Welcome back to Better Planners podcast in 2024! We're starting the year off with a big one on state housing policy in Oregon, what to expect for the 2024 legislative session, and how planners and other allied professions can participate in the public process at the state level. We talk a lot about variances, urban growth boundaries, infrastructure funding, and much more!
While this episode does focus a lot on Oregon and our state policies, we hope this inspires you to become more engaged in your state legislative sessions and policies. Thanks for listening!
Want to be a part of the podcast? Send in an email!
The team behind the upcoming Better Planners podcast wants to hear from you about the real life issues you handle as a planner. What are the honest, gritty, wicked problems you find yourself managing?
To share your experiences, email betterplannerspodcast@gmail.com
Your message might end up in one of the upcoming podcast episodes. You can be as anonymous or as identifiable as you want.
Where to find us:
Website: https://oregon.planning.org/community/betterplannerspodcast/
Instagram: @betterplanners
Welcome back to Better Planners podcast in 2024! We're starting the year off with a big one on state housing policy in Oregon, what to expect for the 2024 legislative session, and how planners and other allied professions can participate in the public process at the state level. We talk a lot about variances, urban growth boundaries, infrastructure funding, and much more!
While this episode does focus a lot on Oregon and our state policies, we hope this inspires you to become more engaged in your state legislative sessions and policies. Thanks for listening!
Want to be a part of the podcast? Send in an email!
The team behind the upcoming Better Planners podcast wants to hear from you about the real life issues you handle as a planner. What are the honest, gritty, wicked problems you find yourself managing?
To share your experiences, email betterplannerspodcast@gmail.com
Your message might end up in one of the upcoming podcast episodes. You can be as anonymous or as identifiable as you want.
Where to find us:
Website: https://oregon.planning.org/community/betterplannerspodcast/
Instagram: @betterplanners
Mary, if you had the power to introduce one piece of planning related legislation to the 2024 Oregon State Legislature, and it would be guaranteed to pass Yes. Yes. What would it be, and why?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I will not take credit for this. I've had other people, uh, tell me about this idea, and I think it's probably a really good one. It's called a land value tax.
Shelley Denison:I was gonna say a land value tax!
Mary Heberling-Creighton:No!
Shelley Denison:Yes! That was gonna be my answer!
Mary Heberling-Creighton:It's like we have the same brain!
Shelley Denison:It's almost as if a land value tax is like what every single planner ever wants to institute, but no politician has the guts to do it.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Ugh, okay, well, let's tell the folks who don't know what a land value tax is. So, especially in Oregon, because we have urban growth boundaries, the land inside an urban growth boundary that is not developed, but is definitely developable to however you define that, is taxed at a higher rate, kind of to incentivize them to get developed. Basically, it's like one tool that you can use to help get more housing in your community. It's not the end all be all, obviously, but it's something that I think could be helpful.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, and land value taxes also reduce the temptation of speculation.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Hmm. Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Because of, because they, they encourage people who are sitting on vacant land to actually put that land to productive use instead of just sitting on it empty. There's also, have you heard of, uh, split rate taxation?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Maybe.
Shelley Denison:So, it's like a, it's like a, a, a variant on a land value tax.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Okay.
Shelley Denison:So, it's a tax on both the land and, right, the, the property, the improvements or whatever, but the land is taxed at a higher rate than the, the structure, than the improvements.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:So, it's kind of a, it's kind of a middle, you know, kind of a middle ground between
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:property taxes we have now and a land value tax, but I mean, listen, I feel like, I feel like it. You ask any planner who cares about housing what their, their one, like, top, like, number one priority on their policy wish list is, and they're going to say land value tax.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Or decommodifying housing altogether. But that's, that's, that's, you know, that might be a little, a little too far in the future.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right. You're listening to the Better Planners Podcast, brought to you by the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association. I'm Mary Heberling Creighton.
Shelley Denison:And I'm Shelley Denison.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:You can find us on Instagram at better planners, planners is plural. On the webpage for the Oregon APA chapter and on all of your favorite podcast streaming platforms.
Shelley Denison:You can also get in touch with us by sending an email to betterplannerspodcast at gmail dot com. And we want to hear from you. We love hearing from you. We want your questions, your comments, your suggestions, your complaints, everything. We want to hear everything.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes, and we're really excited about all of the upcoming episodes we have planned for this year. We've got some really good topics we're working on, and our goal this year is to publish on a more consistent monthly schedule, so you should expect us to have at least one episode a month.
