Here are 15 of the townhouses being built in the 80-lot Riverwood Crossing development on Laura Vista Drive in North Albany. (Photo taken Jan. 20, 2026)
Housing construction in Albany is going on all the time, it seems. But you may be wondering if it’s too much. Or is it enough?
The question has one answer: Developers are building just enough houses and apartments as the market allows or demands. They would go broke if they built too much.
But what are the numbers? I asked Johnathan Balkema, the city of Albany’s building official, how many permits for dwellings the city had issued in the last few years.
The permits he counted were for single family houses or SDUs, new accessory dwelling units or ADUs, manufactured homes, new townhouses, and new apartments.
Here’s the table of dwelling permits from 2013 through 2025. (The number of duplexes must be doubled to yield dwellings.)
For the 13 years shown in the table, Albany issued building permits for an average of 287 dwelling units per year. The year just past was above average with a total of 366 units, with apartments and townhouses together outpacing the construction of single-family houses.
Are those numbers high enough? According to a 2019 “Housing Needs Analysis” done for Albany by a team of consultants, the answer is “maybe.”
That report said the Population Research Center at Portland State forecast Albany to have almost 72,000 inhabitants in 2040. To house the increased population, Albany would need about 6,500 additional dwellings, or about 325 per year.
Since that report came out, Albany has grown. The Portland State center says the city’s population in 2025 was 57,897. That’s about 1,400 people more than five years ago. At two and a half people per household, that makes about 560 additional households in five years.
During those five years, the city permitted about 1,500 dwelling units, almost three times as many as the number of added households. The pace of construction was faster than the rate of population increase.
All this presumes that my arithmetic and assumptions are reasonably close to reality. If they are, Albany builders are doing OK in meeting the demand for places for people to live.
But there’s another angle. The housing needs study found that based on census data from 2017, only 7,800 people lived and worked in Albany. Some 13,500 worked in Albany but lived somewhere else, mainly Corvallis, Lebanon and Salem. Another 17,000 lived in Albany but worked out of town, mainly in Corvallis, Salem and Eugene.
This explains much of the peak hour traffic. Maybe, to save on gas, some of those 13,500 commuters to Albany jobs might want to live within the Albany ZIP codes instead. To accommodate them, housing construction would have to speed up. (hh)
The story has been edited to correct the year of Albany’s Housing Needs Analysis. It was 2019. No matter how deep we get into the 21st century, when I’m not paying attention I seem to be stuck in the 1900s.
The entire south end of the Riverwood Crossing subdivision being built in North Albay off Gibson Hill Road.
Many can not afford
These ( affordable) homes being built, out of reach $ rent or to $ buy.
Has anyone noticed the traffic problem lately.
We barely are able to keep up with rent in our old apt now with a $50 increase every year.
A big reason Oregon’s population keeps growing is the marketing of the state, by developers, real estate investors, commercial interests. Marketing is supposed to increase demand. It works. Yet, do we really want growth to continue forever? The news is, it can’t.
1919 “Housing Needs Analysis”? 1919?
I see you corrected it. LOL
All of these Duplexes are going to be bought back up from the developer and rented out. How does this equivalent to affordable living for people wishing to buy a home of their own.
Where are the kids going to go to school?
Very interesting, Hasso. Thank you. But, those figures aren’t going to change much. Only people with executive-level pay can afford to buy a house or a condo. And, rent is high in Albany, so, if people have a place to live in another town, they are going to hang onto it. Our economy is not going to change a lot for the working people. After all, our President thinks “affordability” is a big, new word he has never heard before and is a hoax.
Why don’t you comment on Biden’s 23%+ inflation which caused the affordability crisis instead of parroting some left-wing news site like CNN.
Promise me you’ll never lose your childlike sense of credulity. It’s really quite charming.
At least he has the guts to use his real name, unlike an ankle biting lap dog like you.
Real classy place you got here, Hasso.
If I were you, I wouldn’t use the word, affordability, in an online posting. The President, who you apparently favor, doesn’t like the use of that word. He will come after his own (that is, fellow Republicans)….if they don’t toe the line. I’m not one of his followers, and I’m going to quit using that particular “a” word.
