Thank you for talking about the real estate transfer tax. Repeal of that stupid constitutional amendment should be on housing activits' short list for immediate action.

We need a land tranfer fee, dedicated to affordable housing, and it should escalate significantly higher for transfers of the same property within 3 years, to discourage flipping.

Regarding the document filing fee, there's some controversy because the State's Department of Housing and Community Services has only spent about half of the affordable housing funds that they've taken in since the program started in 2009.

There was a bill last session (HB2198) to require better reporting and transparency around the program, and hopefully force them to get more projects funded.

Guess what? "Moderate Democrats" in the State Senate killed it.

See http://www.bendbulletin.com/opinion/335536…

Measures 5 and 50 also effectively function as a state preemption on local property taxing authority. Removing these state laws that prevent local governments from equitably and adequately leveling property taxes and perhaps replacing them with a homeowners exemption would greatly expand local government options.

In Portland we could abolish the PDC - that would help a lot.

@altogetherPDX I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I'm curious what exactly you believe abolishing the PDC would accomplish.

Capsule hotels ought to be cheap to rent, yet profitable to run.
http://kotaku.com/5990496/your-guide-to-ja…

Why not attack the root cause of housing affordability?
The artificial shortage of land caused by METRO and enforced by several so called "environmental" groups led by the 1000 fiends of Oregon.

It is just basic economics that reducing the supply of land increases the price. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_d…

One of METRO’s reports even said that we have to raise land prices to get builders to build more density:
“If land values stay low,density does not work financially. If the public sector wants the private sector to build more densely it must do something to affect demand and supply conditions so that land prices increase” from page 8 of http://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/f…

Homeland Security intends to keep everybody all penned up together where they can all be most conveniently monitored. There are plenty of wide open spaces. Not all that long ago, one could still stake a claim to government land and start a homestead. Now, big, corporate farms and Monsanto are running family farms out of business and out of existence.