Better Planners Podcast
Brought to you by the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association (OAPA), Better Planners is a podcast that delves into in-depth conversations around relevant and timely stories that surround the urban planning realm including the ground-level work of planners, community development advocates, and allied professions. With an emphasis on amplifying the voices and stories of marginalized communities. The episodes will be a resource and guide to provide insights into planning related topics people face on a daily basis that may be inspiring, challenging, questioning, and/or innovative. This podcast is intended for urban, regional, and rural community planners. Or you could be a community advocate, student, newcomer, or seasoned professional, this podcast series will have something for everyone! So join us as we all become better planners! Instagram: @betterplanners
Better Planners Podcast
The State of Housing and Oregon's Communities Respond
We have a longer episode for you all this time, but it's a good one! In this episode we discuss the state of housing: how did we get here, what does the future hold, and we interview a few interesting projects happening in Oregon as they try find innovative ways to provide housing in their communities.
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I'm gonna say something controversial, yet brave. I believe. That the abstract concept of home is a Psy Op.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:What?
Shelley Denison:It's a Psy Op. It is, it is a psychological operation against the American people. Oh my gosh! You, you put so many, oh my gosh! The, the, the pipeline of professional road microphone to full on consumerism. Conspiracy theorist is absolutely happening right now.
Mary Heberling-Creighton: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 Shelly Dennison.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:You can find us on Instagram at better planners, planners, 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. com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to ko fi. com slash betterplanners. That's K O. So, Mary, I'm curious, what in your life has been your favorite housing situation?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Okay, so my favorite housing situation, which is ironic because it's not the house that we bought within the last year, but it will become our favorite, it's just not yet currently because we've got to do things to it, um, but, We were living before this in a duplex. In a pretty nice area of Portland, where it's very walkable, you're able to get to a lot of things, a lot of cafes, restaurants, stores, all of that was in pretty good walking distance, um, and the only reason we could ever, uh, afford to be there is because it was a duplex and it was a rental, and it was in this kind of semi historic area where a lot of the Uh, area, a lot of the neighborhood was a combination of rental and home ownership as well as a block down from us was an affordable housing development too. So it's just this like nice mix of a variety of housing types. We were in a duplex. There's quite a few duplexes in the neighborhood, but also, you know, like courtyard apartments, uh, like lots of really not just single family home, lots of middle income. Not middle income. Lots of middle housing all together. And yeah, it was just like, it was like the type of neighborhood that we as, um, planners are like, yeah, this is, this is the good stuff. The ironic part is that we would never be able to buy a house in that neighborhood.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah, exactly.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:So you could only really afford to be there. And by like, afford, it's like, You know, two income household. We both are paid well. Like, it wasn't the most affordable rental spot ever, but, um, it was just really nice to be able to, at least for a little while, be in a, in a neighborhood like that. Yeah. Uh, what is your favorite housing situation?
Shelley Denison:Um, when I was in college in my undergrad, I went to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, which if you're familiar with Brigham Young University, you probably know that it is a religiously oriented college. So everybody goes to church and you go to church with the people who live around you. And it just so happens that at at BYU. It's typically like an apartment complex are the people that you go to church with and something that I really, really appreciated was how strong a sense of community. That I had with all of my neighbors, because we were all college students. We all knew each other and we all went to church together. Right. So we kind of had this like built in. I mean, it was a third place really. Um, uh, like this built in community of, of this built in way to know all of your neighbors. And so even though some of the apartments that I lived in were, um, not Habitable, uh, I would say, um, I still have really, really good memories of, uh, having just a lot of really, really good friendships with all of my neighbors. And there is something, something great about kind of the, the organic serendipity of neighbor relationships.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Because. You know, if you live farther away from your friends, you gotta, you gotta plan to see each other, right? But if you're friends with all your neighbors, then it, it just sort of, like, organically emerges that, you know, a couple of people will just, like, hang out in an apartment. Or in the evenings, you know, you go sit in the courtyard and there's a bunch of your friends already there. I think there's something kind of magic about that kind of relationship, where a lot of the hanging out, a lot of the socializing, a lot of the community is very spontaneous. Yes. As opposed to planned. And I think that's one of the things that planners try to create is more opportunities for spontaneous community. Um, and I think that requires people knowing who their neighbors are.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:So, yeah. I think my underground is really good. In that sense.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I kind of feel like a lot of people have very similar experiences in college.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Because college areas, college towns, inevitably are a lot more walkable. Like, college campuses themselves, it's like, there's, there aren't cars. It's like, It's all walkable. It, and then a lot of the housing for students is either on campus or directly around it. And so there is that sense of like community and camaraderie that's kind of built in.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And I feel like when, when you ask people like, oh, your favorite housing situation, a lot of times it's some, some quirky thing or some fun thing or some really, amazing housing situation from their college years.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because we also talk about college housing as like generally being like very low quality building wise.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:But it's, it's still interesting to me that a lot of people see that experience as overall good because of the sense of community. So even though the buildings themselves were. Not ideal. It was everything else.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:Associated with it.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:That, that people like Yeah. The community, the walkability, the, the, we're all in this togetherness.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm-Hmm.
Shelley Denison:We're all in this We also wanted to. Just really quickly give a shout out to a fantastic local business in downtown Gresham, Oregon, uh, SDF Collective. You might have noticed that our audio quality sounds unbelievably good. And that is because we are recording in the dedicated podcast studio at SDF Collective.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. We feel very professional right now.
Shelley Denison:I know. Um, It's a little terrifying to be surrounded by, uh, expensive equipment, but also, like, maybe we know what we're doing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Maybe we do.
Shelley Denison:Maybe we do. We at least sound like we do.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:That's right. That's, that's the point.
Shelley Denison:That's half the bottle. Probably more. Um, Mary, what are we talking about today?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, so if you couldn't guess already, based on our introduction, we are talking about housing. We're going to talk about the past, the present, the future of housing in the United States, how we got where we are today, and where do we go from here.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, and we want to thank Cassandra Brown for supporting a lot of the research for this episode and connecting us with some interesting housing projects in Southern Oregon. She's a volunteer with the podcast, a planner with the city of Medford, and a graduate from the University of Washington MEP program. And an avid pedestrian. Um, she also said that her favorite housing experience was living in a poorly insulated and probably illegal, but very cheap addition as a college student in Bellingham with a 20 minute walk of all of her besties and the best views of the bay.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:See what I tell you. People love their college housing situation.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Even if they're illegal and poorly insulated. We are not advocating for illegal additions.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:No, but should they be illegal? We'll get into it! For this episode, Shelley, I know that you Interviewed a couple of different people across the state of Oregon that are doing really interesting, innovative housing work. Do you want to talk about that?
