
Oregon Just Voted to Legalize Duplexes on Almost Every City Lot - jseliger
https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/30/oregon-just-voted-to-legalize-duplexes-on-almost-every-city-lot
======
davidw
This was super stressful to follow along the whole path in the legislature. We
turned out some YIMBY's to meet our state rep here in Bend to support it back
in... January I think it was. It kept going in fits and starts, and really
came down to the wire today, with a failing vote before it went up again and
passed, before the legislative session expired.

I'm happy to have played a very small part... our Republican state senator was
one who voted in favor; maybe our calls and emails had a positive effect.

Hats off to the people in the legislature and some of the advocacy groups
around Oregon like "1000 friends of Oregon" who worked _really_ hard to get
this through.

~~~
Aloha
This is often the path that a lot of legislation takes thru the legislature.

~~~
davidw
The bit where the first vote failed because one of the senators who ended up
voting in favor didn't feel comfortable being in the same room as one of the
Republicans who had been hiding in Idaho to deny the senate a quorum, and who
had threatened to kill Oregon State Police if they were sent to find him was
kind of over the top though.

~~~
pacoWebConsult
Really? Sounds like they don't have the spine to represent their constituents
properly if they're willing to let legislation fail because a colleague is
making empty threats. Kinda sad that they were too uncomfortable to do their
job because someone else was too insane to do their job...

~~~
davidw
She showed back up. I don't have a lot of details so we'll wait and see what
shakes out. The important thing is the bill passed. There will be disciplinary
hearings of some kind for the R who made the threats. Because of the walkout,
everything got compressed into two final days, so I don't think they had time
for that beforehand, which was unfortunate, as he certainly wasn't doing his
constituents a favor with that kind of talk.

Anyway, it was pretty crazy and a real nail-biter.

~~~
lonelappde
Disciplinary hearings? Imagine the hearing you'd get if you publicly
threatened to assassinate members of government with a specific intent of
preventing the government from functioning.

~~~
DuskStar
In some minds, the threat that senator made is roughly equivalent to someone
saying "if you come to arrest me for being gay, I will resist violently".

------
burlesona
Thankfully this is beginning to look like a trend. Minneapolis adopted a
similar deal (redefining all single family to be residential up to three
units) late last year, and more of these kind of upzonings are in the works
across the country. Ref:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/12/12/three-
cheers-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/12/12/three-cheers-for-
minneapolis-the-3-is-for-triplex)

~~~
H8crilA
Wonder how long will it take for prices to take notice, doesn't seem to be
happening yet:
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNXRSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNXRSA)

~~~
bluGill
In Oregon? 60 years if ever. You can't get a building permit to build anything
without your lawyers ($$$) spending years getting you through the process. Or
so I've heard.

In Minneapolis I expect it will start to make a difference in 5 years. In
Minneapolis a building permits for something allowed in code takes an hour
from the time you park your car to the time you drive away, and no lawyer
needed.

Note that we will never really know that a difference was made: there are any
other factors involved in housing prices with no way to control for any of
them. Thus no matter what happens you will be able to reasonably argue from
data whichever side you want.

~~~
Frondo
People exaggerate. Portland's already been transformed by row houses, lots of
apartment and condo structures, and dense building. Unsurprisingly, a lot of
old-timers hate it, and their complaints all boil down to "it's different from
when I was a child/raising a family here".

The dense building is already taking place, in every neighborhood in the city.
Getting a permit is no problem; my little brother, an engineer with no
background in building, got a permit to build a four-unit building on one of
the sites where they were already allowed (before this law was passed) in 8
weeks; the normal time for any permit approval for construction, he says, and
in his engineering work he did a lot of work with permitting for customer
projects, too, so I'd guess he knows.

Portland's already been changing and it's made the city so much more pleasant
to walk through. Neighborhood after neighborhood of single-family detached
housing is boring, tiresome to drive or bike through, and an environmental
disaster (as the ODOT study recently confirmed).

If the rest of Oregon can now follow suit, this is only a good thing.

The funny thing is, driving through old towns in Oregon or anywhere, where
most of the building was done before these zoning laws made everything into
the same boring city planning style, architecture and construction used to be
a lot more interesting and visually pleasing. It's neat to drive through
places with variety of structure. These laws are one of the most pointless
things, that's done a great deal of damage, the US has done.

~~~
DougN7
This might be a good thing for the environment, but fixing “boring” is very
questionable in my opinion. Now you’ll simply have driveways that are 2-4x
wider than before (which also means more rain run-off) and less lawn. That
sounds boring and ugly IMHO.

~~~
Frondo
The rain runoff can flow into the bioswales the city is already building all
over; it won't just run into the city sewers.

As for needing to build wider driveways, and that making it boring, I realize
there's a certain kind of subjectivity here but I don't think that what we're
going to end up with is literally "duplexes with double-wide driveways
replacing single-family dwellings on the same-sized lots."

The front-runner for the 2020 mayoral race has an architectural background and
has been talking about ideas like introducing an LA-style design review board
to Portland, to ensure that new development has to pass aesthetic review in
addition to environmental review. I guarantee you that six months after
something like that were enacted, every architect in the city would know
exactly what they needed to do to keep the city interesting as well as weird.