Shelley Denison:And just as a little preview, Some of the episodes that we're working on include planning for neurodiversity. We're going to be interviewing a newly minted PhD from my alma mater, the Ohio State University, who wrote her dissertation on planning for neurodiversity. We're going to be talking about what a sustainable future of housing. could look like given climate change and demographic shifts and what that means for traditional detached single family homes. And we're also working on an episode on contemporary indigenous tribal planning. We're talking to some folks who work in that space in Oregon and We're going to be talking about, uh, among other things, one of my biggest ethical questions about planning, which is, is planning, uh, a direct act of settler colonialism? So I'm really excited about that conversation.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Should be super interesting. All right, so Shelley, what are we going to talk about today?
Shelley Denison:Well, Mary, we are just a few weeks away from the start of Oregon's 2024 legislative session. February 5th is the first day of that session. Housing is a huge piece of the state's current legislative agenda, especially for Governor Kotek. On her website, she has Three highlighted priorities for her legislative agenda and housing and homelessness is the first of those. In the 2023 legislative session. Uh, for the state of Oregon, there were 135 bills related to housing. A little bit of a technical explanation, so the 2023 session and every odd year legislative session in the state is what's called a regular or a long session. And they're about 160 days, they can be extended if needed, but the 2024 session and every Even year session is a short session, and they are a maximum of 35 days. So the 2023 session, tons of bills were introduced. I think it was something around 2, 700 bills were introduced total in the 2023 session. But because this year is a short session, there are nowhere near as many bills. However, We can still expect a lot of forward movement on housing legislation this year, as well as next year, especially because 2025 is going to be the last regular long session of Kotek's first term in office. So given that housing is one of the biggest pieces of her legislative agenda, we can definitely expect a lot of housing legislation to be introduced in the next legislative session. So in this episode, we're going to talk about a couple of things. We're going to cover, uh, one piece of key housing legislation from 2023. We're going to talk about what to expect in 2024 and possibly 2025. And finally, we're going to talk about how individual planners and folks in planning adjacent professions can get involved in the state legislative process.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:So, backing up to last year, what exactly were in those 135 bills that you mentioned?
Shelley Denison:So most of them were pretty non controversial and included changes to very specific types of regulations or processes. There was definitely a legislative focus on production, building more houses. So the The pilot Oregon housing needs analysis estimates that the state has a shortage of about 140, 000 housing units and estimates that we need to add over 550, 000 housing units over the next 20 years in order to adequately meet housing demand. So a very, very quick little high level Econ 101 lesson, supply and demand are related to each other, right? So when you have a low supply of something, but there's a high demand, right? So when there's more demand than there is supply, price goes up and it's through increasing the supply. of whatever that good is to meet the demand that prices, theoretically, right, in a perfect world, all things equal, prices will go down. So the legislative focus from Governor Kotek, from the state, from DLCD, Department of Land Conservation and Development, the big focus is on producing more housing. The big focus is on increasing the supply of housing with the idea that increasing the supply to meet Demand will lower prices overall. So that's, that's kind of the big legislative focus. A lot of the bills were, um, about things like expanding middle housing allowances and adaptive reuse development opportunities, like being able to take buildings that were previously used as commercial properties and convert them into housing. A lot of these bills were clarifying some procedural technicalities. Some of them were region specific and applied to very specific kinds of projects in certain parts of the state, but a few of them in particular were Definitely very controversial and subject to a lot of debate. One in particular that was especially contested was House Bill 3414. Yeah, and
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I know that you were paying a lot of attention to House Bill 3414, so why don't you tell us a little bit more about that one?