Shelley Denison:Yeah. So I talked to three different people who are working on three different projects related to residential development around the state of Oregon. We were really interested in finding stories, finding projects that. Uh, implement kind of novel ideas, you know, interesting financing mechanisms or really good community engagement, public engagement efforts. Um, and we were also really interested in talking to people outside of Portland. Um, we both love Portland, but sometimes. It gets all the attention.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:So let's listen to, to some bits from those interviews.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Connie Lindsey:This is Connie Lindsey from GK machine in Donald Oregon and GK machine has been building and designing agricultural and industrial equipment for about 50 years now, right here in Donald. And Donald is a very small town. There's about a thousand people that live in Donald, and no housing has been added to this community for over 18 years. And one of the things that we discovered, um, doing a little internal study, is we found that if an employee commutes more than an hour one way to work, we will lose them in approximately one and a half to two years. Because of that commute time takes away from family takes away from a lot of things. And so we decided to start looking at housing options and because of GK's long agricultural history, right here in the Valley, we wanted to create a neighborhood that highlighted the agriculture of the area. And so we did some research and we found a concept called an agri hood. So the concept is, instead of building this beautiful neighborhood around, let's say, a golf course, for example, we're going to build this beautiful neighborhood around a working farm and garden. And the people who live in the neighborhood can participate in the gardening in a number of ways. They can get a box from the garden each month and pay a fee. They can volunteer on the farm in exchange for a box of food each month or week. Or, um, they can actually rent a raised bed and, and learn how to plant and grow their own food. So we're going to design this beautiful, a neighborhood of 350 homes around a working farm and garden. Another thing I have seen. That has happened. We have about 20 employees that now live in Donald and they're moving in on a regular basis. What I'm seeing now is the employees are becoming community. Their spouses are becoming friends. Their kids are going to school together and playing together after work, you know, so there's a sense of community that we're actually creating here in Donald for our employees.
Shelley Denison:There's like, there's a few things that I really like about that. One is, I feel like it's so rare to see a company that dedicated to the quality of life of its employees.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Like, I feel like it's so rare to see a company To see a business like really, really trying to create the kind of conditions that would encourage employee loyalty.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right. Yeah. Well, and it's such a, I think with, I think as planners we highlight how detrimental Long commutes can be, which is why we always want to encourage people being able to work in the places that they live, but like hearing it from a for profit company kind of is like a little, um, it just makes you feel good. You're like, I know we know, and it's true. Yeah. I mean, like I've worked jobs where I've had long commutes and like, yeah. It's really hard to continue to do that for many years, because it just takes so much out of your, out of your life just to commute, especially if it's in a car. Um, I think it's a little bit different with transit because you still feel like you can do other things and you're not so focused on being the one driving, but yeah, car commuting is rough.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I love that it's one of those things where it's like, it's not just. It's not just an environmental thing. It's not just a quality of life and overall well being thing, but this for profit business, this private business has discovered, oh, it's actually good for, like, our profit driven motive to encourage people being able to live close to where they work.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And I think the biggest thing too is the Empowerment of those people that now live in the community that they work.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Because you care so much more about your community when you live and you work and you play there It's it becomes a much bigger deal for you and then in turn they're more involved in their community and they're more involved in what's going on and how things are are working because they have the time and The space to do that.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah. And this idea of like the, the, like the Agra neighborhood, I think is so cool. Um, cause it's really leaning into that like rural tradition, you know, of, of rural Oregon, you know, it's not just, again, again, we love Portland, but it's not just an example of like, you know, an architecture or planning firm in Portland trying to take something that would work in Portland and like put it, you know, in, in another part of the state. Right. Like it's a thing that makes sense in, in that the geographic context and in the social context of that area.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. We love it.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Very cool.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:This is great.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Rose Ojeda:My name is Rose Ojeda and I'm the Director of Manufactured Housing and Cooperative Development Center here at CASA of Oregon. CASA stands for Community and Shelter Assistance Corporation. We, uh, first received a contact, uh, after the 2020 Alameda fires from a local leader who helped lead the local organization, uh, Coalición Fortaleza. She had reached out to us after she learned about our resident owned community program and our manufactured housing work, uh, to see how we might be able to help redevelop a, uh, manufactured dwelling park in, um, southern Oregon.
Shelley Denison:What is a resident owned community? What makes those, those innovative?
Rose Ojeda:A resident owned community is a program where we, uh, work with the residents to purchase their manufactured dwelling park to help them both purchase the park and then also operate the park. And the residents make all the decisions, including the election of their board of directors, approval of their annual budgets, any rent increases. and also any improvements to the park.
Shelley Denison:What do you think are some of the the long term benefits of having a resident owned community as opposed to kind of a more traditional, um, you know, private third party owning the land?
Rose Ojeda:Well, in a resident owned community program, um, of course the residents control the budget and the costs and rent increases. So they are just great stewards at managing those operating costs and basically, um, stabilizing their rent over a long period of time. So they are able to achieve a very, Stabilized a permanently affordable housing community on their own. I mean, they're making all the decisions Right now, uh, CASA has helped to preserve, uh, 26 manufactured dwelling parks throughout, uh, the entire state of Oregon. They're located along the coast, in the Willamette Valley, uh, we have one, uh, in the Portland metro area. We have others in, um, uh, central, uh, excuse me, north of Oregon. Eastern Oregon, Central Eastern Oregon, and outer areas beyond the metro, Portland metro area. So they are all over, and then of course now we have a park in Southern Oregon. We just actually recently closed on a park in uh, Grants Pass. And that particular park is also predominantly Latinx. So we, uh, and, and, and are now working on perhaps another senior park in Grants Pass. So we are just moving forward with a variety of different, um, manufactured dwelling parks and working with, within a lot of the different cultural groups. And, uh, just, we're just really excited to be able to support their, um, their empowerment.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I love this one.
Shelley Denison:Me too.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Um, I have found in the communities that I've worked in is that probably the last affordable housing That exists is mobile home parks or manufactured home parks in the communities that I worked in. And it is a huge problem when they are not cooperatively owned because the The people that are living there do not have a say, I mean you could say the same thing about like any sort of rental property quite frankly, but, um, it's especially important because they technically own the homes, but they don't own the land. And so they don't have control over when the rental pads of those parks are then, um, raised without their notice. Um, and it's really hard to be like, they are manufactured homes, but it's, it's not easy to move them.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And it's, yeah, it's one of the kind of the last like truly affordable places for folks. And it's almost impossible with the rents that they're paying or, um, what they're paying for pad rent to be able to afford any other option truly.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah. Yeah. And this, this concept of, Cooperative ownership, I think, is, I think it has to be a major component of the future of housing. I think in the long term, if housing is going to be sustainably affordable and accessible, more housing needs to be cooperatively owned.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:I think that that is one of the most important, uh, and most effective checks on cost prohibitive, uh, rent increases.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Um, it's, it's one of those really important checks on, uh, You know, the market, which incentivizes continually increasing the price of rent.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:It's also really, I mean, I say this because I work in disaster recovery work, but like in the 2020 wildfires that happened, which the Alameda one that they're talking about there down in Southern Oregon, it majority of people that were hit and their homes were destroyed were in manufactured home parks.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And. There have been lots of efforts to ensure that when those parks are being rebuilt, that they are cooperatively owned to kind of help alleviate some of the issues that maybe they've seen in the past with not being, with being third party owned, that sort of thing. Um, so it's part of the recovery process down there for sure. And I'm really happy to hear that.
