Portland design commissioners on Thursday grappled with how to respond to a push by the City Council to reform the design review process.

City councilors in December unanimously approved requiring preparation of a report on design review, including options for a temporary suspension of its requirements. The report will also study design review’s economic impacts, process and use of design overlay zones and historic districts.

Portland Permitting & Development and Planning and Sustainability will prepare the report for City Administrator Raymond Lee. It is due on April 9.

In 2025, the city issued only 22 new construction permits for multifamily projects amid city and state officials pushing for more housing. But design commissioners said design review should not be blamed for the slowdown in multifamily construction.

“My concern is just that if not taken with full context, certain numbers and charts can reveal different things to different people,” said Commissioner Sarah Vaz, who asked whether impacts such as rising construction costs and inclusionary housing requirements would be considered.

A senior city staffer noted that the review is part of a wider City Council effort to remove barriers to development and to encourage development.

“There’s wide recognition that there’s many factors, and I don’t think anyone is saying that design review is why we are in the situation we find ourselves in now,” Chief City Planner Patricia Diefenderfer said.

Design review gives residents a chance to be heard, Design Commission Chairwoman Chandra Robinson said.

“Design review is a time when the public is able to come provide testimony,” Robinson said. “It’s the time when they’re able to get their voices on the record, and I think it’s an important part of the process that they’re able to share their thoughts on proposals in their neighborhood.”

Commissioners said members of the public are often unclear about the limitations of their power.

Design review “cannot change the heights, the (floor area ratio requirements), the zoning, the required parking or not parking, what a property owner can do with his property,” Commissioner Zari Santner said. “We cannot dictate those.”

Robinson agreed, saying residents often urge the Design Commission to require parking or a grocery store as part of a larger development — something the commission cannot do.

Santner said design review represents a “social pact” with city residents: Essentially, a promise that if residents allow taller, denser development, zoning and design review will ensure that it “improves the quality of life for people in neighborhoods where the development is happening.”

Commissioners did point out some potential improvements. Application requirements could be better aligned with project phasing, Vaz said. Applications can often require too much detail, too early in the process, when architects haven’t worked out items such as lighting, she said.

Members of the public who testified Thursday said they want to be able to weigh in early in a project’s review process, before the developer has fully shaped the development.

City staffers assigned to the forthcoming report will hold a similar meeting on Monday with the Historic Landmarks Commission. After the council receives the report in April, the group could weigh possible code changes.

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EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In the steel shell of a former dormitory (more recently, a nursing home), water collects in buckets as construction crews hammer, drill, saw and weld, and heavy machinery is used to cover a series of underground water retention systems.

Next door, the masonry elevator shaft rises three stories above construction crews working on the first floor of a new building.

The two buildings are becoming 95 units of income-restricted housing. One Neighborhood Builders is tackling the project in partnership with Family Service of Rhode Island, Crossroads Rhode Island and Foster Forward. Units are expected to be ready for occupancy by February 2027.

Foster Forward clients, young adults aging out of the foster care system, are eligible for a few of the new apartments. They often struggle to secure housing because few landlords will accept any vouchers when demand is so high.

Forty percent of the units will be for people making 30 percent of the area median income or less, while the remaining 60 percent will be for people making 80 percent of AMI or less.

Work is expected to be done on the two buildings by January 2027. The project’s final phase would see construction of a third building with 49 additional units. A request has been submitted to the state for funding in the next round of income-restricted housing loans and grants. Those awards are expected to be announced in April 2026.

The hope is that the third phase receives funding before the general contractor is done with the first two buildings. If so, that would yield huge cost savings over having to bring in another general contractor later, Director of Real Estate Development Michelle Bleau said.

Site work started in March 2025, and then major construction began in December. Some of the work included creation of the underground water retention systems, with catch basins running the length of the parking lot. They’re designed for a 100-year flood capacity.

“These are basically anywhere where they could fit one in,” Pezzuco Construction Superintendent Douglas Valcourt said.

One of the last portions of construction will be vehicle parking: 145 spaces.