Shelley Denison:Yeah, I followed that one very closely. So, House Bill 3414, or HB 3414, had some pretty significant proposals in it. It was introduced at the direct request of Governor Kotek, and in its final form, it proposed three key things. The first Was not a controversial one at all. It was the establishment of a housing accountability and production office at the level of the state, which would exist to help cities ensure that they're meeting their production goals. The second piece that was proposed by this legislation was loosening requirements for UGB expansions. This one was very controversial, and it got a lot of pushback, particularly by environmental groups. So UGBs, if you don't live in Oregon, if you're not a planner in Oregon, UGBs are urban growth boundaries. They are these boundaries around cities that determine what can be annexed into city limits? These boundaries are determined based on some pretty technical calculations, some pretty technical approaches to determine what are the urbanization and development needs over the next 20 years. Typically it's, it's, it's a, it is a long process to annex a new piece of land into the urban growth boundary. But this, the, under House Bill 3414, it would allow any city to incorporate up to 150 acres for housing into their urban growth boundary. One of the reasons this was so controversial, especially among environmental conservation groups, is because UGBs are considered by a lot of these groups to be kind of a gold standard policy when it comes to protecting forest land, farmland, wild land, and to keep urban sprawl in check. And a lot of these groups, a lot of these, uh, Environmental groups like Thousand Friends of Oregon, League of Conservation Voters are pretty concerned that making it easier to expand urban growth boundaries deprioritizes the protection of environmental spaces.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, and it's, it's always been incredibly hard to expand your urban growth boundary. It takes literally years to be able to do it, just with all of the research that you have to do to basically prove that you actually need an expansion. Um, I've only seen it maybe once or twice. It was some of the Portland metro area cities wanting to expand their UGB so that they could have um, a little more employment in industrial land. But like, it took years to do that. And there's a hot debate In the state, there are some people that think that it's the UGB that's causing the housing shortage because we can't, we're, we're restricted by these boundaries, um, to build more housing and some people, like you mentioned, especially like environmental conservationists, believe that the UGBs is why Oregon is as As great as it is, people fall on very different lines, and I think a lot of people are kind of in the middle, too, where it just sort of depends. But yeah, it's, it's, it's been a hot topic, the UGB, especially for the last, I would say, ten years in Oregon.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, and I definitely think it's easy to see both sides of this, right? We are a state that prides ourselves on having a lot of amazing natural resources and prioritizing protecting those resources that has historically been, interestingly, very bipartisan in Oregon, the protection of, of the environment, keeping forest lands as forest lands, keeping farmlands as farmlands, right, has been something that Oregon has really prioritized, especially over the last 50 years since uh, our current land use system was implemented. And then finally, the third key item proposed by House Bill 3414. was limiting the ability of local governments to deny variance requests on residential development projects. So, a little bit of an explanation of what a variance is. When a developer wants to build something in a city, they are required to follow all of the rules in that city's development code. And a development code covers all kinds of things. Everything from the architectural style, the height, the setback, landscaping and trees, um, density, zoning, yeah, all kinds of things. However, often, there are situations where a particular rule doesn't make sense to a specific project. Or, there are situations where a developer is willing to Negotiate and offer something that would be beneficial to the city that isn't necessarily in the development code in exchange for not having to follow a specific rule. So that's a variance.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And typically a variance would have to get either secondary approval, require a public notice, and then maybe go to planning commission, maybe even city council. It kind of depends on the, on the city, which adds extra time and money for developers. But at the same time, it does. It's giving developers an option to do things that maybe are hard to do if you have like a tricky site. If there's, you know, things on it, the shape of it's odd. Um, if there's, you know, obviously if there's like a wetland or other natural resources on there, and you want to basically adjust the development so that you can still develop, but It just has to be a little bit different because of the limitations on the site.
Shelley Denison:Right, yeah. And one of the foundational principles behind a variance is that it's on the developer to argue for why the city, why the jurisdiction should approve the variance request.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:So, House Bill 3414 would, well this is interesting, in the original text of the bill, it said that it limits conditions under which local governments may deny variance requests, but as it went through committees, as it went through, you know, different hearings, the text of the bill was amended to, requires local governments to approve certain adjustments to land use regulations for housing development. I think that's really interesting. I think that's a really interesting shift in language from limiting conditions under which a city can deny variance request to requiring a city to approve. Variance requests. Right. There were specific situations, two specific situations in which a city would be allowed to deny a variance request. One is to address health, safety, and habitability issues, which is wonderfully vague. Um, and the second situation is if the variance request relates to density, height, or Florida area ratio of the development, uh, which I have, I think that's, I think there are two interesting things about this that kind of, kind of reveal that this might not have been looked at by the right people who have the kind of technical expertise to say whether or not this is a good idea. One, is that Those three things, density, height, and floor to area ratio, those are the things that when you allow variances for, allow for more housing. Like, those are the things, these specific parts of development codes, that when we are more lenient, more, offer more room, offer more allowance for those things, that's