Shelley Denison:You know, it also provides this great opportunity. Um, you know, uh, she talked about opportunities for seniors. Um, you know, they're one of the groups that can be hit the hardest by increasing. Property values, increasing taxes, increasing rents, because a lot of times they're on fixed incomes. So, you know, being able to provide that kind of opportunity to allow them to age in place, to have secure housing, you know, through this kind of, through this kind of this, this mechanism of, of a cooperatively owned, Manufactured Home Park, I think, is, is really, really valuable and a really, um, effective approach to ensuring and protecting access to secure housing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Matt Brinkley:Yeah, so my name is Matt Brinkley, and I'm the Planning Director for the City of Medford. Um, and I've been in this position for a little over seven years now. Yeah, Summit Gardens is a 34 unit multifamily development on just a little under two acres of land. It is, uh, being, it is purpose built. Uh, for agricultural workers. Um, as you may know, agricultural or housing for agricultural workers in the state of Oregon is a challenge. It, it, it always has been. Um, and that is partly because it's a. byproduct of Senate Bill 100 in the way that we treat residential development on EFU land, which, you know, I mean, that's essentially the, that's the employment area for agricultural workers, um, and, uh, providing adequate housing on land that is EFU, um, has always been difficult. Uh, so this project is intended for agricultural, uh, workers, and, uh, it's a project that is being developed by Casa, um, of Oregon. And, um, it's a, it's been, it was a really interesting experience, I think from a funding standpoint, um, to kind of put everything together. And the city had a role in that, and I'm happy to say that, you know, it's being built. It's, um, it's just about done in fact. And so we're very excited to have housing, uh, for that particular part of our community, um, being done. So like a lot of regulated, affordable housing, uh, there isn't. just one funding source. So there are a variety of, um, private, uh, as well as public funding sources. The public funding sources that I am aware of, um, I believe this was a LIFT, uh, funded, um, development. The city, uh, awarded, um, Funds from our housing opportunity fund for this particular development and our housing opportunity fund is, uh, it was originally started in 2018, um, as a local funding source for housing that's affordable to households up to 120 percent of area median income. And we build that fund through a third of a percent tax, if you will. On, um, on, uh, building permit valuations. So both residential and commercial building permit valuations, uh, or as it's known a construction excise tax. And that that was something that was relatively recently, um, authorized by the state legislature. There were some communities who had it just a couple, I think, throughout the state. Bend being one of them who had a construction excise tax for affordable housing before that. Um, and then it was, uh, It was made, um, so that you couldn't do it. Uh, and then the legislature changed that right in time for us as we were developing our housing program. And so we, uh, established that in 2018. And I think, I think we're on our fifth round. So it's a competitive RFP process and we've used it for a variety of different projects. So, you know, a lot of them have tended to be regulated affordable. Um, housing, um, but we've also funded, uh, various, uh, shelter, uh, sort of projects, um, as well. So we've, we've used it for different things. We also used it to launch our accessory dwelling unit system development charge reduction program. We suspected, or we recognized early on when we were talking about housing, that accessory dwelling units could be an important part. Um, of our program portfolio. Uh, we had seen by that time that, you know, the city of Portland, for example, had waived. Uh, SDCs for ADUs, and that had resulted in increased production, um, a significant increase in production in the city of Portland. Uh, Medford has had, has allowed accessory dwelling units for a long time. We've had years in the past that have been relatively good, and by that I mean we would, we would get maybe 10 ADUs per year. And, you know, that's, that's a pretty small percentage of our overall housing production. And we thought that ADUs were a great strategy, both to provide, you know, naturally occurring, affordable housing, or at least housing that would be attainable to, you know, 80 to 120 percent AMI. We also looked at the impacts or the benefits that it has. Uh, for the household that's, that's building the ADU. And, um, you know, we have a desire, for example, to be able to age in place. Uh, parents also might want to provide an opportunity for adult children to have a place to live. Um, it, it's a great strategy for addressing a lot of economic stressors. Uh, that we have,
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I was semi joking during, when we were Listening to the recording, but I went C E T, baby. But I think, um, yeah, C E T has become like one of those very things that planners talk about a lot of like, ooh, C E T is really cool and inventive and innovative now, but like it truly does work. It's one of those ones where you go. It's not just like talking about it and you think like it's this great novel idea, but like in practice, it's actually working really well.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Can you explain, it's construction excise tax. Can you explain what that is?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. So it is as, um, as Matt articulated too, as well, it's, it's typically the city will choose a certain percentage of all, it'll be a certain percentage of building permit valuations. So say you have a building permit for a residential structure, um, and it's 20, 000 and you say, Oh, we'll, we'll take 3 percent of that and we'll put it in this fund and it'll be our construction excise tax. So it's kind of like a tax on, um, on building permits and it does, it can increase building permits a little bit, but in comparison to other things, it's, it's usually like, I've only ever seen like 3 percent is kind of the maximum. Um, but the city can also choose to now with the legislation that was expanding it, you can choose to only do certain, have it on certain projects. So, um, a lot of cities now have started doing it, um, on commercial, um, but they, we won't, they won't require it on any affordable housing and they can choose maybe like school projects. Maybe they won't do it, that sort of thing. They have the choice of. of how they can tax certain building permits. Um, but yeah, it's a, it's a really innovative way to get some, some good amount of funding.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:When I, in one of the communities that I worked at, they had, gosh, I think it was only, it had only been around for maybe like a year or two and it was a fast growing city. Like a lot was being built and they had almost a million dollars in that fund just from like maybe a year and a half. Yeah. Of the CET being available.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And you can do a lot with You know, that kind of money, right? If you're creative.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. I think something that, that Matt's comments illustrate is how important it is to understand and correctly use the right kinds of funding mechanisms where they need to be, because he talked about, you know, how Medford implemented, you also waived SDC fees for ADUs. And so I think that kind of requires a good understanding of what are all of the different funding mechanisms that jurisdictions have access to. What are the ones that make sense to increase and what are the ones that make sense to pull back on?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:You know, and I, I think it's one of those things where it's, it's like you need to use many of them in tandem in order to get the outcomes that, that you want to get.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. And then he was also talking at the beginning about, um, farmworker housing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Um, there was a study done about a year ago by Oregon Housing and Community Services on farmworker housing in Hood River, Marion, Morrow, and Yamhill counties.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:And they found some really interesting things, like the average farmworker family in Oregon earns between 20, 000 and 25, 000 per year.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Wow.
Shelley Denison:And so, I mean, that's like beyond, yeah, beyond poverty.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:And what that translates to is a lot of sharing small spaces. Um, in this survey, um, 96 percent of residents report living in overcrowded conditions. And 65% in severely overcrowded positions. Uh, two of the people who were interviewed in the study said that they share a cabin with 20 other people. I think this is one of those populations that gets ignored often.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm-Hmm.