~~~
clairity
i heartily support raising density limits, but i’d caution against adding a
design review board like we have here in LA. imho, it doesn’t add any more
harmony or interestingness, while adding cost and delay to projects. we have
whole classes of buildings that can no longer be built here because they’re
not in style any longer.

~~~
Frondo
That's fair, I've never lived in LA so I don't know what problems it caused;
only that the architect I know who's running for mayor liked it and felt it
improved the city.

He said that one of the problems he sees with development in Portland now is
that the developers are under no constraint to make their buildings visually
interesting at all;

as an example he's cited, lots of the new apartment/condo buildings go up with
a nearly uniform front structure for the entire length of a city block, when
varying materials or architectural features would add little cost but make the
structures more pleasant to walk by, drive by, etc., a facet of city living
that is hard to pin down quantitatively but makes a subjective difference.

I haven't lived in Portland in a while so I can't speak first-hand to this
alleged blandness of new construction but I do remember the last time I was
there seeing a lot of new stuff that was essentially undecorated, and of
course it's cheaper that way but compared to lots of the development that _is_
designed with more variety, I know which I'd choose.

Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, I just know this is a situation
where the market will converge on construction that probably isn't ideal for
very-long-term city construction, but there isn't really an adequate feedback
mechanism to force people to make prettier buildings. The city's under such
housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if someone
built those. (Okay, I love brutalist architecture, especially some of the
Soviet monstrosities, and I'd live in one in a heartbeat, but that's
definitely me and even those had some style.) Seems like a place where a
regulatory authority could do well, but maybe not a cookie-cutter of what LA
has. It's just, these buildings are going to be around for a long time; now's
the time to make them look good.

~~~
clairity
> "Maybe there's a middle ground, I don't know, [...] The city's under such
> housing pressure that people would live in unpainted cement blocks if
> someone built those."

you point to one answer already: if the housing market were truly competitive,
developers would have to compete on housing features beyond the basic box.
that's why i'd generally advocate for a lighter touch on the regulatory side,
because housing seems to be already overburdened to the point of making it
unaffordable for most urbanites.

yes, let's make sure a house meets basic safety requirements, and that
builders and engineers document how they meet them, but beyond that, allow
people a little creative freedom and you'll get interestingness.

and i'm no fan of brutalism, but having some brutalist structures around
serves to remind me how much i like other styles better. =)

~~~
Frondo
I think the thing my architect friend was getting at is, these structures are
here for a long, long time, and they take up a finite (and _heavily_
constrained resource), so it's not like there's an opportunity for people to
realistically decide in 5 or 10 years that fifteen new buildings that have
been built should be replaced or adjudicated.

I think the problem is that this already falls so far out of the realm of "let
the market address it" because of the constraints on building and housing,
especially in such a tightly-housed city as Portland; if builders build it
wrong (and will make money regardless because of the constraints on this
market that mean people can't reasonably take their dollar elsewhere), the
city suffers in non-dollar-measurable ways for decades.

Again, this is mostly coming from my friend who likes the design review board,
and sees that a lot of the new development in Portland is boring from an
architectural point of view (and will remain so for at least the remainder of
his life) but there's absolutely nothing in a market sense that would compel
anyone to build more interesting buildings.

And, the more we talk about this, the more I like the idea of the design
review board; I'm all in favor of sensible regulation, and your original
complaint, that some styles are no longer permitted in LA, seems like even
less of an issue if it means that new construction does remain aesthetically
interesting.

An extremely small price to pay for putting pressure on architects to build
interesting new things as these buildings go up all over down.

But, of course, it's all just talk and speculation, since neither of us is
mayor (and at least one of us doesn't live there.)

------
raldi
If you're afraid (or overjoyed) that this might change the city overnight, you
might want to read this story about an area of Portland that repealed its
apartment ban 39 years ago.

Even without exclusionary zoning, neighborhoods change _very_ slowly.

[https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/21/this-is-what-a-
street-l...](https://www.sightline.org/2019/06/21/this-is-what-a-street-looks-
like-39-years-after-legalizing-fourplexes/)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Anyone who is worried about the neighborhood "changing overnight" should be
worried about immigration and not the international kind. It's wealthy people
from the next city or state over who change things when they move in because
they have the money (which is convertible to political power although the
conversion is not 100% efficient) to change things how they want.

------
huevosabio
This is a fantastic step towards affordable housing. We need more state-level
interventions like these to remove the hurdles that impede building new
housing. I hope that government officials in California follow a similar path.

The only sustainable way to affordable housing is to make market rates
affordable.

~~~
scarface74
Housing is affordable in large swaths of the country. It’s only a relatively
few cities where it isn’t.

~~~
dredmorbius
Actually, not. The housing crisis in the US, particularly expressed as
evictions, is not merely a tech-hub/coastal problem.

On the Media's "Scarlet E" series is an excellent exploration of this:

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-
unmasking...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking-
americas-eviction-crisis)

~~~
scarface74
Look at where most of the red is when calculating the housing affordability
index....