what creates more housing. And it's also interesting that in the text of the bill, it uses the word variance and the word adjustment interchangeably, which any planner who works in current planning, in reviewing development applications, in reviewing development codes, knows that there is a big difference. A big difference between a variance and an adjustment. And I think that those are a couple of things that sort of reveal that maybe this wasn't fully baked. When it went to the state legislature, there was this, uh, Oh, let me, so 3414, very contested, lots of public hearings, lots of testimony. And there was a lot of reporting on what was going on with 3414. OPB published an article in June, 2023, where they quoted The deputy director of Thousand Friends of Oregon, Mary Kyle McCurdy, where she talked about how Thousand Friends of Oregon originally supported 3414 in, uh, early in the session, but as the bill went on and added particularly the UGB amendment, A Thousand Friends of Oregon stopped supporting the bill. McCurdy said the bill. This is quoting from the article. McCurdy said the bill does not have adequate requirements for housing density or affordability within any expansions. And she argued it was not necessary in the first place. And then she's quoted as saying there are thousands and thousands of acres inside UGBs. Cities have testified to this. The problem, McCurdy argued, is that cities don't have enough money to build infrastructure for new housing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:That's a super important point right there because I feel like expanding a UGB is not going to solve the problem because you're still going to have to build infrastructure out to these honestly obscure areas. Like I feel like our UGBs are pretty big for the most part, I mean maybe, maybe I'm biased, but I always struggle with With wanting to develop further out, without following or adding in adequate transit, adequate resources, adequate, adequate, uh, economic development, like, it's, it's something that, it's something that I think other states we can learn from who UGBs, like, there's so much that we can learn from that, and so much discussion about, um, A lot of cons outweigh the pros in terms of sprawl development, right? And if you don't have any sort of limitations on how the housing is going to get developed in these expansion areas, like, quite frankly, they're just going to be suburban sprawl because that's the most common use of development, even still today in Oregon. And it's just going to be an easy one that somebody can say, great, I already got, I know how to build 150 houses out on 10 acres. Actually, you probably need more acres than that if you're going to do single family. But if there's no kind of ramifications or no sort of details on how to do that, I can pretty much guarantee you that it's probably going to be not the best type of housing, most appropriate housing that we want to have.
Shelley Denison:Right. That's exactly right. I 100 percent agree with you. I, I think that if we're going to take the legislative approach of supply, right, if we're going to take the supply side approach, it's not enough to just deregulate. The, the, the development industry, it's not enough to just make it easier to build. We need to do, we need to have some kind of policy mechanisms, some kinds of regulatory requirements that tell developers, that tell the private market, this is what you are required to build. Right? You only have access to quicker permitting processes, to better land, to whatever, if you build what we could define as, you know, middle housing at a reasonable density. Right? And a lot of people would argue that, um, That taking, this kind of approach is just taking a deregulatory approach and trusting that the private market, trusting that developers will act virtuously, which is debatable, right? It's debatable if that, if that's actually going to happen.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And also, that's why variances started, because we needed to give developers some sort of, we could give them some leeway. But they were under restrictions, right? Like, sure, you can go and add more density here, but let's add some ramifications to that, right? Because as communities, we're communities, right? We have public interest, public good to kind of assess, and say, for example, a goal of a community is to make sure that every person is within a 10 minute walk from a transit stop, right? You expand the UGB, Well, now you're forcing a city that may not be ready to try and put in transit out there, or, or they just don't, and it never happens. And it starts getting, turning away from kind of the goals and the values of a community, right? And not all, and, and that's kind of the part that planning plays, is trying to take the goals and values of a community into actual development and look and feel of a city, right? So not everyone's gonna be happy you're in a community, there's gonna be different opinions, right? But you can generally get a sense of what a community is gonna want and find a way to create some common ground there, right? You know, a lot more of communities are okay with hey, we can add, we can add the variance option of creating more dense style housing if it keeps them away from natural resources. Right? That's a super common variance request, right? Obviously, the developer would have to prove that they could do that, and that they would still be able to meet the density requirements, but it would mean that they may have to build some attached housing that they wouldn't normally have been able to do before, right? It's one of those ways that a community and a city can still navigate The values and the goals that they have for the next 20 years, 50 years of their community, but allows, you know, that negotiation, that, that leeway. And, on the other side, on the flip side, I will say sometimes variances are created to be so difficult that they, you cannot develop with them. And, in my personal opinion, I don't think that that's helpful. I think it gives a false sense of Ideas for developers, and then it ends up creating distress. It ends up creating tension between the developer and the city. It's not, it's not a good look for a city to do that, in my personal opinion.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:There are ways that you can do variances that are good for both the city and the developer. So I understand why some people don't like variances. Absolutely. And I, and I've worked in cities where some of the variances didn't make sense to me. Right. But there are other ones that worked really well.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, and I, I think this whole thing kind of reveals this bigger, abstract question of what is planning if, if we are going to rely on developers and the private market to create cities. Why have planners?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm-hmm.