Shelley Denison:very often. And it's one of those things, especially in more rural parts of the state where there is a lot of, you know, industry based in agriculture, it's, it's one of those things that we really need to pay careful attention to, to understand what are the specific needs of, um, this population of, of farm workers in Oregon. What are their specific housing needs? Especially if they do farm work that's more seasonal, so, you know, they'll move, you know, pretty frequently based on, you know, what's in season, who's growing where. You know, that's a really unique need that I think planners and housing planners and housing agencies, it's really important that we pay attention to. Really close attention to.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. It's also a type of housing that is one of the types that like doesn't fit in a neat box.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And so it makes it harder because the zoning codes. have historically tried to put things in very neat boxes and anything that's slightly varied or slightly different is really hard to define and therefore it's hard to implement or, or build.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Um, and so it just kind of puts into perspective of like needing to have flexibility around different housing types because they do exist and they are needed, Um, and especially for communities that you may not interact with on a daily basis. Maybe you're not a rural farm worker and so you don't talk to them or you don't interact with them. But it is something that is very important and should be considered a proper housing type.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Oh yeah. And then you add this like additional layer of vulnerability around immigration status. Mm hmm. And a lot of Um, a lot of farm workers in Oregon reporting that they, they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to, you know, be seen as difficult. They don't want to be seen as complaining because it could jeopardize their immigration status.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. So let's start by talking about where we're at right now and how we got to what a lot of people consider to be a contemporary housing crisis. And we'll begin in 2008. Um, Mary, can you refresh us on the 2008 housing crisis?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes, so between 2007 and 2010, the U. S. saw a major decline in home prices due to a housing bubble collapse, which led to a lot of home foreclosures and devaluation of home related securities. So, two key causes of the crisis were 1, subprime mortgage lending and 2, housing speculation. If you didn't know, subprime lending refers to mortgage loans extended to borrowers who would likely have a difficulty making payments, and housing speculation refers to homes purchased as investments rather than as a shelter. In a 2020 paper published by the Review of Financial Studies, they found that housing speculation led not only to great price appreciation, economic expansions, and housing construction during the boom in 2004 to 2006, but also to more severe economic downturns during the subsequent burst in 2007 through 2009.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. And a lot of people argue about what the major causes were of the 2008 housing crisis. Um, you know, folks on the right saying that it was actually government policies that made it too easy for subprime mortgages to be approved. And then you have other folks saying, no, it actually was subprime. Uh, under regulation, particularly when it comes to, uh, predatory mortgage lenders and investors, um, that led to, that led to the crisis. Um, but arguably, we are still recovering from the 2008 housing crisis. Today, two of the biggest factors that affect housing access in and affordability are high interest rates and a low supply of houses. I'm not going to pretend to know exactly how the Federal Reserve works, but it's my understanding that the regulatory levers That the Fed is able to pull have a pretty close connection, a pretty big impact on mortgage interest rates. Um, that when the Fed is trying to keep inflation low, which is what we're at right now, that they increase interest rates. Um, and that translates to higher mortgage interest rates. Each year, um, Harvard university's joint center for housing studies publishes a report on the state of the nation's housing and their 2023 report found three. Really important findings. One, the cost of homeownership increased significantly in 2023, ultimately pricing out 2. 4 million renters nationwide. The combination of mortgage, insurance, and property tax costs associated with a median priced home in the U. S. reached 3, 000 per month in March of 2023. And additionally, while median home prices dropped slightly between 2022 and 2023, that decrease was more than made up for by those rising interest rates. Um, and unsurprisingly, those 2. 4 million renters who were priced out of the housing market were disproportionately Black and Latino. Second, that report also talks about housing cost burden. So when a household is paying more than 30 percent of their household income on housing, they're considered housing cost burdened. In 2021, housing cost burdens reached their highest levels since 2013. 22. 7 percent of all homeowners in the U. S. were cost burdened in 2021. And 10. 4 percent of all homeowners in the U. S. were severely cost burdened in 2021, meaning that they paid more than 50 percent of their household income to housing costs. And if we look at renters, cost burden is even worse. In 2021, 49 percent of renters were cost burdened and 26. 4 percent of renters were severely cost burdened. And again, Black and Latino owners and renters are disproportionately represented among people who are cost burdened and severely cost burdened with housing costs. And third, the Harvard report, uh, found that in 2022, there was a severely low supply of homes for sale. At the end of 2022, the total supply of for sale homes was 30 percent less. Then it was at the end of 2019. This was due in part to rising mortgage interest rates, which lowered homebuyer purchasing power. So Mary, you recently bought a home, which is like the millennial dream.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I know. I don't know how sometimes I'm still like, I don't know how we did that.
Shelley Denison:You didn't even like have to win a lawsuit.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:No.
Shelley Denison:To, to be able to buy a home. Tell us about your experience. Buying a home.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to share what it, what it's like because, um, whether you are in the place to think about buying a house right now or you're not, or you did many years ago, it is quite different, I think, than, um, maybe what you are expecting. So sometimes it's nice to show a little bit of what's currently happening. Um, I will caveat that it's, uh, my husband and I. We have two, Really good jobs, two incomes. We don't have any children that we are, um, paying for daycare or, um, any sort of other costs for them. We do have a cat, though. Um, and I don't have any student debt, um, but we do have student debt on my husband's side, so, um. We have some things going for us that I think played into our ability to be able to buy a house at this time, which I think, um, as you mentioned, the 2. 4 million renters that are being priced out, they're probably dealing with, um, some things that we didn't have to deal with. To be able to do that. Um, and this is Portland too, where we bought our house. So, you know, there is definitely a shortage of housing and there obviously were the high interest rates that we were dealing with, right? So we had to be really careful on the houses that we would look at because of the high interest rates that really pays or that really plays into your, your mortgage rate or, um, you know, The amount of mortgage that you pay every month. Uh, and so we basically, because it was such a competitive environment, you kind of had to assume when you saw a listing price that the house would actually go for at least 30, 000 more than what they were listing it as because they could. Right. There were so many people wanting to buy a house. Um, and there were people with a lot more money than others, and so they were able to pay more. We also were definitely beat out by all cash buyers, so they wouldn't even have to deal with the high interest rates. They already had the cash on hand to buy. Um, we even had one that, where they had a non non-competitive clause, which basically said like, whatever your highest bid is, we'll pay more and it'll all be in cash.
Shelley Denison:Oh my gosh.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Um, and we like loved that house. It was like. So nice. Uh, it would have been a great starter home for, for somebody, and we ended up figuring out that it was, it was bought as a second home, or maybe in a, Somebody's third or whatever. It was basically bought as investment property. And so that kind of stung a lot more because of that, but that is the reality of the housing situation right now. Um, but yeah, so we were lucky enough to be able to get a home. Um, but it was, it was rough. I would never wish it upon anyone unless you really like that environment. Great. Um, but it was just not, not my favorite thing that I've ever had to do. So, yeah.