The plan was always for construction of two new buildings and renovation of an old one — a former Johnson & Wales University dormitory that was later turned into a nursing home.

“We cleared everything out — all the old walls, all the wiring, the mechanicals,” One Neighborhood Builders Senior Project Manager Stephen Kearns said.

Inside the old building, only the stairwells were left intact.

“You’re trying to reinvent what you can with what you have,” Valcourt said. “There’s a lot of trying to restore it back to a blank slate and then move forward.”

Crews then had to seal up the holes in the floor where various building systems had been.

“They ran everything differently 40 years ago when this building was built,” Valcourt said.

A dormitory or nursing home, with one massive heating and cooling system, is far different from an apartment complex with individual temperature controls. Apartments will be heated and cooled with Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) systems, based on heat pump technology — essentially mini-splits, Valcourt said.

That means holes don’t need to be cut in the walls between units that are supposed to have hefty individual fire ratings.

The whole building is electric, with plans for rooftop solar panels and heat-pump water heaters.

The old building still needs its new roof. Windows from Latvia that weigh twice as much as typical American ones will be much more efficient.

Once the building envelope is done, along with the roof and the siding (masonry exterior finishes were kept), the building will look complete. However, inside is where work still must be done.

Currently, the inside of the old building has been turned from a blank slate to a labyrinth of framing for apartments (including bedrooms, bathrooms and closets), storage rooms, and the electrical room.

Each unit will have blocking installed so that it can become accessible, allowing for a maintenance person to install railings in the shower or swap out the counters with those accessible to a person in a wheelchair, Valcourt said.

The building will have a mix of large studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. One studio configuration offers a combined kitchen and living room with a bedroom off to the side but without a door. Another apartment configuration comes with a “bonus room” — one the size of a bedroom but without a window or closet that would legally make it such.

“It’s a funky building setup,” Valcourt said. “So, how do you use the middle of the H? Because the building’s a big H. So, how do you use that? You take a little bit from the sides for the units and a little bit from the side from you and you get left with a long, narrow unit. It’s kind of broken up. You got some columns.”

The first floor of the old building will have a few residential units but mostly offices.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Providence Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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The Portland City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a resolution to study the city’s design review process, including possible reforms and a moratorium.

The resolution struck a compromise between the status quo and some critics who urged the council to suspend design review immediately.

“The time of stopping your neighbor’s housing development from going forward because you don’t like the color of the glass that they’re using — I think that should be over,” said Eric Zimmerman, a District 4 councilor and co-sponsor of the resolution alongside Angelita Morillo.

City Administrator Raymond C. Lee III now has 120 days to prepare a report with recommendations for the City Council.

Lee was confirmed by the City Council on Wednesday to serve as the city’s first administrator, the city government’s top nonelected position. He most recently served as city manager of Greeley, Colorado.

Zimmerman said it’s important to distinguish between design review and zoning, as he sought to quell fears of tall buildings in residential neighborhoods. He added that reform of design review will be more successful after engaging with city staff and other stakeholders.

“I think we get to win this message better if we do it in this collaborative, staff-supported way,” he said.

Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney thanked Zimmerman and Morillo for not seeking to immediately dismantle design review.

“I want us to be able to have a comprehensive discussion about design review that moves beyond a binary choice between the status quo and abolishing the system completely, and what you’ve brought us today gives us that opportunity,” Pirtle-Guiney said.

Others, however, urged the council to move faster. Councilor Jamie Dunphy said he “would have brought a resolution forward and just suspended it, personally.”

“I personally want to live in a city that is filled with interesting, vibrant buildings that are not dated by the time they are open,” he said.

Robert Pile, principal at Oakleaf reDevelopment in Portland, urged the council to consider a design review moratorium.

“This is a key opportunity to help expedite entitlements and lower production costs — two things we need to stimulate more housing supply,” he said.

The design review study, which will be due in April, is intended to complement other measures that seek to spur development, including a three-year system development charge waiver that was approved in July.

The push comes amid state and local goals to build more housing.

