A local start-up developer of accessory homes is embarking on a .

Dweller, led by Portland’s Patrick Quinton, is using Small Change, an investment platform that promotes social responsibility. Small Change allows accredited and nonaccredited investors to put money into a portfolio of vetted real estate projects in urban neighborhoods.

Dweller will use the investment to build up to eight accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

Quinton founded Dweller in 2017 after stepping down as executive director of the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland).

To date, Dweller has developed 10 ADUs with what Quinton calls a deferred ownership model. It allows ADUs to be built next to single-family homes with no upfront cost in exchange for a long-term ground lease. Dweller owns and operates the rental units. Homeowners receive 25 percent of the rent and have the option of buying the ADUs later.

Quinton, in an interview, said the business model is amenable to crowdfunding.

“We felt like what we were doing was well-suited to what we were seeing on the real estate crowdfunding side,” he said. “We also weren’t finding that many traditional lenders and investors understood the business model that we had or were willing to be aggressive in terms of putting their money into the ADU market.”

Rents for Dweller’s units built to date average about $1,250. The new round of ADUs will be affordable to renters at 80 percent of area median income, Quinton said.

Dweller was selected in 2019 by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, to participate in the first cohort of its Housing Lab program.

The company’s investment round comes as Portland prepares to implement the Residential Infill Project; zoning rule changes are set to take effect Aug. 1, 2021. The initiative will loosen single-family zoning to make it easier to build ADUs, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in much of the city.

“It opens up more sites for us,” Quinton said. “Portland was already way ahead of the curve in terms of the ADU code. We didn’t feel really constrained.”

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The Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability‘s Better Housing by Design proposal to encourage development of more densely built apartments in certain areas encountered a somewhat mixed reception by the City Council on Wednesday.

Commissioners received about two hours of public testimony from residents, nonprofit advocates and development professionals on the proposal, which is essentially the multifamily companion to the Residential Infill Project that is meant to create more small dwellings in single-family zones.

Better Housing by Design applies to only 8 percent of the city by land area. Areas zoned for multi-dwelling residential (designated by the city as R1, R2, R3 and RH) are concentrated in East Portland, but also include the Alphabet and King’s Hill historic districts in Northwest Portland and sections along Southwest Barbur Boulevard.

The rezoning project would allow many more apartments on some parcels, which would benefit nonprofit affordable-housing developers.

“Better Housing by Design is a game changer for affordable housing developers,” said Julie Livingston, senior project manager for Home Forward. (Livingston also serves as the Portland Design Commission‘s chairwoman, but said she was representing Home Forward in her testimony).

Livingston gave the example of a 5-acre parcel Home Forward owns in East Portland. Under current R2 zoning, with inclusionary housing, the parcel could host up to 144 units. The proposed zoning would raise the development potential to 330 units, she said.

Better Housing by Design allows for more low-rise housing options, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability project manager Bill Cunningham said.

“The basic message is houses are out of reach for the majority of Portlanders now,” he said. “And knowing that we have a broad range of household types, we know we need a broader range of housing opportunities for people.”

He added, “Housing production hasn’t kept up with the growth in the number of households in Portland. So more people vying for not enough housing does drive prices up.”

Commissioners pushed back on some aspects of the proposal. Amanda Fritz said the city should encourage larger units.

“I want to make sure that we’re going to have family housing in Portland as well as affordable housing,” she said. “I don’t think the two should be mutually exclusive.”

Cunningham noted the program includes bonuses for three-bedroom homes at moderate income levels.

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said the city should first release a report, expected later this year, on the racist history of Portland zoning.

“I’m very concerned that we are just solidifying the racially segregating housing policy first, and then we go talking about how we’re not going to displace people after we’ve already confirmed that the racist policy is fine and that we’re going to keep it status quo,” she said.

Representatives of numerous organizations testified in favor of the project, including a Portland Public Schools staffer who said stable housing contributes to learning.

Mayor Ted Wheeler continued the hearing until Nov. 6, when he said the City Council will hear more testimony on Better Housing by Design. Written testimony will be accepted until then.

The post Portland zoning plan undergoes scrutiny appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In a last-minute push, the Oregon Senate last weekend passed a sweeping land-use bill that allows construction of duplexes and other small multifamily structures in residential neighborhoods.

