The Metro Council on Thursday passed a resolution that directs staff to create a Housing Production Accelerator Fund through which $5 million from Metro’s Construction Excise Tax (CET) will be used to accelerate housing production. The program will be designed to provide technical assistance, local staffing capacity, and predevelopment support.

Current estimates show that Portland still needs 27,000 more homes to support its existing population and 151,000 more to keep up with forecasted population growth over the next 20 years, a Metro staff report states.

In a work session last month, the Metro Council supported the $5 million investment of CET reserves to accelerate housing production in the region. Funding will be made available to regional partners.

Also last month, the council adopted the regional housing coordination strategy for collaborative work with cities and counties. The accelerator fund will help advance five strategies: funding pre-development activities necessary to unlock public properties and others whose owners are interested in developing affordable housing but lack the expertise required, expanding resources available for brownfield assessment and exploring grant opportunities for small-scale remediation that leads to middle housing and multifamily housing development, assisting cities and counties with approved housing production strategies, offering technical assistance to support planning and implementation of housing production and affordability and choice, and exploring regional land bank strategies.

Metro staff will design the grant and technical assistance programs, hold listening sessions to get feedback on program design and effectiveness of strategies, and increase management capacity.

“We also want to avoid predetermining funding allocations across the five actions,” said Hau Hagedorn, community investment manager for Metro. “Instead, we intend to offer technical assistance on a first come, first served basis to move funds quickly to projects ready for development and award grants to jurisdictions that are ready to move projects forward that are aligned with the actions.”

Allocation of funds is expected to take about three to five years, but the goal is to do so as soon as possible, said Malu Wilkinson, planning, development and research deputy director for Metro.

Councilor Mary Nolan said that time frame is not as urgent as she believes it should be for a $5 million investment. She also asked about measurements for success. As the program is designed, Hagedorn said, staff will inform the council what is expected to be accomplished this year and beyond.

“As we work more with our partners around the region to define this so it is most useful for them, we will be defining those metrics that we can bring back to you to talk about how successful and how much impact this $5 million will have,” Wilkinson added.

The resolution passed by a 6-1 margin, with Nolan voting no. Staff will return before the council to provide an update on program specifics.

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Two middle housing buildings are being constructed two blocks apart on Division Street in Portland. The projects, E and Hutch, are designed by a small firm made up of two experts in multifamily housing.

The two architects, founder Armin Quilici and partner Keith Fugate, partnered last year on Quilici’s firm, Quilici Architecture, which is now QUAD Architects. Both architects have a combined 50 years of experience in multifamily housing.

QUAD Architects is a small firm that specializes in multi-family development and provides a range of services, from initial feasibility studies to comprehensive architectural and planning services. The firm is mainly focused on projects in the Portland area.

Quilici and Fugate first worked at Bora Architecture & Interiors in the late 1990s and moved on to different firms in the early 2000s.

Quilici started his firm, Quilici Architecture, in 2016 when Portland developer Jim Winkler, of Winkler Development Group, asked for help on a Southwest Portland project, The Gabe. Quilici said he always liked the idea of starting his own firm and liked smaller firms.

“It’s just a little bit more exciting to do all aspects of a project rather than specializing on part of a project,” Quilici said.

The project was put on hold but came back online around 2020 and was twice as big as originally proposed, with 121 residential units. Quilici was looking for some help and Fugate started doing contract work for the firm when construction began.

“We found that we both fill out each other’s weaker spots,” Fugate said. “He’s more the designer; I’m more the project manager.”

The two became official partners and transitioned the firm to QUAD Architects in the fall of last year.

Fugate said multifamily housing is the firm’s “bread and butter.” The firm also works on smaller tenant improvements, some single-family housing and education projects, such as student housing.

“The way things are in Portland, (with the economic downturn), we’re really focused on smaller TIs and things like that, which are kind of backfilling what was multifamily housing over the past 10 years,” Fugate said.

Fugate said the firm is always in contact with developers they have worked with historically and continues to check in with them about work, which lately has been improvement projects. Because of its smaller size, the architects can work directly with clients at each step of a project.

On the boards, the firm has a couple of warehouse tenant improvements, potentially a wine bar project in Dayton and some food cart studies.

Quilici said the firm has seen a demand for middle housing lately. The firm’s middle housing projects, E and Hutch, are currently under construction. The E and Hutch are two separate buildings located two blocks apart, with the same floor plans. The E is at 2515 SE 30th Ave. and the Hutch (also known as 32D) is at 2508 SE 32nd Ave.

These buildings fulfill the need for middle-housing, which is defined as more denser development than duplex housing, but smaller than the more typical four- to five-story double loaded corridor style housing, according to the firm’s website.