Shelley Denison:Right? If it is true that all we need to create good places to live are housing units and anything else can be procedurally. But swept aside by a mandatorily approved variance request, why have planners at all? And I think that that's a bigger question, not just in Oregon, but in the United States, right? Especially when you compare how we do planning in the United States to, uh, other countries. I'm thinking Denmark, I'm thinking Sweden, I'm thinking Spain, places where planners have more sort of freedom, more legitimacy, more authority to, to do the work of making cities, to do the work of making places that aren't wholly reliant on the will and the funding mechanisms of the private market. And I think that's a bigger conversation that I don't know is beyond the scope of this episode topic.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. But, uh, 3414 was a specific bill that that OAPA as an organization opposed. We submitted. A few different pieces of written testimony to the state legislature and we also provided oral testimony in one of the committee meetings. I want to play the, the testimony that, um, a particular representative of OAPA gave in opposition. Maybe, maybe you know them. They might be, they might be familiar."My name is Shelly Denison. I represent the Oregon chapter of the American Planning Association as a member of the board of directors. We advocate for a sustainable and equitable approach to urban planning and land conservation across the state. We are opposed to the provision in House Bill 3414, which limits the conditions under which a jurisdiction can deny a land use variance. During my time as a planner, I've reviewed many variance requests. Most of them have made sense based on the circumstances of their respective proposals. However, some of them have been patently unreasonable. For example, one developer I worked with requested a variance which would have allowed them to forego constructing sidewalks in an entire subdivision. Livable housing means more than just the buildings themselves. Development codes reflect this by requiring elements such as parkland dedications, sidewalks, access to public transit, tree canopy protections, and more good planning is done at a systems level. And housing planning is incomplete without taking into account the whole of our urban systems. This bill undermines that systems level approach to planning by assuming that all that is necessary is merely the construction of buildings. As planners in Oregon, we take immense pride in our state's planning forward reputation. This reputation comes in large part from this governing body's decision 50 years ago this month. To adopt the bill, which formally instituted Oregon's unique approach to land use planning, an approach which fundamentally acknowledges the importance of balancing all of the elements of our urban systems. As we move into the future with the shared goal of meaningfully increasing access to safe, secure, affordable housing for all Oregonians, it is critical that we sustain this multifaceted approach to urban planning. Thank you."
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Snaps to Shelly.
Shelley Denison:Thank you. Thank you.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Good job. Good job.
Shelley Denison:Thanks. I made it with like one second to spare. The time, the time requirements. Yeah, you know, I, I, I still stand by that, that livable communities are more than buildings and good housing is more than four walls and a roof.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And there's, there's so many studies that show that. I mean, it's, it's, it's very unfortunate that it feels like you're being forced into a situation. That makes it feel like we just have to try and do whatever we can to get more housing without taking into account the Unintended consequences. And not even unintended, like, we know what the consequences are, right?
Shelley Denison:Right, exactly. We've, we've all seen the Pruitt Igoe myth. We know what happens when, when you treat housing as just warehousing people. So all of this pushback, all of this controversy, particularly 3414, I will say that, uh, it really seems like Governor Kotek And the state legislature have been listening, have been trying to figure out how to move things in a better direction that does take into account good planning and good systems level planning.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. So speaking of that, um, what are we expecting for the 2024 session?
Shelley Denison:Right. So since it is a short session, Governor Kotech has only proposed one housing related bill, and that is Senate Bill 1537. Uh, and this bill has five key elements. The first one is the creation of a housing accountability and production office, similar to 3414, which this was not a controversial piece of the previous bill. This office would exist to provide technical support for local housing production and provide opportunities for collaboration between local governments and the state in lieu of enforcement actions, right? In lieu of, you know, penalizing cities for not. being completely up to date with state requirements. The second element is land supply. So again, going to that UGB expansion. According to the Oregon Newsroom, this is described as, um, a one time tool for cities that are in need of land and affordable housing to add land. to their urban growth boundary. Uh, it goes on to say any land added would need the consent of the property owner and could only be urban reserve, non resource land, or exception land. So that's a really important shift from the previous one. Again, just a little bit of a technical explanation of an urban growth boundary. So around an urban growth boundary is what's called an urban reserve. Which is land that the UGB can expand into in the future when it does expand. And then land in the urban reserve is rated based on, is it really high value forest or farmland? Is it what's considered non resource land? Um, is it already designated for future urban development? Right, it limits what can actually be brought in. to a UGB in that one time expansion.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:It's like we planned for it.