“We really do have to change the way that we build in Portland, and this is our opportunity to get that information so that we can make those tough choices,” Morillo said.

Councilor Dan Ryan encouraged the study to shine a light on the Historic Landmarks Commission, which he said practices a “de facto override of zoning review processes.”

Councilor Sameer Kanal said the study should consider a design review exemption for conversions of offices to housing units.

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Two Portland city councilors are pushing a resolution to reform the city’s design review process and perhaps provide a temporary exemption for housing proposals.

The effort represents a serious challenge to design review, which is overseen by Portland Permitting & Development. Developers have long blamed the process for delaying construction and adding costs, but supporters say it improves the design of proposed buildings that go through review and allows the public to weigh in on what’s built in the city.

Councilors Angelita Morillo and Eric Zimmerman are sponsoring the resolution, which will be discussed during Wednesday’s meeting. It directs the city administrator to deliver a report to the council within 120 days. The report would:

• include an overview of the types of design review, along with design overlay zones, design districts and historic districts to which design guidelines apply, and
• offer an economic impact analysis of design review on commercial and residential development timelines during the past five years, and projections for the next five years.

The city administrator would then provide options for a temporary exemption from design review and propose potential changes to the city code that underpins the design review process.

Design review “gets talked a lot about as a barrier, but what is the barrier gets a little fuzzy,” Zimmerman said Monday.

The report will “allow us to cut to the chase,” he added. “I would like to hear from the staff – what do they think are the most attackable problems?”

The design review study dovetails with other efforts to facilitate development in Portland. In July, the City Council approved a three-year waiver on system development charges for housing projects.

It’s still an “open question” whether a moratorium on design review would affect commercial projects as well as housing proposals, Zimmerman said.

He expressed concern that design review could deter unique proposals.

Local developers “know what gets through design review,” he said. “That worries me a little bit, because I want to see someone push the envelope a bit as far as awesomeness or uniqueness or density.”

Permitting & Development is open to discussing design review reform, according to agency spokesman Ken Ray.

“We look forward to working with the City Council on ways to bring more flexibility into design review to ensure the process supports thoughtful growth and investment in Portland’s buildings that meets the needs of the people who live, work and do business in them,” Ray stated in an email on Monday.

Design review has come under fire in other cities, including Seattle, where the process has become a roadblock to development.

“We can all agree that nice-looking buildings are a good thing and probably make it more popular to build stuff, but we can’t agree on what nice looking means,” said Michael Andersen, who studies cities for the nonprofit Sightline Institute. “It’s not something you can achieve from regulation.”

Portland’s design review process isn’t as dysfunctional as Seattle’s was before the Seattle City Council suspended design review requirements in September, Andersen said.

“F�ǰ��ٳܲԲ��ٱ����, Portland Design Commission hasn’t been utterly ridiculous,” he said. “But anytime you introduce discretion, you introduce risk.”

Bruce Studer, president of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, said there’s an appetite to streamline design review in Portland.

“I think people would want a little bit smarter way to go through design review,” he said. “I don’t think just being able to block things by stalling it out is something we want to have. You want developers to be able to build things that are smart, sustainable and create lasting growth.”

The Design Commission is composed of seven members who serve staggered four-year terms for up to eight years. Members hail from architecture, development, landscape architecture, arts and related fields, along with a member representing the public at large.

Zimmerman and Morillo’s resolution passed the council’s Climate, Resilience and Land Use Committee on Nov. 13 by a 4-0 vote.

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In California, builder’s remedy has become a handy tool for housing developers to skirt local zoning rules. Now, Gov. Tina Kotek is weighing whether to bring the policy to Oregon.

Such a rule would add to other housing policy tools the governor has enacted in Oregon, such as establishing a statewide housing production goal and requiring each city to produce a housing needs analysis.

In California, builder’s remedy allows housing developers to bypass local zoning if a city is out of compliance with its housing element — a formal, adopted plan for where in a city housing may be built. Under Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, the state has aggressively pursued enforcement of the rule for cities without certified housing elements.