House Bill 2001 carries the potential to transform many of Oregon’s historic urban neighborhoods. Some homeowners decried the zoning reforms as a bid to change the character of their neighborhoods, but housing and tenant advocates successfully pushed the bill by arguing that housing has become unaffordable to many Oregon residents.

The Senate passed the bill Sunday after Republican lawmakers returned from Idaho, where several had fled to deprive the Legislature of a quorum. A spokeswoman for Gov. Kate Brown said she intends to sign the bill.

Oregon will become the first state to require cities to allow duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes. The requirement applies to cities with populations of 10,000 or greater, or any residential zone in the Portland-metro area.

Advocates said more “middle housing” positioned between single-family homes and apartment complexes will benefit small families, renters and people of color who risk being priced out of Oregon’s cities.

“It is the kind of gentle infill that can be very compatible within existing neighborhoods, and it’s long overdue,” said Mary Kyle McCurdy, deputy director of 1,000 Friends of Oregon.

The bill was backed by House Speaker Tina Kotek and other Democratic leaders, and came as Portland advanced its own Residential Infill Project with similar provisions for increasing housing density. Cities are required under the bill to bring their land-use rules in line with H.B. 2001 by June 30, 2021, or June 30, 2022, depending on the city’s size.

Portland has until June 30, 2021, to come into compliance with H.B. 2001. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability plans to bring the Residential Infill Project and related changes before the City Council in the fall, the bureau stated in a news release.

It remains to be seen how the density push will play out in Oregon cities. Housing and policy professionals were skeptical that the zoning change alone would spur a rush of redevelopment.

“I think people will be surprised how little things change,” said Eli Spevak, owner of Orange Splot LLC, a Portland-based developer and general contractor that builds townhomes and other urban housing types. “The way to think of it is it expands choices, but in most residential neighborhoods, the choice people will make is single-family homes, as they have in the past.”

Historically, most housing units in Portland were single-family even before modern zoning was in place that limited housing development options, Spevak said.

Housing analysts also pointed to Portland’s experience with corner-lot duplexes, which have been allowed for years.

“In general, we haven’t seen a mass demolition and new development of duplexes on corners,” said Tyler Bump, a project director for ECONorthwest.

In many cases, it makes sense to leave single-family homes in place, Bump said.

“When we look at development feasibility of middle housing, it’s still challenging,” he said. “The existing single-family house is the highest and best use in most transactions, most sales. There’s a lot of value in single-family houses, and there’s a lot of demand for that still.”

ECONorthwest is at work on an analysis of middle-housing development potential, but the findings were not yet available.

Bump suggested some of Portland’s close-in suburbs, such as Gresham and Beaverton, may be well-positioned with land values high enough to support middle housing.

Other likely places are those areas newly added within urban growth boundaries, McCurdy said. In December, the Metro Council voted to add inside growth boundaries 2,181 acres that could accommodate at least 1,325 homes in Hillsboro, Beaverton and King City, according to the regional government.

Oregon is not alone in pushing to undo restrictive single-family zoning. Minneapolis made national headlines by allowing middle housing throughout the city, and Seattle recently passed rules to encourage construction of accessory dwelling units. In California, where arguably the nation’s most severe housing crisis is ongoing, legislators recently killed a bill that would have allowed denser housing near transit lines, but housing advocates have vowed to keep pushing for change.

For developers, investors, contractors and architects, middle housing is likely to be the domain of small operators. The projects are not large enough to generate returns that would interest major investors and firms, housing professionals said. Investors “want 40 to 50 units at least,” Spevak said.

Z Design-Build is among the small firms that could benefit from expanded housing options. Owner-operator Pete Zenczak is at work with partners on a townhomes project in the Capitol Highway area of Southwest Portland, and another in Southeast Portland. Early plans for the Capitol Highway project call for two duplexes. It could be even denser, Zenczak said.

“Depending on when the infill project goes through, we’re going to include attached ADUs as part of it,” he said.

Developers may seek small homes of about 1,000 square feet as attractive targets for demolition, Zenczak said.