Shelley Denison:I know, I know. It's almost as if, like, the logic and processes behind the urban growth boundary actually means something.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right, yeah.
Shelley Denison:Huh, interesting. Interesting. Um, the third requirement in Senate Bill 1537 relates to housing affordability with, uh, the requirement that within any of those UGB expansion areas, 30 percent of all new housing units must be legally restricted for affordable housing. The fourth element is, uh, incentivizing climate friendly homes. So providing grant fundings, providing subsidies. for new affordable housing construction to use energy efficient design, reduce energy costs, and stabilize operational costs for owners. And then finally, this one's a big one, funding for housing production tools. So Senate Bill 1537 includes, uh, an investment package that totals 500 million from existing state resources, so this wouldn't be a new tax, it would be diverted from Other budget needs, which, again, that's a whole other conversation, and this includes 200 million for infrastructure financing, right? So that, that big concern that every city has, every planner has of, yes, we need more housing. We need the infrastructure to support that housing. This provides a good, uh, a significant amount of money to help support building that infrastructure that's needed to support housing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And that's super important because infrastructure is kind of the. In some communities, it is the limitation to building more dense housing within their urban growth boundary, right? So, a lot of these cities were built a long time ago, and their infrastructure cannot handle additional units to their, to their infrastructure. I mean, quite frankly, um, either the pipes are too old, the pipes aren't big enough, um, it would cost a lot to replace a, a water pipe. Say in a, not even just a street, but like, say in an area and you wanted to upzone the area. It's close to your downtown. It's close to transit. It makes a lot of sense for it to be more dense, but it literally cannot handle it. This is a huge thing that cities struggle with.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Um, ask me how I know.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I was being very vague!
Shelley Denison:I am Intimately familiar with the consequences of development that cannot be supported by existing infrastructure. I will be as vague as I can be about this. All of this is public information. Let me, let me preface with that. All of this is public information. But I will be vague, out of respect for my former employer. The last city that I worked for ran into this exact issue. Mm hmm. Where? There was a lot of development over the last 15, 20 years, tons, tons and tons of new houses and a very quickly aging sewer system and water treatment system. And it got to the point where the existing water treatment system could not support any more development. And our city was required by the state to put a moratorium on sewer hookups. on new development requiring sewer hookups. And because of that, we lost a significant amount of funding for our department because we couldn't process applications for any kind of development that would require sewer hookups. And because we lost all of that money, we didn't have the money to pay for my job, and I got laid off. Yeah. So, I, I will not pretend like I don't have, I will not pretend that I am entirely objective about, about this problem. It is, it is deeply frustrating, not only to me, right, but, but seeing our, our city leadership, all of our city staff, the, the residents who were deeply frustrated. By all of this new development happening, but the infrastructure not keeping pace with that development.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And, I mean, I don't even think it's the city you used to work for. It's like a common issue, I think, in a lot of cities across Oregon. And some of them do want to add more density, but they, but they just can't afford To add the infrastructure, and then that is then pushed onto the developer, which then increases the cost of the homes that need to be built, because they have to put more money up front to build them, right? Um, or they just straight up won't build them, because it's too expensive. If there's some things that we as planners have control over, I would say infrastructure could be one of them.
Shelley Denison:It's almost as if we are professionally trained and we have specific expertise. In understanding, maybe, what kinds of things will need to happen in the future. I think there's a word for that. I think it's called, um, planning. Yeah, so those are, those are kind of the five big elements of Senate Bill 1537.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I do, yeah, I'll, I definitely want to know more about these five areas, and I know that the last time we checked, the actual bill language wasn't posted yet, but the summary was, which is great. But yeah, I definitely want to know. I would love to see that the infrastructure goes to areas within UGBs versus an expansion area, personally. Because I think that's where we need it the most. And then I also struggle with the idea of putting affordable housing. I like, I like what they're trying to do, but I struggle with the idea of putting affordable housing in such far out places where access to transit, access to jobs is limited. Um, and that's a big struggle for me when we see this affordability requirement at 30 percent for expansion areas.
Shelley Denison:Exactly. Exactly. You know, ask any planner what that means. And it's like, well, then that incentivizes car dependency, which has its own set of issues, right?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah.
Shelley Denison:So it sounds like since the 2023 session that Governor Kotek's office probably has learned a little bit from the public discourse that happened around House Bill 3414.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Do you know how Governor Kotek has been getting advice on the technical details around housing production?