Shelley Denison:But now you get to dig holes all over your yard.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Now we get to dig holes. And speaking of trees, we planted some trees as well on our property. So
Shelley Denison:Nice. Good for you.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:In about 30 years they'll be big
Shelley Denison:Yeah. And something that I think is interesting about that is that when we talk about housing costs, stuff like that doesn't get captured.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:No, exactly.
Shelley Denison:You know, so when we talk about like, oh, 30% of your household income going to housing costs, that means like mortgage. And insurance.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Oh, yeah.
Shelley Denison:And property tax.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Right? And it isn't taking into account all of the maintenance, all of the, you know, removing invasive trees, putting in new trees, the costs associated with that. Yeah. So, arguably, Yeah. Even more people than we think, you know, then, then the, the, the data suggests are in fact, housing costs burdened because of all of the costs associated with homeownership.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah. And we were careful about, I mean, I happen, we happen to be a well informed house buyers. Like I'm a, a planner, my husband's an architect. So we were able to see a lot of things that maybe not other folks did. Obviously you have inspections done, you know, when you offer on a house to ensure that nothing's completely, you know, hidden that you couldn't tell what's going to be a big cost that you weren't expecting. But like, you could tell, like, some of the houses that were going, like, maybe folks didn't understand the maintenance that would be required.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Um. Or like, or like bad flips. Yeah. Is a big problem.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Oh yeah, we saw, yeah, we saw some bad flips for sure.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Ugh. That is, that is one thing that I really appreciated about renting. Is that I do not, I mean, I've, arguably I do pay for maintenance with my rent, right? But it's like spread out, right? It's predictable. Uh, last year, my dryer, my dishwasher, and my fridge all went out within like two months.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Of, of each other. Um, I had to get all three of them replaced. Yeah. And I didn't have to pay, I didn't have to pay for them. Yeah. I mean, I paid for it in my rent, right? But like, it was, I did not have to burden the upfront costs.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yep.
Shelley Denison:Of those things. At one time.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Um, I think another thing too that I think about because I've seen people talk about this on social media where they bought a house when the interest rates were super low. So they have a relatively pretty low mortgage payment every month, but the house they were, they bought what they weren't expecting it to be their forever home. It was kind of like their stepping stone. Yeah. Kind of house, which is part of how we create housing in the United States is a lot of it is Like your starter home and then you eventually move on and then you make room for somebody else to go into that starter home And then they'll say move on right?
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Um, and there's these people now that are stuck In homes that they are outgrowing, like maybe they bought it and now they have a couple of kids, um, and they just don't have as much room as maybe they would like. We could also argue that houses in the United States are entirely too big than they need to be, but, um, they, they feel stuck because they can't afford the new interest rates.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:So their mortgage would be significantly higher than. It would have been before. And so they're like, well, we're not, we're not moving.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, there's all of this kind of financial aspects of, of the housing market. And I think it's also really important to look at kind of the social aspect of the housing market. And the kinds of social or cultural associations we have with owning your home versus renting your home. And how, how much weight those assumptions, those associations carry.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Um, there is absolutely this assumption, I think, that we have in the United States that if you do not own your home, that if you're like over the age of, I don't know, 28, Or whatever. And you don't, oh, it's certainly over the age of 30. If you're over the age of 30 and you're still renting, that that is, that, that points to something being wrong with your moral character.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:That that points to an individual failing.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:And what's so interesting to me with the housing market is that there is so much evidence, so many indicators pointing to a failure of of something on a systemic level, right? Failures of institutions. Um, but We still think, you know, the joke is all these millennials just eat too much avocado toast and buy too many lattes. Um, and you know, that's why they can't, that's why they can't afford homes or they don't want to work anymore. And, and, um, it's so interesting that even in a, in a country where, I mean, millions of people are struggling to, uh, afford rent, let alone save to buy a house, let alone be able to enter the housing market, we still think that it is a, like, individual failure, you know, as opposed to something systemic.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. And there's, um, a lot of history that plays into that, isn't there?
Shelley Denison:Yeah, there is. What a great segue.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I know, that's why I asked.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the history of, um, of housing in the United States and how we got to where we are. In colonial America, um, homes were Entirely about their, uh, their utility, they were about shelter and you did not build more home than you could heat a home. You know, a house was not associated with this idea of leisure or even privacy. It was simply shelter from the outdoors. Um, but, uh, around, you know, the industrial revolution around the turn of The 20th century, as America became more urban, um, living density and demographic diversity also increased. And with this increased diversity, this, this increased immigration, there was a growing desire for middle class white Americans to Distance themselves, both literally and figuratively from immigrants and people of color, there was this aspirational element of being able to live, live in and own a large home on a large lot. With a lawn and a fence, um, and the purpose of that was to signal upward mobility by emulating the wealthier class. Uh, and that's when home ownership began to be associated with a person's wealth. moral character. Um, that was definitely also pushed. Uh, you know, in the 1920s, there were a lot of federal homeowner incentive programs. Um, and they really leaned into this idea of homeowners are frugal. You know, they are wise. They are, uh, able to defer immediate gratification, you know, for the sake of being able to save their money and buy a home. And so that's who you want to be like. You want to be like those kinds of people. And then with the rise of streetcar technology and later private automobiles, that's what also facilitated increased suburbanization. So a lot of people, again, middle class. Uh, upper class white Americans, um, being able to leave dense urban cores and live in suburbs. Um, there's a really great podcast, uh, from the public radio station in the Bay Area, KQED, called Sold Out, Rethinking Housing in America. It's a really great series. Um, according to one of the episodes of that podcast, single family zoning started in Berkeley, California. In 1916, Berkeley adopted an ordinance for their Elmwood neighborhood that made it illegal to build anything other than one single family home on one lot. This ordinance was in direct response to plans to build a black owned dance hall and a Chinese laundry in the neighborhood. Um, and the documentation is very clear that this zoning ordinance was explicitly to keep, uh, non white people out of the neighborhood. Um, additionally, the homes built in the Elmwood neighborhood came with restrictive covenants that prohibited homeowners from selling or renting their homes to anyone who wasn't white. And while the 1917 Supreme Court decision in the case Buchanan versus Worley concluded that explicit race based zoning was unconstitutional, cities Found that prioritizing single family zoning was a very effective way to exclude people of color from neighborhoods. And we don't need to go into all of the history of redlining and restrictive covenants and all of the ways in which racial, racial segregation was supported by zoning. And in particular by the exclusivity of single family zoning. Um, and it's so interesting to me that, uh, in the United States, 75 percent of, uh, our urbanized land only allows one single kind of use, which is kind of insane.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:That is insane.