“I think what we’re going to see is we’re going to see small cottages get gobbled up by developers and demoed,” he said. “We’re going to find a lot of these mid-block little cottages, and I think those are going to get demoed and they’ll build duplexes.”

Some large houses in the range of 4,000 square feet could be converted into triplexes, Zenczak said.

Portland is expected to grow by about 123,000 households by 2035, according to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

“Everybody’s trying to pack into this place,” Zenczak said. “It’s either we go out, or we go in. Portland is more inclusive and people are socially wanting to live closer together.”

Preferences are changing too.

“As long as we’ve got a good parks system, people don’t really care about large yard spaces,” Zenczak said. “Millennials and urbanites don’t care so much about that. They want something a little more affordable, and (density) is really the only way we can get it.”

The post A new, denser era for housing in Oregon appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Portland’s effort to bring more dense housing types to urban neighborhoods made it past the Planning and Sustainability Commission this week by a razor-thin 5-4 vote.

The commission’s recommendation, reached Tuesday, sets up a final debate at the City Council this summer.

The Residential Infill Project has been years in the making. It centers on rezoning much of Portland’s single-family neighborhoods to allow duplexes, triplexes and alternative dwelling units (ADUs). At the same time, it limits home sizes to 2,500 square feet on a 5,000-square-foot lot, for example.

The proposal from the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has touched off a roiling debate about the nature of Portland’s neighborhoods, with elements of race, class and the divide between the needs of newcomers and renters versus incumbent homeowners.

Commission Chairwoman Katherine Schultz said the proposal has split public testimony “between people who have a home today in our single-family neighborhoods, and those who would love to be able to live in those single-family neighborhoods. And I found that striking.”

She voted in favor of recommending the zoning changes.

Allowing denser housing options would provide homes for thousands of new city residents that are expected to move to Portland by 2035, city planners said. Depending on the statistical model, the Residential Infill Project changes are expected to result in anywhere from 3,883 to 24,333 more housing units than under current zoning.

“We want more options – more options for housing on those units and more housing in more places,” BPS Interim Director Joe Zehnder said at Tuesday’s hearing. “What we found was it’ll work. The pace of change for these next 20 years is relatively modest.”

Commissioner Katie Larsell questioned bureau staffers about economic projections after a report in The Oregonian revealed more modest projections for unit growth than the commission had seen previously. Zehnder replied that the first projection the bureau received was the more optimistic of the two economic models and was based on unlimited demand for housing units. The second set of estimates, with a much lower forecast for unit production, was based on a more realistic model, he said.

Commissioners who opposed the Residential Infill Project said it may worsen displacement of current low-income residents and residents of color as property owners look to cash in on greater development capacity. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s own projections show increased displacement risk in Brentwood-Darlington, Foster-Powell, Lents, Mt. Scott-Arleta and Montavilla. Overall, the Residential Infill Project is estimated to reduce displacement citywide.

Commissioner Andre Baugh proposed a five-year delay on changing zoning in certain neighborhoods at risk of displacement. The amendment proposal failed by a 5-4 margin.

“Displacement is not a surprise, and should not be a surprise to anybody here,” Baugh said. “The surprise to me is that we’re unwilling to do anything about it.”

After the proposal failed, Baugh made a plea for the City Council to reconsider its push for the Residential Infill Project.

“I think RIP really becomes, as I said before, institutional racism to create the whitest city …,” Baugh said. “The five years that I proposed was just an opportunity to give us a break to say, ‘How do we really respond as a city and recognize the value of people in this economic class?’”

Baugh was not optimistic the City Council would change the program to stem displacement.

“I … obviously am very disappointed in what we’re sending to council,” Baugh said. “Council has no urgency to make any changes to RIP in any way, shape or form. I think we’re just making a bad decision, and I’ll leave it at that.”

The City Council has not set a date to take up the Residential Infill Project.

The Residential Infill Project debate has been watched closely by tenant advocates and urbanists who support bringing more density to Portland’s neighborhoods. Many residents have fiercely opposed the proposal, saying it will change the character of single-family neighborhoods.

Some proponents have said that may not be such a bad thing.

“Traditional single-family zoning is not a good thing for low-income folks, and it never has been because it’s unfortunately sort of an exclusive situation,” said Commissioner Eli Spevak, who voted in support. “It works very well if you already own a home in those areas.”