[https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=1419fe7...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=1419fe7ee70c4267a7258eb59a9a824c)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The reddest areas are CA, NY, Boston and the places people who have made a
bunch of money in those places buy vacation homes and/or cash out and retire
to. It's literally just a problem in a few places but the people of those
places are exporting their housing cost problems as they move out (i.e by
using their wall street money to out-compete the locals for a scenic square of
swamp).

If you just took a bunch of Wall Street bankers, a bunch of CA VCs and then
mapped their cell phone location data over the next several days (July 4
weekend) you'd get basically the same map.

------
aaronbrethorst
Washington next please. I’ll settle for just Seattle for now, and I plan to
vote and have been donating accordingly in this year’s city council races.

Relatedly, fellow Seattleites: the primary for city council races is in
August, and ballots go out in just under three weeks. Make sure your voter
registration information is up to date!
[https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/](https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/)

~~~
seattle_spring
Seattle is very close to approving backyard cottages on all SFH-zoned
properties [1].

They're also very close to approving a pretty major city-wide upzone [2],
though it largely just makes mutli-family zoning denser and doesn't affect SFH
zones much.

[1] [https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/5/13/18619101/adu-dadu-
backy...](https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/5/13/18619101/adu-dadu-backyard-
cottage-law)

[2] [https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/2/26/18240535/mha-hala-
zonin...](https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/2/26/18240535/mha-hala-zoning-
citywide-upzones)

(* No affiliation with Curbed, they were just the first articles to pop up on
my search that weren't paywalled).

~~~
aaronbrethorst
ADUs are great and MHA is fine, but both of these packages literally took
years to pass. The city council needs to move faster.

~~~
closetohome
Quite a few of this year's candidates are proposing eliminating single-family
zoning entirely. It could be on the agenda during the next couple of years.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
It's great to see this! But they need to make it through the primaries and
then win in the general, and this is not an insignificant lift.

------
cheriot
This is great in another way that isn't talked about much. As housing prices
and commute times go up so does the price of everything that involves human
labor. Bus drivers, plumbers, wait staff, etc all have to be paid enough to
live in the city or suffer a long commute. So anyone struggling to make ends
meet has it even harder.

~~~
oceanghost
“Every increase in the real wealth of the society, every increase in the
quantity of useful labour employed within it, tends indirectly to raise the
real rent of land.”

-Adam Smith, “The Wealth Of Nations”

~~~
cheriot
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, but home prices aren't going up because
of an "increase in the quantity of useful labour employed within it".

These are just dumb city planning decisions: Hey, I'm going to permit an
increasing number of offices in this downtown and not allow denser housing.
Drive until you qualify, millennials.

~~~
momokoko
Can you then explain why many cities where the population is declining in the
US are seeing housing prices go up? For example Buffalo, Pittsburgh and
Cleveland?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Are they going up substantially more than inflation over the same time period?

Housing stock tends to shrink with population since in a renters market
there's less incentive for landlords to keep properties in rent-able
condition. For example, an apartment remodel that might have been sub'd out
for $10k and done in a month instead takes $5k and is done over the course of
a year. When some % of all landlords start doing this to some % of properties
it takes a chunk out of available supply and rents stay the same-ish.

~~~
momokoko
_> Are they going up substantially more than inflation over the same time
period? _

Yes, considerably more.

------
chrisco255
Ship it. Restrictive zoning laws are choking the poor and middle class and
causing cities to stagnate. Hopefully CA follows suit.

~~~
nerdponx
Also duplexes really don't do much harm to the "suburban" feeling of a
neighborhood. A nice, big duplex feels as much like a home as any other.

If anything, I feel like it helps make neighborhoods more dynamic by
increasing the population density without increasing the physical density of
buildings and roads.

That said, parking will be important (need enough room for garages or lots of
on-street parking) since I assume these areas won't have great mass transit.

~~~
mywittyname
I personally think multiplex homes look way better than the rows of snout
houses you find in 99% of modern suburban development.

------
Tiktaalik
It’s a sensible move. Vancouver BC is studying moving to allowing fourplexes
on most detached residential lots too, and I hope that city takes steps toward
implementing that.

A great outcome from this is that now that cities are finally implementing
these policies, we can study their impacts.

At this point in YIMBY urbanist circles policies like this have taken on
somewhat of a mythical panacea quality, so it’d be good to finally be able to
ground the affordable housing discussion with hard data.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I really don't understand why we can't also allow bodega-type stores at least
on the ends of residential streets.

Nobody is going to drive ten miles to go to your local bodega. It's not going
to increase traffic. You're not going to need more parking. You can even make
it illegal to sell cigarettes and alcohol entirely there.

~~~
bluGill
Making cigarettes and alcohol illegal makes them illegal. There is a reason
you find tiny stores that sell just alcohol and cigarettes all over in poor
neighborhoods: they are the only thing high enough margin to work out. If such
stores can sell the high margin products they then have enough money to stock
lower margin things as well.