Shelley Denison:Yeah, so on Governor Kotek's first full day in office as Governor of Oregon, she Uh, executed Executive Order 2304, which established HPAC, which is the Housing Production Advisory Council. It's a group of technical experts whose job it was to do a bunch of analysis to come up with recommendations for housing production. Um, this executive order also set a housing production goal of 36, 000 new homes per year. Um, and that's compared to the state's current average of 20, 000 per year. So it's a goal, it's almost doubling what our current production average is. So HPAC just released the draft of their final recommendations. There are almost 60 recommendations made by five working groups. Those working groups are related to availability of land. Permitting processes. Development codes and design standards. Financing and addressing workforce shortages. So, there are a few recommendations. A lot of them are things that we would expect, right? Some of them I think are really interesting. One of them is, again, an expedited UGB expansion tool. Which, that I'm sure is going to be, continue to be highly contested. Both in this legislative session with this new Senate bill, as well as in 2025. I'm, I'm envisioning that being Continuing to be very controversial.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And I, I would say that I'm, I don't want to speak for all planners, but I would say that like, there, there is frustration about how long it takes to do a UGB expansion. I don't think an expedited UGB expansion proposal isn't a bad idea. As long as there's still the requirements of research proving your need and being able to show that it'll meet the basic requirements of, you know, kind of what we already require. I think there's a lot of like bureaucracy that takes it, that makes it as long of a process as it is. And I think that those are areas that we can definitely try and work on. But I think the philosophy, the idea of what you need to do for UGB expansion is not bad.
Shelley Denison:Right. Exactly. Yeah. I am a big fan of removing bureaucratic red tape where it makes sense to remove it. I'm a big fan of expediting, expediting procedural things. When it makes sense to expedite them, I feel like, you know, it's a, it's a baby with a bathwater kind of situation, you know, that as we get rid of the unnecessary stuff, we want to make sure we keep the good stuff. Another one of these recommendations relates to public owned land for affordable housing production. Uh, the recommendation specifies allowing affordable housing developers, right, a first option on publicly owned land. Uh, which I think is really interesting. This one is, I, I don't think this will be very popular. Temporary change to land use review process. So, as it currently stands, there are certain kinds of development applications that can be reviewed just at the staff level. Those are very straightforward, very, you know. Very straightforward development applications, but then there are other ones that need to go to a planning commission or a city council for public hearings. So this recommendation says that on a temporary basis until Oregon emerges from the housing production emergency, all housing development will be exempt from public discretionary review, a review by the city council, um, and everything will be at the staff level.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Hmm.
Shelley Denison:Which that is I would envision that being wildly unpopular, especially among city leaderships. This one, I think, I think, this is more carrot, less stick. A fund for a housing cash bounty. So, directly from the report, to financially assist and incentivize cities to build more housing units, the state will pay cities 10,000 dollars for every housing unit built within the annexed city limits. Over the next 10 years, use of the funds will be unrestricted, but are intended to accommodate housing growth. That could do a lot to support infrastructure.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm. Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Right? Ensuring that there's enough funding for infrastructure. They also recommend, unsurprisingly, reforming Oregon's tax system for housing production, including a land value tax.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Wow. Look at, look at us connecting the beginning of the podcast to now.
Shelley Denison:That's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, end at the beginning.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And honestly, I didn't even mean to do that.
Shelley Denison:It's just so popular among planners. Yeah. It's one of those things that when you learn about it, it's like, of course.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Of course. There's a, another financing mechanism recommended, a middle income housing fund. which would create a 300 million fund to provide gap financing for about 10, 000 units of middle income or workforce housing. And then also a recommendation for a state of Oregon infrastructure fund to continue providing money for the development of. infrastructure in order to support housing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, there's a huge range of recommendations there. I think some are going to be more popular than others, but I like, I like that there is this Advisory Council of Technical Experts. I think that's a great idea, and it does make me feel a little bit better about what is being proposed in bills.
Shelley Denison:Um, in fact, the, uh, the co chair of the Housing Production Advisory Council is also the president of OAPA, J. D. Tovey. So, we got someone on our team.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Doing the work. Doing the work. So depending on how the 2024 session goes, we can certainly expect Kotek to continue to push for a heavy housing production agenda, um, especially considering that 2025 will be the last long session of her current term.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:So with all of this knowledge, I think planners are very, very much Well aware of the importance of public hearings and providing your input, right? We deal with it all the time at a city level and As much as we encourage people to do to speak at public hearings I think maybe we could probably do a better job ourselves of doing the same thing With our state legislature. I mean the a lot that comes out from the state affects us and our jobs and what we do in our communities It it is perfectly okay for us to provide our input on how we see that is going And so yeah, we would love to be able to let you all know in case you don't know cuz hey I also sometimes don't know how to, how to properly provide my input at a state legislature. So yeah, we've provided some resources here for you on how to do that as well, especially knowing that the upcoming 2025 session will be a long session and there'll be a lot going on.
