Proposed changes to Title 11 of Metro’s growth planning guidelines were approved by the Metro Council on Thursday, earning support from some prior opponents and a unanimous vote from the council.
The final revision removed guidelines that said cities had to plan housing for residents making certain percentages of the region’s median family income. Representatives from the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland and the Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors said those provisions were illegal.
At Thursday’s Metro Council meeting, Realtors association lobbyist Jane Leo said her organization supported the new wording in the proposal.
“We’re also supportive of MPAC’s recommendation that this council appropriate funds to allow the discussion of housing throughout the region,” Leo said.
The Metro Policy Advisory Committee, or MPAC, voted Wednesday night to recommend that Metro look at creating some sort of region-wide affordable housing policy, which would be spelled out in Title 7 of Metro’s Urban Growth Management Functional Plan.
Also supporting the proposed Title 11 changes was the Coalition for a Livable Future.
“The proposal you have before you is a small step, but an important one,” said Mara Gross, the coalition’s policy director. “It sets no requirements except that it asks jurisdictions to consider the range of housing in growth areas in concept plans. It gets people thinking about these issues.”
Metro Council President Tom Hughes said he’s been part of discussions on affordable housing since he first joined MPAC a decade ago.
“The debate has to take place at a community level,” Hughes said. “I appreciate the language in this that allows a community to look at their own particular housing needs and say ‘This is what we need in order to balance the housing and provide a truly full spectrum of housing in every community in the region.”
Councilor Robert Liberty, sitting in his final meeting before his Jan. 15 resignation, had been pushing hardest for the changes to Title 11.
“Unlike other regions, we do have poverty in almost every community. Not every community, but a lot of communities – including communities like my hometown of Portland that also have places of growing wealth and affluence,” Liberty said. “This is something that is not isolated into a suburb or the central city or a particular suburb – it’s shared.”
Liberty said new planning programs and datasets will allow cities and governments to look at broader impacts of housing diversity in their growth areas.
“We now have the ability to show what the market can supply in particular areas, whether it’s a match – or mismatch – with local area needs,” he said. Liberty also said more choices for housing has environmental and fiscal benefits.
“We have a larger discussion and we have more people involved,” Liberty said. “The participation of the Realtors and homebuilders at the end, in fact generating a certain amount of controversy, was very important because people began to take the effort seriously.
“This step, which I regard, as Ms. Gross said is small but important, is the beginning of a new and more successful regional approach to this issue about making sure the benefits and burdens of growth and change are distributed equitably,” Liberty said.