Besides, with the problems of drinking and driving, you should want alcohol
stores nearby to drinkers can get their fix without having to drive to the
store.

------
DoreenMichele
There are some comments about infrastructure deficiencies here. Reality:
Sprawl is more of a burden on municipal jurisdictions because infrastructure,
including roads, has to be extended to it and it's not dense enough to
adequately cover the cost involved.

If you play SimCity, you can kind of model this by creating a new city from
scratch and creating an urban core. Place a fire department and police
department at the center and build out to roughly the perimeter of their
coverage.

Keep improving development within that footprint until you have an
economically viable city, then add a satellite suburb following a similar
pattern.

Not everything needs to be in that footprint. You can have farms outside of
it, for example, and you can have some industry with only fire coverage, no
police.

But if you build a sprawling low-density city, you will find it is impossible
to provide adequate services. You can't afford to pay for them. You wind up
with high rates of poverty and crime.

Missing Middle housing also helps get an area to residential densities that
help make public transit make sense. It also helps improve walkability.

A lot of the problems we have currently are because America sprawls. These
problems likely won't be made worse by gently increasing densities. Increasing
density in a good way should start to remedy a lot of these issues.

~~~
CalRobert
Sim City lies, too. Real American "cities" (to use the term generously) are
basically a parking lot with a mayor.

[https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-
pa...](https://humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html)

~~~
scarejunba
What a weird tone for that article! Acts like the game developers were out to
cheat people out of understanding reality.

~~~
CalRobert
Well, I wouldn't say it's evil or anything (it's just a game) but it is a bit
frustrating in a game calling itself a simulation.

Also, it's humantransit, which specifically promotes walking, cycling, etc. so
they're going to be understandably annoyed when the cited inspiration for
plenty of city planners understates the negative impact of car dependence.

~~~
Nasrudith
Personally I wouldn't call it understating car dependence so much as
underestimating the alternatives. Which reminds me of Cities Skylines and how
they did the opposite for what was probably an amusing oversight.

Foot paths are very good for traffic without congestion which makes perfect
sense. What doesn't make sense is the complete lack of time or distance limit
meaning the population will happily walk a massive pedestrian walkway the
length of an entire sector.

A somewhat more realistic way is to use subways to link your high density
residences with no highway access to places like work and retail while leaving
the roads for mostly delivery trucks and emergency services. Apparently
Japanese developments were practically planned this way - adding to where a
new subway loop and putting housing on top for synergy.

~~~
nicoburns
> What doesn't make sense is the complete lack of time or distance limit
> meaning the population will happily walk a massive pedestrian walkway the
> length of an entire sector.

How far is sector? What would you consider reasonable walking distances?
Something like 30mins regularly, 60-90mins occasionally?

~~~
DoreenMichele
Real world transit-oriented design in the US routinely uses either 1/4 mile or
1/2 mile for the radius from transit that most people can/will walk. I believe
they estimate that it takes 15 minutes to walk a quarter mile and 30 minutes
to walk half a mile.

Single data point: I'm a pedestrian. I haven't owned a car in over a decade.
I'm willing to walk up to 30 minutes regularly and farther occasionally. I
also use public transit sometimes.

~~~
asark
30 minutes for a half-mile? Is that the round-trip time or something?

~~~
DoreenMichele
No, that's little old ladies in street clothes hobbling as fast as they can.

People walking as a mode of transit aren't competing with joggers for who gets
there first. These times are for planning purposes.

Of course, it's okay if you walk faster than that. But planning departments
need to look at "Who will actually walk this?" And the answer is "Ordinary
people will walk it if it isn't over 30 minutes, but 15 minutes is better. And
that works at these distances."

You see the most traffic from establishments within a quarter mile, and some
additional traffic within the half mile radius but outside the quarter mile.
It drops off steeply outside of the half mile radius.

~~~
asark
Ah, makes sense. 30 minutes is a _very_ slowly walked city mile for me (25min
at a casual, unhurried pace, shaving a couple minutes off that for a 22-23min
time with a bit more bounce in the step but still not jogging or even speed-
walking) so I figured it was either round-trip or the slowest speed anyone
_capable of walking anywhere at all_ would attain—seems it's the latter.

------
sparkling
When i moved to the US i had no idea about the amount of zonening laws,
construction regulations and building codes. Coming from europe i naively
thought that since the US is the "land of the free" people could basically
build whatever they want on the piece of dirt they owned. Reality is, the
amoung of regulation is far more than i have encountered in my hometown in
Poland.

~~~
masonic

      people could basically build whatever they want on the piece of dirt they owned.
    

Europe lacks fire and earthquake codes?

~~~
sparkling
Obviously anything safety-related is regulated. But nobody is going to tell
you what type or color of roof shingles you need to buy.

~~~
markkanof
Depends on where you live. If you are in a historical protected neighborhood
of a city someone definitely will tell you what color and type of roof
shingles you need to buy.

------
eecc
Another article linked from within the same one posted here [1] is so batshit
insanely heartbreaking and infuriating.