Builder’s remedy was added to California’s law books in 1990 but was little used until the 2020s. In recent years, California developers — backed by state leaders — have used builder’s remedy to advance projects in cities that have rejected land use approvals for housing projects or dragged their feet in the process.

“I’d say it’s the number one tool that’s led to the creation of housing in California in the last 10 years,” said Ezra Hammer, a Jordan Ramis attorney and shareholder who has practiced in California and Oregon.

Past Oregon governors have looked to California and Washington for housing policy, and Kotek is following suit. Builder’s remedy was recommended by the Multifamily Housing Development Workgroup, which was convened this spring by Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson.

Upon the recommendations’ release in May, Kotek “committed to exploring” how builder’s remedy “could work to bolster housing production in Oregon.”

The work group’s builder’s remedy recommendation came alongside other well-worn housing policies such as cutting permitting wait times and encouraging office-to-housing conversions.

“Anything that’s helping clear the decks and make way for approval of additional housing, especially in communities where local officials are not keeping up with housing production, is a good thing in our state,” said Sarah Zahn, managing director of Security Properties. Zahn was a member of the housing policy work group.

Developers have pushed for builder’s remedy projects in cities such as Beverly Hills, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica. The Golden State’s largest cities — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco — have compliant housing elements.

“There’s an inherent friction between states that have a housing crisis and want to see housing built immediately, and cities that want to maintain local control over zoning decisions,” said Spencer Kallick, a land use attorney with Allen Matkins in Century City, California, who has worked with builder’s remedy developers.

“Some cities get it and understand that they need to relax certain zoning standards to provide much-needed housing close to jobs and transit,” Kallick added. “Other cities should get it, but for community and political needs they are more reticent to give up local control.”

Kallick said California cities that do not have compliant housing elements fall into three categories: cities with small staffs and meager financial resources to update their housing element, cities that don’t mind builder’s remedy taking effect to encourage housing and, finally, cities that have battled the state over their housing elements.

At least 20 percent of units in builder’s remedy developments must be affordable. Developers have used it to propose projects such as One Redondo, which would bring more than 2,000 housing units and mixed-use development to Redondo Beach. The city has resisted construction of housing on the site of a defunct power plant, and the developer has launched a series of lawsuits.

Kallick warned that builder’s remedy is not a panacea, and it still requires great patience to get projects built.

“The developers who are doing builder’s remedy projects are ones that deeply understand the intricacies of the law and have the commitment to see projects through because they see the need for new housing in the state,” Kallick said.

Housing experts said it remains to be seen how builder’s remedy would work in Oregon. In California, not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) politics remain hugely influential, and opposition to development is sometimes boosted by concentrated wealth among residents.

Builder’s remedy probably doesn’t make sense outside of the Willamette Valley population centers, Hammer said.

“Builder’s remedy is going to be a tool in a few places,” he said. “It’s really built around multifamily housing. That’s going to work in Portland, maybe some of the larger suburbs around Portland, and it’ll work in Eugene. And that’s it.”

Oregon developers will have to wait at least until 2026 for the state to adopt builder’s remedy. Legislators did not consider it during this year’s session.

Developers have expressed interest in building townhomes or garden-style apartments that currently run afoul of Portland’s minimums for floor area ratio, Hammer said. Those regulations dictate building size relative to lot size.

City regulators, Hammer said, have “taken this tool that’s built for extremely hot markets and overlaid it on portions of the city where we would be blessed to have housing development.”

Builder’s remedy could sweep aside that type of zoning restriction, Hammer said.

“Portland would be ripe for it,” he said.

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At Glisan Landing in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood, families have taken up residence in the Aldea building’s 96 units. Residents can enroll in an on-site preschool.

Across a small courtyard, in the 41-unit Beacon building, residents who were homeless or at risk of losing their homes have access to case managers and culinary training. Renters have access to a program offering help with resumés, job interview practice and employment searches.

A nonprofit café that opened on Monday offers at-risk individuals training as baristas.

