Some representatives of Portland's for-profit housing industry are asking the Metro Council to delay review of new requirements for cities to plan for affordable housing.
The Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland will ask for the delay "to make sure we understand the intent, and provide them with some feedback of unintended consequences of the way the language in there might work," said Dave Nielsen, the association's CEO. "They haven't engaged either us or PMAR (the Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors) in terms of reviewing this."
The Metro Council voted unanimously on Dec. 9 to approve an amended proposal to add an affordable housing provision to Title 11. The proposal is set for a final vote at the Metro Council's Dec. 16 meeting.
But where councilors felt like other cities in the region could accept the new proposed wording, Nielsen of the Home Builders Association and lobbyist Jane Leo of the Realtors' association said the language is better, but not ready to be part of Metro code.
Leo said the language is still in violation of Oregon laws that prohibit affordable housing mandates, called inclusionary zoning, a point she made at a public hearing before the latest proposal was drafted.
"I hated it all before, now I'm maybe only halfway disliking it because it still stands in violation of Oregon statutes prohibiting inclusionary zoning," Leo said Tuesday.
Metro officials say the ban on so-called inclusionary zoning is narrow and doesn't prohibit Metro's proposed requirement that cities and counties come up with strategies for housing that's affordable to people who make less than the median income.
Nielsen also said the new proposal was improved.
"There's still some things in there, quite honestly, there's some language that got more convoluted in the revised version," he said. "What exactly does Metro mean by this?"
Metro Councilor Robert Liberty, who is leading the push for the affordable housing language in Title 11, said after the council's Tuesday worksession that he doesn't think the title needs to be delayed, because the rules only ask cities to plan for affordable housing, with no requirement.
"If the Home Builders wish to come and testify and be clear about what they don't understand that would be helpful," Liberty said. "What are the unintended consequences of asking people to plan for a range of housing types?"
According to Leo, some of the unintended consequences could include planning for workforce housing in areas that don't have good access to mass transit or social services.
"They're going to create housing in that outer fringe that is targeted to someone making 30 to 50 percent of the median family income. They'll be far removed from social services that in most cases are needed. They'll be removed from mass transit," she said. "So it is not doing that segment of our population a service, to locate housing in those areas. It also runs the risk of creating social inequity in that we could become a community surrounded by low-income housing."
Liberty said that in some cases, Portland already is.
"It'd be interesting to see an example of how development on the edge is so low cost as to concentrate poverty on the edge," he said.
On the other side from the homebuilders is Ramsey Weit, executive director of the Beaverton-based Community Housing Fund. He said his place is to "inject the topic into the agenda" wherever it seems appropriate, and in this case, a planning exercise was the perfect place.
"We've been working on this for 10 to 12 years, so I don't see any reason to do that (delay)," he said. "It doesn't make any sense to me."
But the questions still remaining in the wording of the proposal leave the for-profit housing industry feeling rushed.
"This is pretty important stuff when talking about planning for expansion areas for future generations," Nielsen said. He doesn't think there's a reason to say "we've got to rush through and we can't take one more month on it."