Much of today’s nonsense becomes so much clearer when you learn what was par
for the course merely a century ago.

[1] [https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-
exclusion-...](https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-exclusion-
portlands-1924-rezone-is-still-coded-on-its-streets/)

~~~
0815test
The article itself is of course fine; what's "batshit insane" and
heartbreaking is the blatant unfairness it describes. Newsflash - exclusionary
zoning leads to exclusion, which often has its hardest impact on vulnerable
minorities. Who would have guessed? There is a common stereotype that
segregation and exclusion can only result from fuzzy "structural" forces or
from private action by opportunistic and unethical individuals - but in fact,
these things can endure because they're often enforced by a morass of laws and
regulations, though sometimes in remarkably devious and opaque ways.

~~~
eecc
It’s an adverb and it refers to the heartbreak, not the article itself. I’m
afraid you misread my comment ;)

------
rvp-x
As a non-north american I was initially confused at the replies because surely
duplexes are low density construction for a city.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Yeah, my reaction was... are things _that_ bad there that this is significant
good news?

~~~
noobermin
American history, specifically of racism and hatred of the poor, runs deep and
probably stumps most outsiders.

------
noobermin
I really wish the rest of the US would take note, both conditions as well as
climate change really need reduction of sprawl but it really won't matter if
OR legalizes this while FL puts up five times more exhurbs.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Except for some coastal areas and larger cities housing density is way down
the list of priorities because it's simply not a problem.

~~~
drngdds
It might not be seen as a problem, but it _is_ a problem. It makes forms of
transportation other than cars non-viable, which is awful for the environment.
Cheap electric cars will happen eventually, but we don't exactly have time to
waste.

~~~
sempron64
I'm all for raising density, but cheap electric cars will happen a LOT faster
than rebuilding all of America with higher density housing and infrastructure,
besides the carbon emission that that refactoring entails. Cement and steel
emit way more co2 than individual transport.

~~~
0815test
"Cheap electric cars" will have range problems for a long time. Electric
transport (not just "cars", either) works very well with increased density,
and not so well with the low-density status quo.

~~~
bluGill
Range doesn't matter. People tend to have a half hour commute range. Electric
cars have long been able to replace gas for commute for nearly everybody
already. (range anxiety has been about the exceptions - once a month I do X
and the electric car can't do that...)

------
reallydontask
In the UK, semi-detached houses are probably the most common middle class type
of dwelling, so it's interesting to see that there is some sort of debate
about this.

Loads of differences between US/UK but still

~~~
arethuza
Aren't most council houses semi-detached - I wouldn't describe it as a middle
class thing?

------
ajxs
Disclosure: I don't live in Portland. I live in Sydney, which has a much
higher population and much higher real estate prices. The population density
is hard to compare, since Sydney has a very large and sprawling metropolitan
area of 4,775.2 square miles. The first thing I think of when I read this is
that while this kind of development may superficially look to benefit those
looking to purchase property, urban consolidation will benefit property
developers much more so than consumers. Sydney is undergoing considerable
urban consolidation and we're hardly seeing any reduction in property value at
all. We've seen all manner of predatory practices on behalf of property
developers occurring in this city to ensure that the price is kept
artificially high. One practice that is all too common is developers buying up
property and only releasing it onto the market slowly to maximise commercial
gain, as ridiculous as it sounds, anecdotally this is quite common. I wouldn't
celebrate just yet.

~~~
cycrutchfield
Who cares? Once equilibrium is reached, prices will be lower (or at least,
rise more slowly). That’s simple supply and demand.

Those property developers are taking on a considerable amount of inventory
risk. One hiccup in the housing market and they go bankrupt. If that’s the
game they are willing to play, then so be it.

~~~
nitrogen
There's not a whole lot of risk in being first in line to buy up all of the
XBoxes and scalping them to desperate parents.

Or to buying up enough aluminum that you can hoard it.

Or owning enough land that you choose the price.

When you control the supply of an essential resource, you can name your price.
Great way to make money, terrible way to make a society.

~~~
epistasis
What Oregon did here, massively increase the supply of buildable land in one
fell swoop, is pretty much the antithesis of those shortages you talk about
there though.

The trend for cities in the past 75 years has been to down some continuously
until there's not enough spare land that's zoned to account for the necessary
population growth. Then, in that highly supply constrained environment, use
political processes to upzone only a tiny amount of land. Typically this is
the "blight," the few places that minorities where allowed to live when racist
deed restrictions were allowed, the areas where city services were less, and
that stayed that way.

Societies would take the most undervalued land, force the huge backed up
pressure into these vulnerable neighborhoods, and let the few lucky developers
that were politically savvy enough to navigate the process make away with the
profits.

Now that it's everywhere, there will be more competition between developers
and there will be far less exploitation of an artificially restricted
resource. Land is already restricted enough, zoning for density just makes it
all the more scarce and exploitable by the powerful.

~~~
podunkPDX
Living here in Portland, though, my fear is that it won’t be developers taking
a flyer to build these homes, it will be the investor class bankrolling the
developers to build permanent rental properties.

