Infill housing: On Jan. 26, this duplex was nearing completion at 1687 12th Ave S.E.
When she took office this month, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announced her goal that 36,000 new houses be built in Oregon per year. She knows that this requires more than wishing it so.
Since then, she has fleshed out her goal with a state budget that proposes to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to try to deal with various aspects of the apparent shortage of housing. Whether any of these actions come about, we’ll see in June when the legislature is through for the year.
Building houses requires requires financing, land, materials and labor, to start with. It also requires a slew of permits. The permits and the elaborate processes to obtain them are required by state and local laws, and these the legislature could do something about.
Even with the current regulations in place, though, there’s plenty of building going on.
In Albany alone, apartment projects totaling several hundred units are being completed now, and two or three others have gone through the land-use approval process.
South of town and on the east side of I-5, new residential subdivisions of former farmland have been approved or started construction.
Meanwhile, builders are finding vacant lots in town to fill with additional dwellings.
On Tuesday I reported on a manufactured home with three bedrooms and two baths that has just been completed on a previously vacant lot on Northeast Water Avenue.
And a few days ago I took the photo above. It’s a duplex under construction on a section of Southeast 12th Avenue west of Geary Street, near the wooden bridge that leads to the Perwinkle Bike Path.
Infill projects like these don’t expand the city’s spread or require more streets and utilities to be built. That should help with the cost, and it seems like a smart way to meet at least some of the demand.
The builders of that manufactured house on Water Avenue and the duplex on 12th didn’t strive to meet Tina Kotek’s goal, had they known about it when they started.
But even so, these three new Albany dwellings alone mean that Oregon builders now have to build only 35,097 houses this year to meet the governor’s goal. (hh)
How will this help the “homeless crisis?” And why wasn’t this a problem in the 1950s and 1960s?
Hasso, perhaps…rather than throwing shade at the Governor, why not join her and attempt to improve conditions for Oregonians less fortunate than you. After all, the State does not ask much of retirees on fixed incomes. Unless you are a closeted millionaire, it strikes me that a plan to build 36-thousand housing units will extract little or no price from you.
36,000 housing units will cost $10,800,000,000 at $300,000 per house! Is that spare change to the almighty Hartman? Instead of criticizing Hasso you should look to yourself as the Oregon total budget was $11.5 billion in 2022. Liberal mentality is suspect at the very least.
State and local government should dial back their “control” of planning and building in Oregon. The natural rule of supply and demand would resolve the shortage if government would get out of the way. They could start with eliminating a broken state land use system. From there they could take the environmental study requirements off steroids. A couple years ago they put a stop work order on a housing project because of a green spot on an old Google aerial photo. Instead of developing an understanding of the problem, the Governor is doubling down on the problem by throwing taxpayer money at it. Does anyone really think that with the money, more regulations won’t come with it?
This is the best letter on the subject. Government allocations of resources are, as a rule anchored in economics, inferior to free market ones.
Regarding homelessness, which the planned new housing is meant to alleviate, Oregon has no money to help the homeless because income taxes on the working class (rich don’t pay them) and property taxes (churches and all non-profits (including government buildings, don’t pay them) do not bring in enough money to run a state…any state. We need a sales tax. But, we are too wild-west in attitude to vote one in. So, of course, permits to build anything are outrageously high in cost because the state has to grab money where they can.
The value of that mobile home that Hasso wrote about was over $300,000. The rent on that is not gong to be cheap enough for a homeless person to pay. And, all these home and apartments that Governor Kotek wants to build are not going to help the homeless.
We needed someone tough like Nicholas Kristoff as governor, but even though he lives at Yamhill the powers-that-be wouldn’t let him run for Governor.
Sales tax??? Aren’t things expensive enough now? Sales tax is just more money for the politicians to waste. If you think taking more money from the taxpayers is the answer, move to California. All the money they rake in and it’s STILL a cesspool.
Thanks for lowering our expectations from you.
“..Oregon has no money to help the homeless because income taxes on the working class (rich don’t pay them)…”
It took me 10 seconds to find this quote from the Blue Book, published by the Oregon SOS:
“The top ten percent of taxpayers in income paid roughly half of Oregon’s personal income tax, while the bottom half of ​taxpayers in income paid 9% of the total income tax.”
Nick would have been interesting. Kinda want to live it. Can we get a do over?
State government should not be involved with the housing issue. Mandating changes and destroying local zoning ordinances and polices for the sake of creating more housing does away with decades of community planning (which included designed and engineered street, water, utility and sewer capacities for homes, not apartments). In addition, it creates the perception that one more perceived social issue will be solved by those that have little idea of what the problem really is or the true final consequences of their misguided actions (remember all those 60’s housing projects on the east coast that ended up as slums).
Why should we encourage more housing in this area? Do we not have enough people in Linn/Benton Counties? Is traffic congestion not bad enough on Pacific Blvd? How about the backups on the Highway 20 bridge? Maybe the politicians think it’s OK to have to wait 9 months to get an appointment with a doctor in this area. Will crime and social problems decrease when all those new homes are built? More people, more crime, longer waits and more social tensions. Not a problem, we will use the Multnomah County model to fix all of this.
When I was a kid and my dad had trouble finding a place to rent, he kept searching until he found something. Yes, it wasn’t always nice and where he wanted it to be but he always found something even if we had to move from one city to another. Right now, there are over 5,500 apartments available in Oregon and over 45,000 in the Western US. There is no housing shortage. People need to raise their skill levels so they can get better paying jobs.
I recently spoke with someone who lived in an Albany quadplex (infill project) that was built in what was once a single-family neighborhood (houses). She rented one bedroom in one of the townhouses. Each townhouse had three bedrooms which made for a total of 12 people renting in that building. How great for all the home owners next door and in the vicinity. She said parking was a nightmare as not enough parking was available. Yep, 10 cars (from renters in that building) up and down the street and all the related activity and noise that goes with it. The recent edict from Salem now makes legal (and almost demands) building without ANY on lot parking required which means ALL the cars end up on the street. Infill is destructive to neighborhoods and only makes the developers money at the expense of everyone else. Oh yes… how will those state mandated EVs get a charge while parked on the street. I get it, extensions cords since the one and only public charger in Albany is still broken. Silly me….
It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse and Salem is not solving anything.
Don’t you worry even one little bit. Albany’s statehouse representative, Boshart-Davis, will do everything in her power to blinder Kotek’s vision. According to Boshart-Davis and many others in the Albany Reactionary Zone, the government has no business being in the housing of citizens business. According to this philosophy, if you’re living on the street, it’s because you’ve fallen out of the Lord’s munificence. Until you come back into line with the status quo, it is likely you deserve sleeping under cardboard.
The vision that Oregon can build 36,000 housing units per year for 10 years at an annual cost of $10 billion per year. For somebody who loves to use big words, you need to learn analysis of pie in the sky visions. Maybe Kotek partakes of the mind altering drugs which are fueling the homeless problem. I’m sure you voted for measure 110 which added to the homeless problem.