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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/portland-housing-density-residential-infill-project/>
"When it comes to the US housing crisis, Portland was early to the party. Well
over a decade ago, in 2009 and 2010, Oregon’s biggest city had the lowest
rental vacancy rate in the country. The years since have brought little relief:
From 2013 to 2018, median rent in Portland rose 29 percent, and the average
home price rose 46 percent. Since 2015, the city has been under an official
housing state of emergency.
Portland’s housing crunch has many roots, from multi-decade population growth
to the broader affordability crisis sweeping the nation. But one factor stands
out: Most of the city’s residential neighborhoods had been zoned exclusively
for single-family homes since the late 1950s. That is, in most neighborhoods,
new duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes (let alone apartment buildings) have
not been allowed.
But in 2020, all that changed when Portland’s city council tossed out 60-plus
years of low-density mandates by voting in favor of housing reform that ended
single-family zoning. The new rules were game-changing: a package of zoning
shifts known as the Residential Infill Project (RIP for short) laid the
groundwork for more residential density than in most American cities. RIP made
new single-family homes of over 2,500 square feet illegal. It erased bans on
“middle housing” — a term describing duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and
townhomes — across the city. And it allowed for two accessory dwelling units
(ADUs) on any lot, removed residential parking mandates, and permitted
three-story apartment buildings of up to six homes on any lot as long as they
met deep affordability standards. It amounted to a transformation in Portland’s
approach to urban density, and is, to this day, one of the most pro-housing
reforms that any US city has passed.
“This reform ultimately became the most permissive update to low-density
single-dwelling zones in the country,” urban planning consultant Neil Heller,
who helped do some of the financial modeling for RIP, writes in the latest
issue of
Southern Urbanism Quarterly.
This is the story of how Portland got it done."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