Hoping I’m wrong, but the last few decades’ antics with investors tells me I’m
not.

~~~
cycrutchfield
What’s with all the handwringing over investors and developers? Yes, some
people will benefit from this decision, just as some people would have
benefited from the opposite decision. Who cares? The only thing that will
reduce housing prices is more housing being created.

~~~
nitrogen
People want more than just housing from housing. Some people want a system of
wealth distribution to allow new entrants to the market (the young and/or
disadvantaged) to build capital. Some want a place that they can call their
own and customize as they see fit. Some want to be invested in a community.
Some don't want to have to listen to and smell their neighbors through cheaply
built shared walls.

If the existing capital holders build a bunch of rentals, then many of those
goals are not possible.

~~~
0815test
People have all sorts of delusions. Cheaper housing, by and large, makes it
_easier_ for new entrants to build wealth, whilst having a place that they can
call their own.

------
loser777
To what extent does the number of families in a building change with the law
vs. just evolving as the environment evolves? I'm currently staying
temporarily in the bay area, and it seems that many homes here have been
"converted" from single family homes to full-time airbnb's with extra bedrooms
and bathrooms tacked on in any way that they can manage. Functionally it's
probably common for a suburban neighborhood to be a bunch of "4, 5, 6-plexes"
when appearing to be a typical suburb of single family homes on the outside.

~~~
masonic

      full-time airbnb's with extra bedrooms and bathrooms tacked on in any way that they can
    

... which is exactly a risk of killing "zoning" (capacity limits)
restrictions. It's now far riskier for a property owner to rent to traditional
tenants (especially with the threat of Section 8 acceptance becoming
mandatory) than to cash out into the AirBnB market.

------
baybal2
America should follow the example of progressive countries.

Point 1. Residential highrises should become the main housing option

Point 2. Stop subsidising suburban lifestyle for the rich

Point 3. Massive public investments into infrastructure

Point 4. Replace zoning regulations with something less extremely specific or
go for sanitary code type regulation

Point 5. Stop requiring people without cars to buy unneeded parking space on
their own plot

~~~
scarface74
_Point 2. Stop subsidising suburban lifestyle for the rich_

The average price of a house is $226500. ([https://www.zillow.com/home-
values/](https://www.zillow.com/home-values/)).

Almost anyone can get an FHA mortgage with 3.5% down. The thought that only
rich people can afford a home is not true for most of the country.

~~~
sampleinajar
True, but "rich" is fairly subjective. I also don't think that point was
implying that only rich people could afford homes, but that the suburban
"lifestyle" and the associated costs of infrastructure were being
"subsidized". For the most part, cities subsidize less urban areas.

~~~
scarface74
Subsidized by who? Suburban areas are often separate municipalities with
separate budgets and I would think that most infrastructure would be paid by
property taxes and local sales taxes.

In fact here in Atlanta there is a trend toward upper class neighborhoods
separating from Atlanta and creating separate cities - no this isn’t a good
thing.

~~~
sampleinajar
It's not exactly true that all services in a local municipality are funded
solely by local funds. For example, in your state of Georgia the state pays a
share of public education. Most states' largest sources of revenue come from
sales taxes which it should be clear comes disproportionately from cities as
cities are disproportionately populated. Any state funded and especially state
run service is going to be largely funded by city dollars. It's admittedly
complex and varies state by state in degree, but overall it stands true that
cities pay more taxes to their state in dollar amount by virtue of there being
more people; therefore it seems fair to say that any state funds used for any
area outside the cities is subsidized by the cities. I'm not saying this is a
bad thing, just a valid observation.

------
Lazare
Excellent. Fingers crossed it works well and provides a blueprint for other
cities and states.

------
OliverJones
About time. Over the last generation almost all US cities have failed to add
enough new housing to handle the growing population.

Want to reduce homelessness? Build homes.

Want to reduce ridiculously overpriced homes? Build homes.

------
jbb123
So what is a duplex? Nowhere does it say and it's not a term I've ever heard
used in the UK? I guess "semi-detached" would be closest but not sure?

~~~
icebraining
I think a semi-detached is a duplex, but the latter term is more broad,
covering also two-story apartment buildings and such:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_(building)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_\(building\))

~~~
vidarh
'Semi-detached' can be used about the end unit of a long chain of terraced
houses, so while a semi-detached can be part of a duplex, it might also not
be.

------
TomMckenny
Fantastic. I hope with all my heart that rezoning at least slows down price
increases. It should certainly be done as widely as possible.

But in the end I think we need to keep in mind that there will need to
additional aggressive legislation to even keep prices flat relative to wages
let alone reduce them.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
On that note, does anyone know of any economist(s), or _thinkers_ , who a have
a comprehensive plan to change the way the housing market works?

~~~
ajmurmann
Alain Bertaud might have the opposite of what you might want to call a
"comprehensive plan". He makes great suggestions on how to give control back
to the market and achieve better outcomes than the quasi, soviet-style,
planned economy that our housing market is in the US (my words not his). Great
interview with him on econtalk about his new book:
[http://www.econtalk.org/alain-bertaud-on-cities-planning-
and...](http://www.econtalk.org/alain-bertaud-on-cities-planning-and-order-
without-design/)

Edit: typo in author name.

------
tunesmith
We're in a single-family home HOA in Portland that prohibits duplexes and
DADUs, and everyone's confused about whether this supersedes the HOA rules. I
think it doesn't; HOAs can still prevent something the law allows, but I'm not
certain on that.