“We want to help them not just get a minimum-wage job, but set them on a path to wealth creation,” said Christine Putterman, development director for Stone Soup, the nonprofit group that operates the café.

Such heady goals were made possible by Portland-area voters, who approved more than $911 million in two separate affordable housing bond measures in 2016 and 2018.

As a result, dozens of midsize affordable housing buildings have risen in Portland and surrounding communities, providing thousands of homes to at-risk residents, often with attached social services.

But now, the flood of affordable housing funding is slowing to a trickle.

Both the Metro and Portland bonds are largely spoken for, officials said. The local governments intentionally marshaled the resources quickly, spending the funding on projects in local communities before construction and acquisition grew any more costly.

That enabled the bonds to produce more units than originally projected. But as a result, the $652.8 million Metro bond is nearly exhausted — it’s about 90 percent allocated — while the $258.4 million Portland bond is completely ascribed to various projects.

“The Portland bond is fully allocated,” said Danell Norby, housing investments and portfolio preservation manager for the Portland Housing Bureau.

If they’re not followed upon, the approximately 80 bond-funded projects could come to represent a generation of affordable housing — a discrete, one-time allocation of public and private resources that was discontinued.

That leaves the city and region at risk of stalling the progress it has made in increasing affordable housing, experts said.

“That’s where I’m hearing a lot of concern,” said Dave Otte, a principal and owner at Holst Architecture, a local firm that has designed seven total projects funded by the two bonds. “The resources are dwindling, and the need is increasing. So, both of those are going in the wrong direction.”

A reckoning with homelessness

Before the pandemic, homelessness in Portland grew steadily as rents and home prices outpaced both wages and inflation. Then the pandemic kicked the problem into a higher gear, with unsheltered homelessness nearly doubling from 2017 to 2022 as a fentanyl wave took hold.

Complaints followed from residents and business owners of public drug use, vandalism and other petty crimes that made Portland the subject of national media attention.

Politicians tried a number of strategies to clean up the city: The state recriminalized drug possession, and the city founded Portland Street Response to respond to nonviolent calls and pursued harm-reduction strategies. Shelters sprang up in unusual locations via conversions of a former county jail and a string of outdated motels.

Elected leaders also turned to what many officials and advocates identified as the root cause of the problem: a lack of affordable housing.

Generations of restrictive zoning, byzantine permitting processes and resistance to building affordable apartments had resulted in a dire supply-and-demand crunch. There were simply too few housing units for the population, leaving thousands of low-income residents without shelter in a game of musical chairs with life-and-death consequences.

Portland-area voters threw an enormous amount of money at the problem. In 2016, they approved a $258.4 million housing bond. Metro followed up with a larger regional housing bond in 2018, with $652.8 million going to affordable housing projects in Portland, Hillsboro, Beaverton and Gresham, and three Portland-area counties.

The bond added affordable homes in places that hadn’t previously been targeted for subsidized housing, including Happy Valley, said Emily Lieb, housing policy director for Metro.

“The intent was really to distribute investments everywhere in the region,” she said.

Sites with access to transit and amenities were given priority. In some cases, developers had already acquired a site and came to local jurisdictions seeking bond funds. In other instances, the sites were publicly owned. In at least one case, the land was donated (by the Strong family in Alberta) for a 75-unit project.

The bonds formed the foundation of the finance stack for dozens of affordable housing projects. Local bond funding is only one source of affordable housing spending, paying for less than half of a typical project’s costs. Federal low-income housing tax credits, state programs, construction loans and other sources added more.

So that $911.2 million in taxpayer-approved bonds leveraged more than $3 billion in affordable housing projects.

The results

The city of Portland has completed 1,551 units, with 308 more in some stage of construction in 15 total projects with the proceeds of the city bond. That’s higher than an initial goal of 1,300 units. (The Portland Housing Bureau administered both the Portland bond and the city’s portion of the Metro bond. Only one project — Hollywood Hub in Northeast Portland — used funds from both the Metro and city bonds).