Shelley Denison:That on 75 percent of our urbanized land, you can only build one kind of thing. Okay. Mary, what are some of the long term effects that single family zoning has had?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, so, um, one effect is the impact on property value. So, because land zoned for single family housing is relatively expensive compared to other land, it actually incentivizes development in poor neighborhoods as well as sprawl. Which we have feelings about sprawl here in Oregon. Um, Andrew Whitmore is a planning professor at UNC Chapel Hill, and he argues that when planners prioritize the property values of single family homeowners, they are acting as wealth managers when they ought to be more concerned with using tools like zoning to mitigate harm. I love that. Mitigating harm. And as we talked about before, a long term effect is also racial segregation. And a 2020 study out of UNC Berkeley found that the greater proportion of single family zoning, the higher observed level of racial residential segregation.
Shelley Denison:I, um, I read this book a couple years ago. Uh, called Neighborhood Defenders by a professor, uh, an author, uh, Katherine Einstein, uh, not related as far as I know to, um, the scientist. Um, well she is a scientist, uh, you know what I mean. Um, but she wrote about this, the phenomenon of neighborhood defenders. Uh, we might, some people might refer to them as NIMBYs, right? She calls them neighborhood defenders. She wants to give them a fair shake. Wants to talk about them in a very good light, in good faith, in this book, right? It's a very good book. And One of the things that she was able to do, she's writing specifically about the context of Boston, and one of the things that she was able to do was take, uh, all of the public meeting minutes from, um, planning commission, city council meetings, uh, where people would come and testify about, or, or provide public comments about housing, new housing development projects. And, you know, because people. names and addresses are associated with, you know, those comments. She was able to see, find a lot of demographic data about the people who come and comment. And what she found was overwhelmingly, um, the people who come to these meetings to give comments are, uh, white retired homeowners.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:And it's interesting to me, I think this is a big question that planners grapple with, is who are we planning for? Because, um, you know, as Whitmore says, there's this idea of planners acting as wealth managers to ostensibly protect the property values of the people who show up to planning commission meetings. What obligation, if any, Do planners have to the people who don't yet live in our communities because they can't yet afford to live in our communities?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:I think that's a really important question.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. And is it important? It is like such a common comment that we receive in public hearings of like, especially when we had all of that work around middle housing in lots of cities in Oregon because of state requirements. Uh. The most common question I found was how is this going to affect my property value? And it is a little bit of a question of like, why is a planner, why are you asking that of a planner, right? You know, that you bought an investment that could go up or down, you know, like it's risky to buy housing just as it's risky to play in the stock market. Right?
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:When we are planners, our goal is to plan for everyone. And planning should not inherently, at least to me, should not inherently be about your property values. It should be about creating environments where everyone can thrive, not just the few.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. And I mean, setting aside the reality that there isn't actually any good evidence to show that allowing middle housing or more dense housing actually lowers property values.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Well, that too.
Shelley Denison:We'll put that aside for a second. And the model that we have. The role that housing plays in our country as not just shelter, but as investment, um, is a really interesting thing to explore because, in my opinion, it shouldn't be Risky.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right. It's a basic need.
Shelley Denison:Right. And, and because of the way that financial systems that markets in our country work, your security and retirement is kind of dependent on your property value.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:And people should not be expected to try to have a secure future based on risk in investment, uh, we should have more safety nets, more opportunities for people to ensure secure futures, secure retirements, other than just the money, the equity that they have in their home. So even if their property value did decrease, that's not going to screw up their ability to support themselves in retirement.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:And that's like a whole, a whole other thing is that, uh, that, that idea of shelter versus investment. I think it's one of those things where we've, we've kind of lost the plot a little bit when it comes to housing and how so much of the housing market is dependent upon its secondary market and the idea of, of, um, like financial products that are, that are based on mortgages. And so. So the housing market respond, responding to the demands of its secondary market, right? As, as investment products, as opposed to its primary market of people wanting somewhere to live, people needing somewhere to live.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah.
Shelley Denison:That I feel like is a thing that is very, um, difficult to learn about. I've tried, I've tried, I, I think, I think parts of it are kind of opaque on purpose.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. And then if you don't have a house, you get criminalized for it.
Shelley Denison:Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah. Wild.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. But, you know, we do have some Things that we can look forward to in the future, right? Some amazing things that people are doing that are trying to combat all of this housing crisis that we're in, and we already have a lot of things happening and that are starting to kind of build this better future of housing, right? A lot of it is around changes of laws and regulations around single family zoning. So, for example, in 2018, Minneapolis became the first major US city to allow duplexes and triplexes in all of its zoning and all of its single family zone neighborhoods. Sacramento, Berkeley, and Boise have adopted similar laws. In 2019, you probably already know this, Oregon passed House Bill 2001, which required additional types of housing units to be allowed in single family zones for about 70 percent of cities in the state. I mean, that's like, That is huge.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I mean, we kind of gloss over it sometimes because it is so like, as planners in Oregon, we're just so used to talking about House Bill 2001, but it was such a major thing.
Shelley Denison:Oh, yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:For an entire state in the United States to do this. this kind of work.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Um, in 2021, California passed Senate Bill 9, which requires cities to allow up to four units on single family lots. And in 2023, Washington passed House Bill 1110, which bans single family zoning in medium and large cities across the state. So kind of similar to, um, Oregon's House Bill 2001.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. So we're seeing this. I mean, on the entire West Coast. I guess the entire West Coast is three states, but, um, California, Oregon, and Washington, making single family zoning less exclusionary.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Which is so interesting, because the West Coast is now, has been known as being, like, pretty expensive, housing wise.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And so we're the states that are like, okay, let's do it. Let's try and do something about it.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah. Um, something that I think is interesting is we're still kind of waiting to see what kind of effects these have.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Absolutely.
Shelley Denison:Right? Because these are like state level legislation. Implementation takes a while. The market takes a while to catch up. Um, so we're still kind of waiting to see. If these efforts to change some of those regulations around what's allowed in single family zones if they're going to have kind of a meaningful impact on increasing the supply of housing. Um, a lot of planners also talk about how, uh, making zoning more inclusionary is just one piece.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:There's, you know, a big kind of parallel push to eliminate parking minimums, you know, especially with things like ADUs, requiring off street parking for ADUs is, uh, kind of makes them very prohibitive to be able to be built, um, because, you know, ADU is, you know, it's like you have kind of some extra space in your backyard.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:Um, okay. If you have to dedicate, you know, 80 square feet of that to a paved parking spot, then it's probably not very cost effective to, to build that ADU. Right. So, so a lot of things with, with eliminating parking minimums. And I think what that points to as well is how important it is for planning to. To maintain kind of a holistic, comprehensive approach, instead of doing things just kind of piecemeal.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah. But also, and it also has to be, I mean, it's so hard when you make state level changes, because especially on the West Coast, our states are so large that, like, inevitably, different parts of the state are so different. Um, so it's one of those, you know, You know, find balance lines of, you know, the, the taking away parking requirements, uh, in urban areas makes a lot of sense, but maybe it's a little less so in rural areas where. You do need a car to get around. Um, and I, you know, and the thing too is developers aren't dumb. If they think that they're the people they're trying to buy or live in their complexes, say it's an apartment complex, they're gonna build parking for it. But maybe it's not gonna be as much as they did before. But they're gonna build parking because they know in the area that they're building it, they're going to need a car, right?