~~~
logfromblammo
It depends on the wording of the law, I think. Many HOA agreements have
severability clauses and also large antenna bans. But federal law explicitly
allows antennas, so that antenna-ban clause is silently severed. It remains in
the agreement text, so a naive homeowner might believe it remains in effect,
and the HOA might attempt to enforce it using the same forms as all the
clauses they can lawfully enforce, but they will always lose if the dispute
goes to court.

The federal 1996 Telecommunications Act, and OTARD rule in the implementing
regulations, explicitly prohibits rules preventing over-the-air reception
antennas "by homeowner, townhome, condominium or cooperative association
rules, including deed restrictions, covenants, by-laws and similar
restrictions".

So the law proposed by HB 2001 _could_ sever the clause preventing duplexes or
render the entire HOA agreement invalid (if no severability clause), and
therefore make duplexes allowed in HOA neighborhoods.

But... it does not. It only reaches down to the "local government" level,
which is the municipal or county zoning restrictions. The NIMBYest of the
NIMBYs will already have HOA agreements that match or make more restrictive
the zoning requirements of their municipalities. The effect will probably be
to increase the prevalence of HOAs to impede progress, in lieu of zoning.

I am not a lawyer or legislator, but the bill should have been amended to burn
out anti-density covenants, deed restrictions, and association by-laws.

------
podunkPDX
I’m not certain that this will create any affordable housing in any of the
metro areas (Portland, Eugene, Bend).

I suspect that this will end up opening the doors for the investor class to
fund massive amounts of development in anything resembling an urban core,
turning the resulting housing into permanent rentals, tranching those rentals
into the next investment instrument to be sold &c.

I’m from Portland, and I wish that this would increase the availability of
affordable housing, but I feel that this is a lot of feel good, and it’s just
going to make my home town that much worse.

Here’s to hoping I’m wrong.

~~~
sfifs
Even if there's a massive investor driven housing development, ultimately the
units have to be rented out which will put pressure on rentals down and make
housing more affordable.

If rentals are lower, yield for ownership will also go lower leading to lower
prices.

------
rwmj
I find it odd that this is something that the government can regulate. Surely
it's nobody's business if a single building is split between two families?

------
edoo
This will have a few predictable results: The developers that pushed this
through will make a fortune. The government taxes will increase immensely as
they can now squeeze in more people. The city will generate much more
pollution than it did. At what point do you say enough is enough. Exponential
growth is unsustainable. The best communities I've ever seen were zoned for
minimum size 1 acre single family lots.

~~~
firethief
> The best communities I've ever seen were zoned for minimum size 1 acre
> single family lots.

That isn't scalable enough without a major population correction. There are
about 3.5 billion acres of arable land on the planet[1]. If we devoted all of
that to rearing human families, we'd have to eat them.

(1)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land#Arable_land_area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land#Arable_land_area)

~~~
edoo
What they are doing isn't scalable without a major population correction. You
hit the exact same issue someday no matter what. By encouraging exponential
growth it just ensures when we do hit a true limit the losses are orders of
magnitude worse. Also an increase in density is a decrease in quality of life.
Why not live sustainable lives with a comfortable amount of resources instead
of exponentially reproducing until everyone has nothing. If the plan doesn't
scale 50k years into the future it is an abject fraud designed for short term
profit at the expense of others. Math always wins.

------
xivzgrev
Fucking finally. I can’t wait for California to get their shit together on
this. Now supporters there will have an analogy over the next 5-10 years

------
georgeburdell
Seems reasonable, but being a Portland resident I'm already annoyed at how
hard it is to find parking. Portland's mass transit is a joke (I can bike
downtown end-to-end faster than MAX can crawl through it) and so people have
no choice but to drive. What's the point of putting duplexes in neighborhoods
without good transit and roads at capacity? California had a much more
reasonable solution in SB827 and now SB50 [1] in that density increases would
have only happened near transit.

I don't think the law will have the intended effects. Home prices tend to be
sticky, and I'm not aware of any North American city that successfully built
its way out of a housing affordability crisis. Wealth inequality is such that
current property owners, and real estate speculators, will make out
handesomely.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Bill_827](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Bill_827)

~~~
mmarvick
> Portland's mass transit is a joke (I can bike downtown end-to-end faster
> than MAX can crawl through it)

TriMet is currently looking into moving MAX into a tunnel downtown, and with
fewer stops [1]. Part of the reason it's _so slow_ right now through downtown
is all the stops, and because it has to stop at lights.

