A housing shortage is testing Oregon’s pioneering land use law. Lawmakers are poised to tweak it
PORTLAND, Ore. — A severe lack of affordable housing has prompted Oregon lawmakers to abolish a 1970s law that made the state a national leader in using land-use policies to prevent suburban sprawl and preserve wildlife and agriculture.
The so-called urban growth border, a sacred cow of Oregon’s liberal politics, has helped cement the state’s green reputation and has been “extremely influential” in its development, said Megan Horst, a professor of urban planning at Portland State University .
“I can’t stress it enough,” she said of the half-century-old law. “All that farmland would probably be a sea of strip malls and subdivisions, as they exist almost everywhere in the country.”
But the interconnected homelessness and housing crises have forced lawmakers to consider exceptions, including Democrats who have historically championed these groundbreaking policies.
The only bill Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek has introduced during this year’s short legislative session is a sweeping housing package that aims to jump-start housing construction by amending the 1973 law that essentially drew a circle around cities to protect agricultural land, forests and nature from urban encroachment.
Lawmakers have just two weeks to pass the bill before the session ends on March 10.
As the longest-serving speaker of the Oregon House, from 2013 to 2022, Kotek became known for her progressive agenda. But as governor, she has sought to ease restrictions on developers in an effort to advance her housing production goals.
Her efforts to win support for the package have put her in the unusual position of having to lobby not Republicans — who largely support it — but members of her own party, many of whom voted against a similar measure last year. Kotek said she spent the seven months between legislative sessions talking to lawmakers, housing developers and conservation groups to find a middle ground.
“Last year we had a number of proposals that did not work for everyone, but we did not walk away. We sat down and worked on it,” she said as she testified in support of the bill, describing herself as the “chief architect” and “head cheerleader.”
“I also know that the process means there may be amendments,” she added. “But what we can’t see happening is this legislature leaving at the end of their session without this bill.”
On the ground, anti-sprawl policies can look dramatic. Sometimes blocks of dense apartment complexes end abruptly, giving way to dense forests or rolling fields. There may be houses on one side of a road, while the other side has open space as far as the eye can see.
The 42-page package would, among other things, grant a one-time exemption from the decades-old rule by allowing cities to acquire new land for the purpose of building housing. This would require 30% of new units in expansion areas to be affordable.
Currently, cities must predict population growth over a twenty-year period before they can request an urban growth boundary change for new housing, businesses, or industrial or public facilities. If they show that the area within their boundary does not meet expected needs, and if they identify outside areas that meet a complex set of criteria, they can apply to expand.
Cities with more than 2,500 residents that want to expand more than 20 acres must apply to a government agency for approval.
According to the Department of Land Conservation, 95 percent of such modifications were approved between 2016 and 2023. & Development, the agency in charge of approvals. But many cities and developers say the stringent evaluation and analysis requirements can be lengthy and difficult to navigate.
“While land supply is not a barrier for all cities, it is critical for some, and the current … process is time-consuming, costly and contentious,” said Ariel Nelson, a lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities. who has a neutral position on the bill, according to written testimony.
To speed up the process, the bill before lawmakers would relax certain regulations and waive the 20-year population projection if conditions are met. But the proposal still contains some restrictions that largely stem from requests from Democrats.
To qualify, cities must prove they have a lack of land and affordable housing. They should outline the history of their growth boundary over the past twenty years and assess how much land has been developed within the current boundary. They would also have to show that a certain percentage of households are highly cost-burdened, meaning that they spend more than half of their income on housing.
In most cases, cities would not be able to add high-quality agricultural or forest land.
Furthermore, cities would only be able to add relatively small areas of land: for example, cities with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants would only be able to add a maximum of 20 hectares of ‘net living area’, which is less than a tenth of the area. one square mile (0.3 square kilometers). A net residential acre refers to the amount of land used to build homes, excluding streets and utilities.
The one-off exemption from urban growth border rules would expire in 2033.
Sen. Deb Patterson, a member of the Senate Environmental Caucus and Housing Committee, said these guardrails made her feel comfortable supporting the bill. She was one of the Democratic lawmakers whose “no” vote killed last year’s proposal.
“While it is not a perfect bill by any means, so much work has been done to make this a much better bill that I believe I will have a ‘yes’ vote,” she said.
One of her Republican colleagues on the Senate Housing Committee, Sen. Dick Anderson, also supports the bill, but said the border expansion rules were restrictive “almost to the point of not being helpful.”
“You shouldn’t imagine a Las Vegas or Phoenix-style expansion, with houses galore and subdivision after subdivision,” he said.
Anderson thinks other parts of the bill would be more useful in his coastal district, particularly a measure that would allow cities to “swap” land currently within their boundaries, which is more difficult to develop due to steep terrain or other topographical issues, with an equivalent amount of land just beyond that is more suitable for residential use.
To fully address the crisis, other factors must also be addressed, such as rising construction costs, labor shortages and increasing corporate ownership of housing, housing experts say.
Lawmakers have tackled land use law in the past, in part to spur industrial growth. Most recently, they passed a measure last year that allows the governor to designate up to eight sites for expansion to make room for semiconductor factories.