The post One step closer to significant zoning changes appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

After a first draft of rezoning rules meant to expand Portland’s housing stock was criticized by the Planning and Sustainability Commission for not going far enough, an updated proposal goes further.

The revised draft of the Residential Infill Project has emerged. It doubles down on city officials’ drive to allow more so-called “middle housing” – duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) – throughout the city.

If approved by the commission and City Council, it would put Portland at the forefront of efforts by urban planners to make room for growing populations in U.S. cities. Minneapolis led the way in December when it decided to allow duplexes and triplexes throughout the city, effectively ending single-family zoning.

Portland’s proposed rules would allow fourplexes, and not just on corner lots but on any properties within areas zoned for them. The changes came at the urging of the Planning and Sustainability Commission.

The Residential Infill Project zoning would allow a 2,500-square-foot house, a 3,000-square-foot duplex, or a 3,500-square-foot-triplex or fourplex on a 5,000-square-foot lot. In many neighborhoods, a lot could have a house and two ADUs.

Portland is working to accommodate an expected 123,000 new households in the city by 2035. At the same time, the Oregon Legislature is considering House Bill 2001, which would fundamentally change single-family zoning in cities throughout the state, requiring municipalities to allow middle housing.

In gauging the likely effects of the Residential Infill Project on rents, demolitions and displacement of existing low-income residents, officials are also weighing the cost of doing nothing – what planners call a baseline scenario.

Tyler Bump, senior economic planner with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, laid out the risks of doing nothing and potential displacement of low-income renters during a Planning and Sustainability Commission meeting earlier this week.

“There seems to be a relatively high cost of doing nothing in terms of impact to displacement across the city right now,” Bump said.

Bump showed the Planning and Sustainability Commission maps of mathematical displacement models across the city. The models show about a 20 percent reduction in displacement.

“The proposal broadly decreases displacement risk across most areas of Portland,” Bump told the commission.

That’s not good enough for the populations in East Portland, where the Residential Infill Project is projected to accelerate displacement, Commissioner Andre Baugh said.

“I really worry that we’re being asked to displace certain populations faster than others for the benefit of this greater good, and the greater good of more units is not benefitting everybody equally,” he said.

Baugh said he would not support further displacement of Portland’s African-American neighborhoods.

“You’re asking me, as an African-American, to approve displacing African-Americans that can’t come back,” he said. “I just can’t approve that.”

City officials estimate the Residential Infill Project would lead to the creation of 1,700 additional housing units in 20 years’ time. That works out to about 85 units per year. The city’s analysis suggests this would result in a slight reduction in rental rates citywide and slightly fewer demolitions of existing properties.

“There’s a limit to how much just changes in zoning can stimulate development,” said Morgan Tracy, project manager for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

Tracy mentioned Gateway as an area with generous zoning but little construction.

“You have to be cognizant of what the market will be, and the gap between demand and units,” he said. “Zoning by itself won’t dictate development.”

Middle housing in Portland has been the domain of small-scale developers, while major developers focus on large single-family homes in the suburbs or multistory multifamily projects.

A study of up-zoning in Chicago drew some attention when it found that denser zoning led to no additional construction, but boosted land prices.

BPS Interim Director Joe Zehnder cautioned against reading too much into the Chicago study, saying political resistance has played a role in blocking construction there.

“In Chicago, each of the 50 different wards have separate aldermen and they call all of the zoning,” Zehnder said. “So the way the zoning happens is very political and related to power.”

Yonah Freemark, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who conducted the study published in Urban Affairs Review, cautioned against drawing direct conclusions.

“It’s quite possible that other cities that make similar changes see dramatically different effects,” he wrote in an email message. “It is also worth pointing out that every zoning change is different.”

Yet he suggested cities watch for increased land prices and displacement after up-zoning.

“If up-zoning increases value when it occurs, but construction takes a while to get going, what happens in the meantime?” Freemark stated. “My study suggests that one effect might be increased costs and reduced affordability. Cities should be thinking through how they approach this issue, because it might mean displacement for some.”