The three-story buildings are 12,500 square feet each with 11 residential units, plus 3,000 square feet of ground floor retail space that could be a café or similar use. The buildings include a single staircase. Quilici said the design could be replicated on other lots, with different exteriors.

“The idea of this design is that you can repeat the basic layout in different lots,” Quilici said.

Quilici said it is a simple and efficient smaller-scale apartment building and that the basic layout makes sense for the 5,000-square-foot lots.

The project team includes civil engineer Humber Design Group Inc., structural engineer Aman Structural Engineering and owners/developers and general contractors Don Mutal and Aaron Jones. QUAD Architects led landscape design.

The total project cost is $7.12 million. Construction began in the fall of 2024 and is on track for a Dec. 31 completion.

“We know coming out of this housing and construction recession we’re going to be building more middle housing, small-scale apartments,” Quilici said. “We can help out.”

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Portland officials plan to limit sizes of new homes in much of the city as part of a broader drive to encourage development of more housing units.

The is an ambitious rewrite of residential zoning throughout the city, with exceptions made for a few neighborhoods.

The long-gestating plan is moving closer to enactment. The Planning and Sustainability Commission will take it up in two public hearings in May. Then city planners will make any necessary changes before bringing the project to the City Council in the fall.

Developers and residents are being urged to now.

Planners aim to encourage more middle housing – anything larger than an apartment but smaller than a single-family house. Housing such as townhomes and duplexes can house more residents at lower cost with minimal disruption to existing single-family neighborhoods, city officials said.

As part of the zoning rewrite, city planners are proposing stricter rules on how large newly constructed homes can be. In an R5 zone, which covers 132,000 lots in Portland, homes would be limited to a 0.5 floor-area ratio – for example, a 2,500-square-foot house on a 5,000-square-foot lot. That’s a significant change from current rules that allow 1.35 floor-area ratio, or a 6,750-square-foot house on a 5,000-square-foot lot.

Instead of McMansions, the rules would encourage accessory dwelling units, duplexes and other building types in urban neighborhoods.

Existing homeowners would not be forced to make changes. But any expansion of a nonconforming home’s footprint, or a scrape-and-rebuild, would trigger the new requirements.

The Residential Infill Project allows more building options on residential lots, such as a house with two ADUs or a duplex with an attached ADU. Triplexes would be allowed on corner lots.

“What we’re trying to do is create options that are single dwelling-like, but smaller,” said Joe Zehnder, chief planner with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

The rules are likely to prompt developers to build more small condominium projects.

“That’s our expectation; that’s our hope,” Zehnder said.

The restrictions on new, large homes are likely to make existing large homes more attractive, said Mike Nuss, owner of RareBird, a small-scale Portland infill developer. The rules will also make some projects infeasible because of the square footage limits. And developers are likely to be less aggressive in acquiring land for residential projects.

“The building community is in somewhat of an outrage for it, because it does limit what you can build,” Nuss said. “I think the end result will be smaller units.”

Meanwhile, the Portland real-estate market has a low inventory of single-family homes – only 1.6 months in the metro area. Median sales prices continue to rise, up 6.8 percent in March to $395,000.

“The market need is more family-size housing, and this does not address that,” Nuss said.

The infill options – known as “A” overlay – would be available in most Southeast and Northeast Portland neighborhoods, and portions of Southwest Portland. Areas with natural hazards such as landslide risk were excluded. Neighborhoods considered at risk of displacement of existing residents of color, including Cully, North Portland and East Portland, were also excluded. (A map is available at ).

The “A” overlay could be extended to neighborhoods at risk of displacement in future years if conditions warrant it, city planners said.

“This is just being conservative to see how the thing plays out,” Zehnder said.

Some Cully residents have decried being left out of the overlay zone.

Houses would still be allowed as tall as 30 feet – two and a half stories – on standard lots. Rules would be changed to measure height from the lowest point near the house, not the highest point.

Parking would not be required for duplexes and triplexes.

“It’s a little bit of an incentive to build more unit types,” said Sandra Wood, supervising planner at BPS.

The city is also seeking to discourage driveways that access streets, and to encourage alleyway parking where possible.

“For every driveway, it eliminates an on-street parking space that would be used by many people,” Wood said.

The plan has garnered more than 180 public comments submitted online. Among them, Ethan Seltzer, a Portland State University professor emeritus of urban studies and planning, said the project falls short of what’s needed but would improve upon current rules.

“We need a city built for change, not one that is stubbornly committed to a past long since gone,” Seltzer wrote. “I applaud the RIP for moving us into what I think is a much better direction. It could do more, but this is a good first step and I support it.”

Another resident, Bruce Gilley, said the residential infill plan is “unfair to people who chose to buy houses in neighborhoods with the current density limits.”

The Planning and Sustainability Commission will hold public hearings on the Residential Infill Project on May 8 and 15.

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