As the city council works to solve a housing emergency, and crosses its fingers that Salem will pass an inclusionary zoning (IZ) bill, the city's housing commissioner wants affordable housing projects in two swaths of the city to be able to dodge the sometimes-lengthy scrutiny built into the city's permitting process.
Under an ordinance Saltzman plans to bring before Portland City Council next week, apartments and condos could undergo less stringent review—provided they contain at least five units, offer affordable housing subsidized by the city, and sit within the Portland's Central City or Gateway districts.
Property in those districts is often subject to increased scrutiny because of design standards embedded in the city code. So when an interested developer proposes building affordable units, the city throws what's known at a Type III review, which Saltzman's ordinance calls "the City's most time-consuming, expensive, and complicated land use review."
These reviews often take between 51 and 90 days, can cost more than $30,000, and are scrutinized by the city's design commission, which can repeatedly poke holes in the aesthetics and layout of proposed projects. The project might also need to undergo a historic resource review as part of the Type III process.
Saltzman says that shouldn't be necessary in a city that needs to add nearly 25,000 affordable units.
"The Type III design review and historic resource review and approval process creates additional cost and delay, which can be a deterrent to the remodeling and construction of affordable housing units and frustrate efforts to address the City’s urgent need for this type of housing," the ordinance says.
In place of a Type III review, Saltzman says qualifying affordable housing projects should go through a less stringent "Type IIx" process, which would largely cut out the design commission and historical review, and leave most of the scrutiny up to city staff. That could slash fees for developers by thousands, though it apparently wouldn't save all that much time. According to the ordinance, Type IIx reviews typically take between 42 and 80 days, compared to the 51-to-90-day range of Type III.
The ordinance is expected to come before Portland City Council a week from today and, if passed, would go into effect immediately. Saltzman's chief of staff, Brendan Finn, says the quick passage is necessary if the city's going to attract maximum interest in more than $60 million in local and federal funds the Housing Bureau wants to use to subsidize affordable housing.
The proposed ordinance is only a start, by the way. Saltzman is also going to put a resolution before his colleagues that would direct the city's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to look into ways to "simplify regulations, remove regulatory obstacles, and expedite processes for land use reviews and permits" for affordable housing projects and shelters.
"We’re asking them to go further," Finn says. "Dan thinks that housing affordability is an issue that we’re going to be struggling with for the next generation."
