Conditional use and zoning processes add costs and uncertainty to projects that are already struggling for funding, Planning and Sustainability Commission member Steph Routh told Portland City Council members earlier this month.

“This is about helping community-based organizations cut through some red tape in order to advance our shared goals,” Routh said, adding that EOAH “reads like a love letter to Portland from Portland.”

The proposed ordinance has been fine-tuned over a series of hearings before City Council this month. While it originally allowed for rezoned properties to be developed with market-rate housing, it has been updated to include regulated affordability at the behest of Commissioners Chloe Eudaly and Jo Ann Hardesty. The proposed ordinance is likely to be adopted when it next goes before City Council on June 10.

The EOAH project is being managed by the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability and funded by a 2018 Metro Planning and Community Development grant. Case studies were conducted for three properties of different sizes and in different locations. Carleton Hart Architecture provided design concepts for the sites, and The Nielsen Group provided financial expertise.

The city partnered with Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon to reach faith organizations, identify barriers to development and develop a system to connect property-owning institutions with developers that need access to affordable land.

“These amendments are truly a game-changer for us,” Jan Musgrove Elfers, president of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, said during a May 14 hearing. “I cannot overemphasize how vital an impact the amendments to remove barriers in this proposal will have for faith communities that are trying to build affordable housing on their properties.”

The proposal aims to facilitate development by amending city code for institutions with conditional uses in residential zones. Those nonprofits would be able to add housing to their properties without undergoing a new conditional use review when certain base zone standards are met. They would also be allowed to adjust conditional use site boundaries without bringing up a review.

Because conditional use code often requires institutions to maintain a minimum amount of parking even when they are close to transit, the proposed ordinance would allow housing to be built on up to 50 percent of that parking on sites near frequent transit. Some of the anticipated residential buildings may include institutional or community service space, so an increase in acceptable nonresidential floor area is also planned.

The proposed ordinance also would include rezoning and changing the comprehensive plan map designations to expand housing opportunities on 18 designated sites throughout the city. Those changes are being recommended to offer more flexible options for development and a wider range of uses for mission-based organizations that want to develop housing on their land.

Those organizations may hold the key to solving a heretofore major problem encountered by affordable housing developers – a lack of available land. There are about 1,300 institutions – including faith-based, fraternal, community service and education organizations – regulated as conditional uses in residential zones in Portland. They occupy a total of 1,400 acres of city land.

As faith institutions continue to suffer from declining membership, many have an abundance of property and a desire to use it to further their community outreach. The potential for building housing on that land makes perfect sense, Nielsen says, in part because faith-based institutions often have deep roots in neighborhoods with residents who might otherwise oppose new projects by nonprofit developers sometimes considered outsiders.

“Having a congregation that knows its neighbors, that knows its community and serves its needs positions us really well to be able to help when people are struggling,” she said. “Responding to an affordable housing crisis is right in our wheelhouse.”

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