The Residential Infill Project has drawn some criticism from residents who want to preserve the character of their single-family neighborhoods. But Kimberlee Stafford, a Tonkon Torp partner, said fears of dramatic changes are overblown.

“I don’t think … rampant demolitions or drastic changes in neighborhoods are at all what we’re going to see,” she said.

The post Revised Residential Infill Project elicits hopes and fears appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

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.

The post Democrats pushing for more middle housing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

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.

The post Residential Infill Project coming into focus appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A state agency has dealt a potentially fatal setback to a push to add Portland’s Eastmoreland neighborhood to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Oregon State Historic Preservation Office on Wednesday announced that opponents had submitted enough objections to prevent listing the proposed Eastmoreland Historic District on the federal register.

The National Park Service will make a final decision, and the federal agency will accept public comments until it issues the decision.

The state office received 5,952 objections, or 82.8 percent of the property owners in the proposed district. According to federal rules, if more than half of the owners in a district submit objections, the property cannot be listed.

The state decision recognized nearly 5,000 legal trusts that were counted as voters. Eastmoreland has approximately 5,000 residents, according to a Portland State University analysis of census data.

Supporters of the bid for historic district status decried the use of trusts in the vote count. Only four properties were the source of the 5,000 trust votes, swaying the result, said Kristiana Nelson, a board member of the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association.

“I’m disappointed and disgusted,” she said. “I think it’s a deeply cynical and deeply unethical move.”

Historic district supporters could potentially adopt the same tactic in a new application to the State Historic Preservation Office, but Nelson said the designation effort may be at an end.

“I’m not sure what the appetite is to continue this work,” she said.

George Beard, another historic district supporter, said counting the trusts violated democratic principles.

“In a country in which the principle and even the court decisions favor the principle of one person, one vote, this is the most outrageous and rigged and contemptuous, undemocratic act I’ve seen in years,” he said. “I’m aghast.”

Opponents “gamed the system to seize thousands of votes that don’t exist,” Beard said.

Yet he couldn’t help but admire the audacity of the trust-splitting maneuver.

“As a Saul Alinsky guerrilla tactic, touché,” he said, referring to the late Chicago political activist. “I don’t respect it, but I get it.”

The neighborhood association began the drive to establish a historic district to slow the pace of demolitions of historic homes, board members said.

“It’s not a remote thing,” said Andy Payne, an Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association board member. “You can see it. You can feel it. You can hear it.”

The application to form a historic district sought to recognize Eastmoreland as a 475-acre residential neighborhood in Southeast Portland. The district would have encompassed about 1,275 single-family homes built primarily from 1910 to 1921, and 1952 to 1961.

The move came amid advancement of Portland’s Residential Infill Project, which would open the door to more duplexes and other building types in neighborhoods including Eastmoreland. Some residents fear it could increase the pace of historic home demolitions in Portland, although city planners say they expect the opposite.

Not everyone backs the drive for preservation in Eastmoreland.

Amy Rosenberg, an Eastmoreland resident who owns a public-relations firm with her husband, Mike, created a podcast after struggling to make up her mind on the issue. She interviewed neighbors on both sides for the podcast, StreetTalk. Eventually, she came to oppose formation of a historic district.

“Change happens; change is good,” Amy Rosenberg said. “Portland is changing; that’s OK. You can’t put a pause on construction and development and think everything will be OK.”

The post In historic district fight, foes win at state level appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Work within Portland bureaus to achieve goals set forth in the city’s is proceeding, and the Historic Landmarks Commission on Monday was given a chance to weigh in.

The commission got a look at a draft of a letter that the Bureau of Development Services (BDS) will send to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) outlining possible ways to revamp city codes to encourage owners to not tear down residential buildings in some of Portland’s oldest neighborhoods.

“This letter is a work in progress,” BDS planner Benjamin Nielson said. “It is a starting point for the final letter that we will be submitting on (the commission’s) behalf to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.”

Three main goals are being pursued via the proposed code changes. The first is to preserve not only properties listed on the city’s Historic Resources Inventory, but also those that add to the character of a neighborhood. The second is to define eligibility for incentives by targeting structures age 50 or older. The third is to determine the neighborhood compatibility of cottage clusters and the allowance for two detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as well as provisions for additional floor area ratio (FAR).