Metro expects to add approximately 5,600 units from the regional bond once it’s fully spent — far more than the original goal of 3,900 units. Of the higher total, 2,410 units have been completed, 1,491 are under construction and 1,327 are in preconstruction, Metro officials said in May.

As of December 2024, 62 Metro projects were providing homes for an estimated 9,500 to 16,000 people. Three or four more projects are expected to be added to the total.

“The bond has been a huge success,” Lieb said.

Unlike the infamous monolithic “projects” that were built in American cities in the mid-20th century, chronicled in social-science literature and pop culture products like “The Wire,” the buildings were kept relatively small and interspersed in neighborhoods.

The buildings were designed to be largely indistinguishable from market-rate apartments.

“I really can’t imagine that your average Portlander would be able to point these out by the building and say, ah, that’s affordable housing,” Housing Bureau spokesman Gabriel Mathews said.

Certain developments are intended to serve seniors, veterans and families — demographics that are sometimes ignored by for-profit multifamily developers.

“They’re not just buildings,” Lieb said. “These are thoughtfully designed properties that are designed to meet the needs of specific communities that are most impacted by the housing crisis.”

Developments were designed to fit into neighborhoods rather than become impositions.

“These are beautiful, in many cases, highly efficient buildings with 99-year affordability,” Norby said.

The burst of construction came at the same time as a post-Ferguson reckoning with racism, redlining, forced relocations and other tactics that had shaped Portland neighborhoods.

Building on existing preference policies, local governments and developers contracted with women- and minority-owned firms such as Colas Construction to build many of the projects.

“There was a more intentional focus on community engagement and equity throughout the project design and delivery,” Norby said.

Economic impact

The affordable housing bonds have buttressed construction and related industries during a slowdown for private-sector projects. As private developers sat on the sidelines, bond money sluiced through the local economy.

“It has obscured a true downturn that otherwise would have happened,” said Noel Johnson, an independent local housing developer. “The good news is that all of this public money kept our construction trades busy longer than they otherwise would have. That’s a good use of public money — that’s Keynesian economics 101.”

The Metro bond alone has supported an estimated 3,000 living-wage jobs, according to the regional government.

Holst Architecture has been among the beneficiaries of the bonds. At any given time, about one-third of the 50-person office is working on bond-funded affordable housing projects, Otte said.

“We’ve kind of ridden the wave of what is getting funded and what is penciling for developers — whether they’re affordable-housing developers or market-rate housing developers — and it changes over time,” Otte said. “Having the affordable housing bond has shifted our focus.”

The bonds have funded affordable apartment types that would not otherwise have been built, Otte said. Private developers tend to build smaller units, which are typically more profitable than alternatives.

“It’s hard to make larger units pencil,” Otte said. “They’re harder on pro formas. They’re more expensive to construct. So, I think a subsidy on those was wise, even though it was harder to deliver.”

Metro is managing the end of the regional bond measure. Interest earnings have added to the tax revenue, and Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal last month approved $26 million to be distributed to local governments to offset unexpected cost increases and help finish projects.

Still, public officials say that much more affordable housing is necessary.

“As huge as the impact of this program has been, we know there’s still significant need,” Lieb said. “So, Metro is looking at different options to continue funding affordable housing in the future. We know there isn’t a lot of appetite right now among voters for a new property tax.”

The Metro Council is considering allowing the use of the supportive housing services tax to fund affordable housing projects.

At the city, six tax-increment financing districts approved last year will provide money in the Eastside and Central City. But revenue will come in slowly at first, and spending will be limited to projects inside the districts’ borders.

Despite the massive public investment, homelessness has continued to grow. A 2023 count found 4,355 individuals unsheltered, and an additional 2,467 in shelters and transitional housing.

Mathews, the Housing Bureau spokesman, said affordable housing is keeping those numbers from further worsening.

“It’s hard,” Mathews said, “to quantify the homeless folks that you’re not seeing because the units are there.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected to reflect a numerical error in unit count related to the city of Portland housing bond. Also, the nature of the Strong family’s donation has been clarified.

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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.

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