Shelley Denison:Right. Exactly. And it. I think it's definitely the case that sometimes the state legislature feels a little bit like a black box, that there's so much going on, especially during long sessions, regular sessions. There are so many things happening that it's like, what even, what bills are we even supposed to be following? What are the ones that, like, I should even be commenting on or paying attention to? So there's a few really good ways to, to get more involved in this. One is connecting with OAPA. Um, OAPA has a, a committee, the Legislative and Policy Affairs Committee or LPAC, which That's their whole committee's job, uh, during state legislative sessions is to track bills and to figure out how, how the organization, how OAPA is going to respond to them. They're actually currently looking for volunteers to help track and respond to bills. So if you have a particular interest in State legislature and housing policy. That's a great way to get involved and learn more about how the legislative process works. Um, if you're interested in, in joining up with them, you can just send an email to, um, lpac lpa@oregonapa.org. It's also really, really beneficial. for you to connect with your specific state senator or state representative. There's, it's, it's one thing for OAPA to provide one really, really great, super well analyzed piece of testimony on a particular bill. It's a whole other thing for planners all over the state to take this decentralized engagement approach. And to connect directly with their state legislators. Um, it's as easy as going to the. Oregon State Legislature website, Oregonlegislature. gov. They have a lookup tool. You just put in your address to see who your state senator is, who your state representatives are, and you can literally just email them and ask if they will meet you for coffee. And you can talk about Your experience as a planner and what directions you think would be the most beneficial.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm-Hmm.
Shelley Denison:for housing policy to go based on your personal experience. I can tell you that especially the representatives love that They love that. Yeah. Uh, because that they, they see that as a way to guarantee a vote.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm-Hmm.
Shelley Denison:But, but it is a fantastic opportunity to help. Somebody who doesn't have a lot of technical knowledge about land use or planning to fill them in a little bit on what's actually going on on the ground. The Oregon Legislature website, again, OregonLegislature. gov has a tab on their website called Get Involved. When you click on that, you can subscribe to email alerts from certain committees or about certain bills. You can learn how to register to testify in a public hearing on a particular bill. And they have, they have it set up that you can testify either in person, if you want to go to Salem or virtually, uh, and you can also submit written testimony on, on any of the bills. Uh, and then finally, uh, something that I really like doing, if, especially if the sort of technical language of stuff is just daunting to have to get through, is to set up a Google alert. If you go to google. com slash alerts, you can put in some keywords, right? So I might put in like Oregon 2024 Oregon legislative session. Housing. Or something like that. And I have it set up to where once a week I get an email in my inbox, uh, it's a digest of all of the news stories that came out that week about whatever keywords I put in. That is a great way to keep on top of particularly what's the more controversial stuff, what's the more newsworthy stuff, what's the kind of stuff that is really, really, really worth paying attention to.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right. Yeah, because the controversial ones will get written up by our newspapers.
Shelley Denison:Yes. Yes.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah. And I, I know that this episode has been pretty Oregon focused, but I hope and like, I think I can say for the both of us, we hope that it's something that makes you think about what you could be doing in your own community, in your own state, at least just starting to get engaged in wanting to understand what's coming from your states. I think that, well, I hope that it's as easy to find out as it seems it is in Oregon. Um, I think we pride ourselves in Oregon of making sure that, um, we provide a lot of resources to people, especially around government processes. Um, it's not perfect, but I, we do really take pride in that in the state. So the, your best bet is actually going to be reaching out to your state chapter. Or some states have multiple chapters, like California.
Shelley Denison:Texas.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. To your, um, APA chapters, and, and starting there, because I think they'll be the ones that can probably help connect you with the best ways to be able to engage in your state's legislation as well.
Shelley Denison:Absolutely.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:That's absolutely true. But like, what this all comes down to is, um, the land value tax.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, can we just, we'll just keep providing written comment. Land value tax, land value tax, land value tax.
Shelley Denison:We're just going to have a sit in in the um, statehouse in Salem until a land value tax gets, gets proposed. I'm volunteering Mary and I to do that.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Well, um, okay, well we'll see about that.