Most of the conversation on Monday centered on whether the incentive eligibility would be too broad. By making any house older than 50 years eligible for the incentives, regardless of historic status, nearly 70,000 of the 80,000 housing structures on the east side of the design overlay zone would be eligible for the incentives. The design overlay zone in question includes much of the inner city.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad thing to offer that incentive path to those older houses,” Commission Vice Chairwoman Kristen Minor said. “But by setting a number are we getting houses that are worthy of preservation?”

The 50-year mark was based on a number used by the National Park Service for eligibility on its National Register of Historic Places. There is nothing in city code that specifies the age a property can become historic.

“I think that 50 years is kind of arbitrary, but it is a starting point,” Commission Chairman Kirk Ranzetta said.

“I would just offer that it is helpful to have that as a basis,” Commissioner Wendy Chung said. “At least the 50 number corresponds to some objective number, even if it is not ours. I don’t think we should pick a different number.”

Defining eligibility for incentives is tough because Portland lacks a comprehensive inventory of historic residential structures, Ranzetta said.

“It’s incredibly difficult to craft a code to protect a resource we don’t know anything about,” he said.

The commission indicated it is more comfortable with the idea of cottage clusters and additional ADUs within the design overlay zone.

The letter will be revised before being presented again to the Historic Landmarks Commission for approval. The final version will be sent to BPS, which will incorporate it into proposed code changes. They will go before the City Council as part of the Residential Infill Project.

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Growing cities don’t have to become seas of gleaming skyscrapers, according to Ed McMahon, the Urban Land Institute‘s senior resident fellow for sustainable development. He delivered that message last week at the White Stag Block in Portland as one of the speakers for an event that focused on housing density and affordability.

“Portland can grow without losing the things you love,” he said.

McMahon has consulted for cities across the nation. Height shouldn’t be the most important factor in new building projects, he said.

“Three things you need to think about when it comes to development are where you put it, how you arrange it and what does it look like,” he said.

Urban planners across the country have sought to avoid contributing to suburban sprawl. To increase density, the propensity has been to build taller, often at the expense of existing historic buildings.

“Increasing housing supplies does not ensure affordability if developers build oversized and overpriced luxury homes,” said Laurence Qamar, owner of Qamar Architecture + Town Planning and another speaker at the event.

New towers often come with higher prices and lower density, McMahon said. A study by the Preservation Green Lab in Seattle, he added, found that such buildings fall short in comparison to many smaller, refurbished buildings for housing people per unit. That same comparison held true for office buildings as well.

“Smaller, older buildings had more jobs per square foot,” he said. “They also had more locally owned businesses, more non-chain stores and more women- and minority-owned businesses. These are places that are worth preserving because they do outperform, on a square-foot basis, some of these larger, newer buildings.”

Nevertheless, across the country more affordable units are being torn down than built new. A National Housing Trust study, McMahon said, found that for every affordable housing unit built, two are lost due to abandonment, deterioration or conversion to more expensive housing.

“Preserving rather than building new has proven to be the most financially sustainable method of reversing the trend of one step forward and two steps back,” he said.

McMahon added that in his professional experience, well-designed duplexes and fourplexes often were welcomed into neighborhoods. He compared the compact multifamily layout of the Battery neighborhood in Charleston, S.C., to the circular sprawl of Sun City, Arizona, a census-designated place near Phoenix.

“The Battery in Charleston is double the density of Sun City, but who would even know that (by looking),” he said.

While Sun City relies on cul-de-sacs of houses, Charleston has duplexes and fourplexes that mimic single-family homes through strategic placement or elimination of garages.

“Good design makes you forget about the whole concept of density,” McMahon said. “You just like being in that place.”

Portland’s small, 200-foot blocks often make good design difficult. Qamar advocated limiting building heights to mitigate those challenges.

“Our tiny blocks increasingly yield massive buildings that rise straight up from sidewalks with little of subtlety and form,” he said.

Marshall Runkel, chief of staff for Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, encouraged event attendees to stay involved as proposals such as the 2035 Comprehensive Plan and the Residential Infill Project come before the City Council.

“Over the course of the next year, there should be dramatic regulatory changes that will have influences on all of the subjects discussed tonight,” he said.

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