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.

The post Portland design review reform debated amid housing crisis appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

BOSTON — After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith was given the keys to a Los Angeles studio apartment that came with an important perk — easy access to public transit.

The 38-year-old feels like she went from a life where “no one cares” to one where she has a safe place. And the metro station the apartment complex was literally built upon is a lifeline as she searches for work without a car.

“It is more a sense of relief, a sense of independence,” said Smith, who moved into the unit in July. She receives some government assistance and pays 30 percent of her income for rent — just $19 a month for an efficiency apartment with a full-market value of $2,000.

“Having your own space, you feel like you can do anything,” she said.

Metro areas from Los Angeles to Boston have taken the lead in tying new housing developments to public transit, often teaming up with developers to streamline the permitting process and passing policies that promote developments that include a greater number of units.

Building housing near public transit helps energize neglected neighborhoods and provide affordability, city officials say, while ensuring a steady stream of riders for transit systems and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of cars on the road.

“Transit-oriented development should be one of, if not the biggest solution that we’re looking at for housing,” said Urban Institute Land Use Lab research director Yonah Freemark, who has written extensively on the topic. “It takes advantage of all of this money we’ve spent on transportation infrastructure. If you build the projects and don’t build anything around the areas near them, then it’s kind of like money thrown down the drain.”

The Santa Monica and Vermont Apartments, where Smith lives, is part of an ambitious plan by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build 10,000 housing units near transit sites by 2031 — offering developers land discounts in exchange for affordable housing development and other community benefits.

In Washington, D.C., the transit authority since 2022 has completed eight projects that provided nearly 1,500 apartments and a million square feet of office space. About half were in partnership with Amazon, which committed $3.6 billion in low-cost loans and grants for affordable housing projects in Washington, as well as Nashville, Tennessee, and the Puget Sound area in Washington state. Almost all are within a half-mile of public transit.

“Big cities face the greatest challenges when it comes to traffic congestion and high housing costs,” Freemark said. “Building new homes near transit helps address both problems by encouraging people to take transit while increasing housing supply.”

In Boston, the Pok Oi Residents in Chinatown is a 10-minute walk to the subway and a half-dozen bus stops. That’s a draw for Bernie Hernandez, who moved his family there from a Connecticut suburb after his daughter was accepted into a Boston university.

“The big difference is commuting; you don’t need a car,” said Hernandez, who said he can walk to the grocery story and pharmacy. His 17-year-old daughter takes the subway to school. Now, his car mostly sits idle, saving him money on gas and time spent in traffic.

“You get to go to different places very quickly,” Hernandez said. “Everything is convenient.”

States across the country are passing laws targeting restrictive zoning regulations that for decades prohibited multifamily construction and contributed to housing shortages.

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a state law allowing taller apartment buildings on land owned by transit agencies and near bus, train and subway lines.

“Building more homes in our most sustainable locations is the key to tackling the affordability crisis and locking in California’s success for many years to come,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, who authored the bill.

California joins Colorado, which requires cities to allow an average of 40 housing units per acre within a quarter-mile of transit, and Utah, which mandates about 50 units per acre. In Washington, the governor this year signed a bill allowing taller housing developments in mixed-use commercial zones near transit.

“We want to ensure that there are mixed-income, walkable, vibrant homes all around those transit investments and that people have the option of using cars less to improve the environmental health of our communities,” said Rep. Julia Reed, who authored the Washington bill. “It’s about giving people the opportunity to drive less and live more.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has made housing a priority. Among her most potent tools is a 2021 law that requires 177 towns or communities nearby to create zoning districts allowing multifamily development. The state provided nearly $8 million to more than 150 communities to help create these zones and threatened to cut funding for those that don’t. More than 6,000 housing units are in development as a result.

“You put housing nearby public transit (and) it’s great for people,” Healey said. “They can literally get up, leave their home, walk to a commuter rail and get to work.”

Among the first to comply was Lexington, which has approved 10 projects, including a $115 million complex with 187 housing units and retail space.

Walking past earth-moving equipment and dump trucks at the construction site earlier this year, project manager Quinlan Locke said: “This is a landscape yard. It’s commercial. It’s meant for trucking. Two years from now, it’s going to be meant for people who live here, work here and play here. This is going to become someone’s home.”

Some advocates argue the lofty goals of transit-oriented housing are falling short due to fierce local resistance and lack of funding and support at the federal and state levels.

Higher mortgage interest rates, more government red tape, rising construction costs and lack of investment at transit stations also have contributed to a troubling trend — nine times more housing units built far from public transit versus near it in the past two decades, according to a 2023 Urban Institute study.

In Massachusetts, 19 communities still haven’t created new zones. Some unsuccessfully sued the state to halt the law, while residents rejected new zones in others. Lexington eventually shrank its zone from 227 acres to 90 acres after residents complained.

“If we allow the state to come in and dictate how we zone, what else are they going to come in and dictate?” said Anthony Renzoni, a selectman from the town of Holden, which sued the state and is drawing up a new zoning map after residents rejected the first one.

In Los Angeles, the six-story complex where Smith lives in East Hollywood is home to 300 new residents since opening in February. The area has gained a Filipino grocery and a medical clinic. A farmers market is set to open early next year.

Half of the building’s 187 units are reserved for formerly homeless residents like Smith, who had been living in a rundown motel via a voucher and before that on the street. She’s been assigned a case worker and is getting help with basic life skills, budgeting and finding work.

Equally important: Smith, who can’t afford a car, doesn’t need one.

“I’m very, very fortunate to be somewhere where the transit takes me where I want to go,” she said. “Where I want to go is not that far.”

The post U.S. metro areas seeing more transit-oriented housing projects appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The city of Portland has tasked its city administrator with aligning existing policies to create a unified housing strategy related to housing production, preservation and stabilization.

The strategy will be designed as an implementation tool with defined tasks and metrics. It will address homelessness and sheltering, permitting and development, land use and zoning, anti-displacement, workforce development and other innovative housing approaches, including social housing.

The Portland City Council on Wednesday voted 11-1 to approve the resolution (Councilor Dan Ryan voted no).

The city’s Homelessness and Housing Committee in May chose to send the resolution to the council for adoption. The city administrator will provide periodic updates to the committee, as well as submit a full draft of the strategy by Dec. 1.

According to American Community Survey data from 2023, half of Portland renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing-related costs, while 28 percent are severely cost-burdened, spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing-related costs, the city’s resolution states.

In response to the housing emergency, the city has adopted and implemented numerous policies to address homelessness and housing instability. They include the Housing Production Strategy, the Housing Needs Analysis, the Anti-Displacement Action Plan, the Portland Inclusionary Housing program, the Affordable Housing Tax Increment Financing Set Aside Policy, and others.

The intent of the housing strategy is to see where gaps exist in the city’s policies. For example, the Housing Production Strategy did not address sheltered housing transitions. Councilor Loretta Smith asked for the strategy to identify gaps by district.

The strategy will be informed by cross-jurisdictional plans and agreements with Multnomah County, Metro, and the state to eventually create a regional system to address the housing crisis.

Ryan asked for rent regulations to be added to the plan, because it was not included in the resolution but discussed during the committee meeting. Councilor Candace Avalos said the overall objectives, including rent regulations, will be discussed further by the committee.

Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney said Portland has some of the smallest units in the U.S. being delivered to the market. She would like to see the strategy include housing for families of all sizes, she added.

The unified housing strategy draft will be presented to the Homelessness and Housing Committee by Dec. 1.

The post Portland moves to unify housing policy and strategy appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.