[1] [https://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/max-tunnel-
study](https://www.oregonmetro.gov/public-projects/max-tunnel-study)

~~~
joelhoffman
That is amazing news, thank you for posting it. It was a tragedy they didn't
do a cut and cover tunnel for the green line when it went in. They had to shut
down all the streets and move the sewer etc. anyway!

------
jquery
As an SF homeowner I look forward to Cali passing the equivalent so my home
(near BART) shoots up in value. Win/win.

~~~
oberservant
That's great

------
mgleason_3
Seems like a pretty immediate solution for housing and rental shortages. I was
just talking to a A developer who mentioned that it costs so much to build in
LA&OC California that it only makes sense to target the high end/luxury
segment with new construction - at least for single-family homes.

IDK what the economics for new-construction of apartments is like, but I have
to image its similar.

Certainly more constructive than Governor Newsom suing Huntington. ref:
[https://abc7.com/society/gov-newsom-suing-huntington-
beach-o...](https://abc7.com/society/gov-newsom-suing-huntington-beach-over-
lack-of-low-income-housing/5107431/)

------
fortran77
This is a great idea! I hope California follows. Wherever a single family
detached house stands, a two-family home should be allowed in its place.

------
psadri
Is this primarily aimed at building duplexes on bare land? Or to convert
existing single family homes to duplexes? For the latter, how are the
economics? It is not cheap to prematurely tear down a house to build a duplex
instead.

~~~
jandrese
It may not be a common case, but there should be places where oversized homes
can be divided into two units for a modest cost. Have to plumb in a second
kitchen, redo some of the electrical, etc... but maybe cheaper than building a
whole new house from scratch, especially if permitting on new construction is
an obstacle. It needs a lot of custom engineering for every house though,
which is expensive.

In the end you'd probably have to set it up as the world's smallest condo for
tax and maintenance purposes.

------
rhacker
Is this going to make a LOT of people rich on cottage rents? Pull in a
trailer, hook it up, make $1000 / mo? I'm guessing the contractors in
Portland, Bend, Eugene are getting calls now.

~~~
pcwalton
That's not how ADU legislation has worked out here in California. There are
significant restrictions on the ADU that prohibit just "pulling in a trailer",
and I imagine the Oregon legislation looks similar.

Here's an article explaining some of the restrictions in San Francisco, with
some photos of garage conversions:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/New-use-for-
San-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/New-use-for-San-
Francisco-garages-upscale-13778164.php#photo-17238670)

------
refurb
They kind of do this in SF with ADUs, accessory dwelling units. Want to
convert your garage to a separate unit? City will help you with all the
permitting.

~~~
luckydata
But you agree that's not even close? You have one good house and a subpar
living arrangement that can be only temporary or last resort, while in the
other scenario you get two units that can both host a family without loss of
dignity or comfort. It's night and day.

~~~
refurb
I’ve seen some beautiful ADUs in SF which basically removed the garage and
converted the ground floor to a 2nd unit of the same size as the upper floor -
AKA turned it into a duplex!

------
sharadov
The Bay area needs this badly. But the NIMBYs will not let this pass.

------
sunshinelackof
As long as they don't touch the UGB.

------
NN88
this is the step towards the USA matching the infrastructure development in
the rest of the world.

------
luckydata
Well done neighbors, I hope some of your good sense infects us.

------
pacoWebConsult
Is anyone else concerned that this will lead to conditions like the beginning
of the 20th century where 2 or 3 large families would live in a single
residence, often times with 10+ people living and sleeping in the same room?
Rezoning a residence to house twice the people without any adjustment in
required square footage is a slippery slope towards turning low income housing
into slums.

~~~
i_am_nomad
This isn’t about re-zoning the use of existing houses, it’s about what can be
built in the future.

------
zerotolerance
Like most things they do in Oregon, this will certainly not have the desired
effect. Infrastructure in Portland is stressed enough without doubling
density. Turning 1 $600K home into two $500k homes isn't going to help anyone
but the speculating developers.

~~~
geezerjay
Your hypothetical example assumes that this measure leads available housing to
double while prices fall about by about 15%, and even so your conclusion is
that this doesn't help anyone?

~~~
epistasis
This is a very common view in certain areas that otherwise have progressive
views. In these terms, the profit of developers is an evil that exceeds the
benefit of any person having housing. In particular, new people are often
considered nuisances or a burden or something that is bad for the
neighborhoods, even.

------
CoconutPilot
The problem people don't want to address is these neighborhoods were not
designed to handle this many people. They don't have the power, water, natural
gas, sewerage, parking, etc to handle these many people. As a result
everyone's quality of life is degraded.

The city loves the taxes though.

~~~
ng12
That's such a cop out. Do you imagine Manhattan and Tokyo went from being
uninhabited wilderness to concrete jungles in one go? No, it was constant
iteration over decades.

These are all solved problems. We know how to build denser cities, we just
need the political will to do so.

~~~
masonic

      uninhabited wilderness to concrete jungles 
    

Many of us don't _want_ to live in concrete jungles.

~~~
icebraining
So you should move to Oregon, since all this does is allow low density
construction mixed with the existing very-low density construction.