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Or else nobody is going to live there. Like, you know, they're, they're not, they're not dumb like that.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's an important thing is that, um, you know, I'm not, I'm certainly not a free market proponent on everything, but I think parking is one of those things that the free market can get right. That if we let developers decide, if we, if we require them to do the math of how much parking do I need to supply in order to ensure that there's enough parking, but not too much parking, uh, more than is needed. Then I, I think. Developers have the capacity to figure that out.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And it's like, I'd rather see exceptions being made for adding more parking than it is to take away parking.
Shelley Denison:Oh, interesting.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Because, like, for example, we had, in one city that I worked at, we were trying to help out a senior, uh, affordable housing development. They had to argue that they didn't need parking. It's seniors who are, and it was being sponsored by a local hospital, so it was probably seniors that needed, um, more health care as well. They're not the people that are going to be driving all over the place. Um, and instead they had to argue that rather than the assumption being like, okay, the assumption is no parking or you tell us what kind of parking you want. Um. And so, yeah, just, it just seemed like an extra step that was a little cumbersome when it didn't need to be.
Shelley Denison:Kind of going the wrong direction.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:So, Mary, we've, we talked about kind of where we're at now. We've talked about the history of how we got here. And, you know, at the beginning of this episode, we talked about some really cool different residential projects that are happening around the state. What do you think the future needs to look like if we are going to, in the long term, have affordable and accessible and secure housing? What do you think needs to change?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:That's such a big question. I know. I mean, I mentioned this earlier, but I just, I think flexibility is such a huge component to this because, and that's hard. It's hard. I'm like thinking as, as I'm talking out loud of like, Oh, building codes don't like flexibility. Um, development codes don't like flexibility. Uh, but I think there, things move so much faster than development codes and building codes. Right.
Shelley Denison:Oh yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And rather than being reactionary of like, Oh, everyone's really into ADUs and now we finally like have an ADU. But it's been a thing that people have been very fascinated by. Tiny homes is another one, right? Tiny homes, there were like HGTV shows about tiny homes years ago. And now cities are finally starting to be like, maybe we'll allow tiny homes as homes if they put them on a pad and they're connected to sewer and electricity and all that sort of stuff. And it is a much cheaper way to get housing on somebody's property than building an ADU, honestly. But I think that like the city of Portland has only recently started to allow that. And many other communities do not allow that at all because it's on a wheel. And so per building code, that's technically not considered a house, but like what are some innovative flexible things that we can think about so that we are able to Kind of take advantage of some of the things that are happening that are innovative Going on rather than like taking 10 years to get to that point. I think that's Something that would be really helpful kind of to just allow more more different types of housing within communities that are Have very much been restricted to only doing a single family.
Shelley Denison:Yes. I 100 percent agree. And I think also with that really leaning into uh research and development and allowance of innovative construction methods. So I am a big fan of mass timber. I think that that is a, an approach that could work really, really well in Oregon because like transportation costs of the building materials would be like so, so low because it's, it's all here. I was also recently reading about housing construction using Brick mass wall construction methods. Yeah. Which, which brick mass wall, like masonry mass wall construction might not work particularly well in a climate as far north as Oregon, but in the American South where it's, doesn't get quite as cold, um, would be. It would be much more ideal and would be incredibly sustainable. Masonry and brick is like, we've been using it for tens of thousands. I don't know if that's accurate. We've been using it for a really, really long time for a reason, and that's because it is one of the most durable building materials that we have ever had in the history of the human race.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, so I think, I think really, uh, leaning into, you know, providing funding for, providing resources for testing the, the safety, the feasibility, the durability of innovative innovative Um, construction materials and construction methods is something that could be really, really worthwhile as well.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:And then allowing those in, in, um, building and zoning codes.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Like the idea of, um, oh gosh. Like container.
Shelley Denison:Oh, yeah. Container homes. Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. I'm still on the fence of those, quite frankly, but.
Shelley Denison:Correct.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I appreciate the wanting to be innovative, but I don't know if there's been enough studies done to like fully.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. If they're worth the cost.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. But I would love to be able to like know that people are doing the studies of that and being able to assess.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. For sure. For sure. And then I think, you know. Also, when it comes to changing the way that we think about development codes, moving to a form based code.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Oh boy.
Shelley Denison:Which I know is a little controversial. But, um, I, I, I think we are at, we are at a point in the history of American cities separating land uses between Residential, industrial, and commercial is not necessary. It's not necessary. Sure, there are some types of industrial uses that are polluting, that are contaminating, that you don't want next to a residential area.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Um, but a, a lot of industrial uses. Now are warehouses, you know, they are, they're, they're not the kind of, you know, mass pollution factories that, you know, they were during the industrial revolution when, when, you know, Euclidean zoning was developed. Yeah. I, I'm pretty convinced that cities need to start moving towards a form based code.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm gonna say something that is probably a little controversial.
Shelley Denison:Tell me. I wanna, I wanna hear it.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I do think that public participation has inhibited a lot of innovative development.
Shelley Denison:Mm hmm.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Especially around housing.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. I would, I would be more specific than that. I would say the way that we do.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:Participation. I think that's, that's much better. I think that we don't do enough when it comes to the big picture, visioning, comprehensive planning, that kind of stuff. Uh, you know, when it comes to actually, developing the goals and the visions of what we want cities to look like. We don't do enough there. And then we do too much on individual projects.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes. Yes. I a thousand percent agree with that.
Shelley Denison:Right. And I think that that does a huge disservice. Planners, it makes our jobs harder. It is incredibly frustrating to the public to, to explain to them, like, thanks for your comments, but since they have nothing to do with the zoning code, you know. Sorry.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:They don't mean anything. Yeah, that I, I, I totally agree with you. I think we need to shift more effort to engaging the public during the kind of big picture vision and goal setting kind of work and less in the super technical design review application review part of planning.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. And I mean, the. It's going to be a lot harder, quite frankly, because it's so much easier for somebody to be able to comment and provide public input on a proposed draft of some of like a building, right? You know, they, they can actually see the schematics of it and be like, Oh, that's what it could look like on my street. Whereas the abstract idea of like, let's add more density throughout the city is a lot harder for somebody to be able to visualize if that's not.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:The realm that they're in, right? But when they see something that's going to happen right next door, it's, it's much easier for them to be able to visualize and, and be concerned about it. So we really have to come up with some creative solutions of how to better truly engage folks in that visioning, comprehensive planning. engagement process because if we want to move away from more public hearings, more individual lot kind of public notice type engagement, We're gonna have to be really careful of how we, you know, talk about this big vision for the community, right?