Biden has been out of office for over a year, but prices are still high. Also, blaming all inflation on Biden is dishonest. The whole world, with the exception of Japan, experienced very bad inflation from 2021 to 2023. Feel free to check me on that. Post Covid 19 supply shortages and also Russia’s war with Ukraine both caused severe inflation across the entire world. Many countries in Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere experienced this inflation, not just the United States. Argentina experienced over 200 percent inflation in 2022 alone. You often accuse other commenters of being partisan. But it’s easy to see you are extremely partisan yourself.
A better graphic that the City could provide is the number of permits by neighborhood. Simply knowing how many is interesting but knowing where as well would be informative. Helps knowing where density is planned.
All of that information (and more) is here: https://albanyoregon.gov/planning/projects
thank you for the pointer – familiar – but i’m asking for what’s known as a “heat map” that shows graphically on a map the planned projects by area – a list of projects by area is just a list – people can make better decisions if there is an accurate and correct graphic which can tell more with a picture than scrolling through a bunch of project pdf files.
While that may be true, each “project” is headed by its actual address. Very easy to graphically see which neighborhood it’s in via Google Maps, etc.
Your “heat map” is now on the main page of the city web site: albanyoregon.gov (near bottom-right corner), You can zoom in and out from there,
You can plan all you want and contract companies to prepare projections all you want but people do not pick where they want to live based solely on availability and jobs. Many people work here but live elsewhere. People choose to live where they feel safe, close to family and the community has the same values. My kiddos said they would not live in Albany even if we gave them our house for free. They will start their working and family lives elsewhere which includes us moving too. Albany will suffer long term for the over growth of unneeded housing and the neglect of the established community already living here.
FYI the price on one of the four living areas in the “barracks” you have pictured was $397,900 and about a week ago the price dropped to$349,900, a saving of $48,000!!!!
Is this an example of affordable housing?
The developers rule Albany, supported and rubber stamped by the Mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and the lemmings in City Council.
The real question is: How many housing units are we obligated to make for the people who work here? As your figures show, we produce more than the number working here, so the excess is for people who work or go to school in Corvallis or other outside areas. Corvallis is getting the benefit of our housing while restricting the housing in their location. Maybe we need to think about this differently, Which direction do the people in North Albany travel to work? If they are going west we need to restrict the pathway to the east, and do not even think of making a new bridge over the Willamette. that would be a tough call…. Bottom line, why should we pay for expansion when the benefits go to outside cities?
Whatever you do, do not make student housing.
you are missing the whole point of development – housing is being built for people who don’t live here yet. not those that do.
Wrong…………housing is being built so that people can make money building things. Who uses it is not in their control. You build housing that people want to live in, if you live here before and it is nicer than you have now, you move if the price is reasonable. The problem is that we have policies that encourage building at a level higher than Corvallis et al. They restrict so we get more of their crowd, the expense, the trouble, the traffic. Only an idiot would build housing specifically for poor people, you build for people who can pay and those folks move out of places that are not as nice to the new stuff… thereby making low income housing from the stock that they left.
Good grief. You ever hear of property taxes? Corvallis is not benefiting from property taxes paid by owners in Albany.
One would think with the large increase in City Fees etc. from all these new dwellings, the City would be rolling in money.
Why aren’t they?
I would guess the city does not get as much help from the federal or state governments as they used to. Also, prices have risen substantially for road repair work, etc. And, all the taxes the city’s urban renewal took away from other programs, such as fire dept., police dept., schools, county programs, in the form of tax increment financing for their urban renewal district, were spent to the tune of over 22 million on Water Street and Monteith Park. Tax increment financing froze the property tax rate at about the 2001 or so level (in the confines of the huge urban renewal district) and all taxes levied above that over the years went to Albany’s huge expenditure on their downtown and Water Street and the park. So, there you go. Remember the shock at what it cost to string the cute, old-fashioned, black-metal-clad lights across middle of blocks on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd streets downtown? But, they are cute!!
If we can keep real estate investors away, we’d see the market settle down. As long as they keep snapping up the homes that hit the market – before the young potential homeowners get a chance, there will always be a huge demand for housing.