Shelley Denison:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think it's one of those things where like show don't tell is Crucial like if you're not a planner like looking at the table of Density and height and and FAR like all the different number Quantitative requirements for different zones like that means nothing to you.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:But if somebody can show you, like, pictures of this is what a cottage cluster could look like, like, if we increase density in this zone to this much, like, here's some pictures that show what that kind of density looks like, you know, so, so being really intentional about, um, about engaging the public where it matters. And less where, where, where frankly it doesn't because, uh, once you get to the point of design review, it's, it's, uh, it's so specific. It's so technical of what does and doesn't constitute like actionable public comment.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Yeah. That was one of my biggest pet feet, pet peeves, uh, When I would work in like development review is requiring like a type two public notice on something that there was no way anyone was going to really be able to sway something right and I can't like think of a good example off the top of my head right now, but it was like, it truly was like, say, for example, it was, um, that was going to be built in somebody's backyard, right? And it just happened that ADUs were a type two, so it required public notice, but there was nothing that was in the requirements for an ADU that was gray, right? So that's where public, that's where public notice and public. plays in is when something's gray. Um, because it could be the opinion of like, well, I don't think that this is like, looks nice. Right. And sometimes there are like fluffy things and zoning codes that say like, Oh, it needs to be aesthetically pleasing. Right. And you're like, well, what does that even mean?
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:But for this example, it's like the ADU would have been like, it needs to be this certain size. It needs to be this, Um, and there's no way for somebody to not meet it if they didn't want to, but it just happened to be the type of housing that required a type two public notice.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:But then it causes people to think, well, I can submit comments and therefore my voice will have a say.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:But they have no idea. They don't understand that like literally there's nothing you can tell us.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:That's going to be able to sway this project get approved.
Shelley Denison:Right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And it was my biggest pet peeve. I was like, why is this a type 2 development?
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:It should be type 1 because it's cut and dry, it's black and white, they either are meeting the requirements or they are not. And it just causes frustration with the community when you allow them the ability to provide comment. But it's not going to do anything.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah. And then if it's like, if there's just like a little, just a little too much jargon, a little too much technical language, something that's just like a little too opaque, you're just creating more mistrust.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:You know, it's just, it's, it's, it's another reason for for residents to say like, Oh, the government, like trying to pull the wool over our eyes and, and, you know, being, you know, not being transparent and, and making decisions, you know, that, you know, outside of the public eye, right. It's yeah, yeah. It's such, it's such a fine line to walk when it comes to figuring out the right ways and the right times to do public engagement.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I also on this conversation of like visioning and comprehensive plan. I think during the process when you're creating it, A lot goes into engagement, and then it happens, and the engagement stops. So then people forget that five years ago, the community had decided, like, this is the type of housing that we want to see in our community. And they get frustrated when they go, why am I seeing this kind of housing happen? And there's not this continual engagement that's done, even after. A vision is, or a comprehensive plan is approved to like keep people informed of like, this is like how our community is growing. And then it just becomes this, this issue because we're not continuing to keep people educated and updated.
Shelley Denison:Right. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah. Public engagement definitely needs like a big overhaul.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm. For sure.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, for sure. And it's goal number one. It is number one in Oregon's land use plan is good public engagement. I think, I think another change that needs to happen, you know, I was kind of talking about this earlier, but this idea of like, of like having a package of funding mechanisms, right? So instead of implementing different kinds of funding mechanisms, like piecemeal, instead of like, instead of that thinking about them holistically. And what are, what are. What are sort of funding mechanisms, taxes, levies, fee waivers, whatever, that, um, that we could combine together in one package that would make the most sense.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. And, and different city departments are kind of siloed too. So like engineering departments, like the engineering requirements for, uh, development Are quite strict as well, but they're out of the control of the planners and I don't feel like engineers and planners or at least the places that I've worked with have really tried to like, look at something together holistically and been like, does our engineering requirements make sense? And a lot of engineering is based on, um, Like codes at the national level, I believe. And I don't know, I'm not an engineer, so I don't know how much flexibility it is, whether you can adopt those and then also make some adjustments to it. I have no idea, but like it would kill pro it would kill projects for like small businesses because they just couldn't afford the infrastructure requirements for just wanting to, uh, convert a building into, uh, like a retail, uh, like, going from, like, say, uh, retail to a cafe. That was, like, no way.
Shelley Denison:Right, yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:And a lot of it had to do with parking.
Shelley Denison:Oh my gosh, yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Just saying.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. When our financing structures, when our fee structures are incentivizing large scale, sometimes these firms have their place, but large scale national developers putting in like cookie cutter subdivisions and strip malls and big box stores, when it incentivizes that and disincentivizes. Entrepreneurs, small businesses, local developers from being able to do their thing and arguably create stuff that makes more sense in like a specific context of a specific community.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Right.
Shelley Denison:That's, that's a problem. That's a problem.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Shelley Denison:I also have like one more, this is like a very specific thing, but I've thought about a lot that I feel like would make a big difference. If somehow the American Planning Association could work with community colleges to create an associates program for specifically for design review.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Oh, I love that.
Shelley Denison:Like the fact that like, I feel like most planners have master's degrees. I just feel like that's a very common thing. A lot of bachelor's degrees too, but a lot of planners that I know have master's degrees. And I think that that education could be put to better use. than uh, reviewing development applications.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Truly though, truly.
Shelley Denison:And I mean, and the reality is, is if we want to be able to process more development applications, if we want to build more housing, we need more people to do that.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yes.
Shelley Denison:And if there is a more cost effective, Uh, way for somebody to get the kind of education that they need to have a, a, a really secure public sector, well paying job that has the potential for like good upward mobility.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. I think an associate's degree in like urban planning design review is the way to go.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:I completely agree. Um, I think. Requiring a master's degree in planning is a huge barrier, and it is, uh, not equitable at all.
Shelley Denison:Yes. Hot take, if you're hiring an associate planner position, and most of the work is design review, you need to not be requiring a master's degree.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah, I agree. That's, um.
Shelley Denison:I mean, I think it is, you know, obviously, if you are an entry level planner, you need that experience. That's like the only way you can really understand the mechanics of, of development codes. But if it, if, if you want to hire an associate planner and that's all that you're going to have them do is design review, don't make them get a master's degree.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Don't make them get AICP.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Cut it out.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:They, some, some places will have, um, like planning techs, and that's like below, like a planner one.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:If that's, if you want to say below is the right word. But it's basically like, I think all they do is like, development, design, review.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Um, and you sh don't, I do not believe you would need a master's degree to have that position.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, right.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:The, the problem is there's, I, I don't know if there's more, like, upward mobility beyond just a planning tech.
Shelley Denison:Yeah.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. And, as always, a land value tax.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Absolutely.
Shelley Denison:Was there any question?
Mary Heberling-Creighton:No. We're gonna bring it up in almost every episode.
Shelley Denison:Yeah. I think we need to figure out a way to talk about the land value tax in every single episode that we make. We could, um, we could do like one of those like subliminal messaging things where we put it at like a super high frequency like throughout the entire episode.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Mm hmm.
Shelley Denison:Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
Mary Heberling-Creighton:Yeah. Just whisper it. Just ASMR. Land value tax.
Shelley Denison:Land value tax ASMR.