The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-08-04
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On August 4, 2026, the Portland City Council Housing and Permitting Committee convened at 2 p.m., with roll call confirming the presence of the committee body. After a statement of conduct was read, minutes from prior June meetings were approved without objection. Public testimony addressed concerns about zoning, demolition of historic structures, and affordability in North Portland, as well as concerns about balcony railing safety conditions at the Cherry Blossom development and city enforcement of design review conditions. The committee then discussed a package of foreclosure actions on delinquent-lien properties; several items were withdrawn or held pending further resolution, discussion covered eligibility and timing questions, and votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The committee also considered an ordinance appropriating a $35 million HUD Section 108 Loan Guarantee award for affordable housing preservation, discussing loan terms, repayment risk, and interaction with CDBG funds; a vote occurred, with the outcome recorded in the vote ledger. Following a break, presenters from Portland Neighbors Welcome, Sightline Institute, and Iris Design Build discussed a single-stair design competition and building code reform, covering cost, accessibility, and fire-safety considerations, with extended committee questions and discussion. The meeting adjourned at 4:34 p.m.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good afternoon. I will call the meeting of housing and permitting committee to order. It is Tuesday, August 4th at 2 p.m. Diego, please call the roll.
1 Good afternoon. Koyama Lane here. Novick. Here. Green here. Pirtle-guiney here. Avalos.
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2 Present. Claire, please read the statement of conduct.
3 Thank you. Chair. Good afternoon, and welcome to the meeting of the housing and permitting committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/council/agenda/houg and permitting committee or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted. When your time is over, the chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. Please state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you. Claire. We have four main items on our agenda. We'll have some time for public comments. Then we will do a continuation of the foreclosure properties that we discussed on July 21st. Then we will have an ordinance on housing and a housing financing grant. And after a short break, we will talk about the single stair design and hear from Portland neighbors welcome, about a local design competition that they organized. So before we get to our main items, we need to adopt committee minutes for our meetings on June 2nd and June 16th. Diego, can you please read the item.
5 Item one June 2nd through June 16th, 2026. Housing and permitting committee minutes.
6 The minutes are approved by unanimous consent. So are there any objections? Without objection, the minutes are approved. Diego, please read the next item.
7 Item two. Document number 2026-271. Housing and permitting community feedback.
8 All right. We will now hear from community members on their ideas or concerns or feedback regarding housing and permitting issues. Each testifier will have three minutes. Diego, go ahead and call the first person.
9 First up, we have madeline masters.
10 Welcome. Go ahead and introduce yourself and get started.
11 Thank you. My name is madeline masters. I'm in district two. Good afternoon. Councilors. I'm here to discuss unintended consequences. I'd like to give you the view from north Portland, where what you call infill smells an awful lot like urban renewal. It smells a lot like extracting value from city dwellers to enrich suburban developers. It's a trojan horse. Soon to be demolished, is a landmark of my street, an old growth bungalow with twinkling multi-pane windows listed by the city as a significant contributing historic resource. As a habitable five bedroom, it could be multigenerational housing or, to increase the development value could be expanded and adapted to multifamily or even commercial use. But these possibilities are prohibited under r two and a half to maximize value. Under the new zoning, the developer must demolish it even as nearby houses and lots sit empty. Is this sustainable? Bought privately for $450,000, it is now listed as a development site for 6.95. The developers other nearby projects project features 900 square foot houses selling for nearly $400,000, double the cost per square foot. Is this affordable? We are losing lifelong housing in a neighborhood of multigenerational households. The buyers of these new vertical units will have to sell. When they can no longer take the stairs, they'll probably have to leave Portland. Is this wealth building? Is it community building? A thoughtful answer could have created a mix of ground floor and upper floor units using the existing structure with new additions. The design would show consideration of the existing neighbors and the history and esthetics that make a neighborhood special. That's infill. But when you massively upzone the entire city or state, you don't target the areas that need investment, but areas that are stable and you destabilize them. You discourage investment in existing structures, you encourage land speculation and demolition and vacancy with historic structures, often on larger lots. You put a bigger target on the most special properties. You take out markers of local identity and end up with the same new developments cut and pasted in every neighborhood. Is this how housing diversity. There's currently a $64 million listing by one developer for a portfolio of 170 new build homes. This is who is building wealth under this scheme. Is this equitable? Is it democratic? I also question how the city is meant to support housing, housing, housing. While we are losing commercial tax base and cutting schools and fire stations. But as to zoning, six major points, which are a bit more fleshed out on the page that I shared, one transparency is essential to market participation as well as to democracy. Two targeted rezoning works better than sweeping changes three restrict demolition, but give historic preservation and upside for form based zoning and use flexibility are better incentives than bulk bonuses. Five designed for longevity six. Esthetics matter to everyone. Pretty neighborhoods draw taxpayers stable neighborhoods retain them. Please remember this. Thank you.
12 Thank you for your testimony. Diego, please call the next person.
13 Next is lacey sutton.
14 I, lacey sutton, I'd like to talk more about the balcony railings at cherry blossom. It's not our most pressing concern, but it's a really good example of the sort of thing your self-proclaimed biggest customer was able to get away with. Even before moving into our new homes, parents expressed concerns about having horizontal bars immediately outside the sliding glass door on the second story, with concrete below, but habitat for humanity refused to replace them. In the years since, I have witnessed countless times children climbing these bars and felt immense frustration with such a stupid, careless design. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that the design commission had actually made vertical railings a condition of approval. Why? Because they shared the same concerns about horizontal bars. During the recorded hearing, a commissioner said the latter has other problems, which is kids can actually climb and jump over them. Vertical balcony railings were a legal requirement of this build. So why do we have ladders, by the way? The condition also states unit entry stoop. Safety railings shall be vertical, but some of these have horizontal railings as well. And the rest of them are just big bars with no safety railings at all. Nothing for small hands to hold on to. I've previously testified about how, following my complaint to pd, I was told that former director kronhausen met with ceo Steve mzanetti to discuss the things they missed. And in an exceedingly rare moment of accountability, habitat was given directives to replace the railings. But after this made the evening news, pa reneged. When I asked for an explanation repeatedly for weeks, I was merely forwarded the memo the director sent to city council, which dismissed all my concerns about cherry blossom. He never wrote a word to me. Why should he, when he can just send out some bs? He knew no one would fact check on the balconies. He said, well, there was a condition in the land use review for this site stating that the railing must be vertical. This condition was related to esthetics, not safety. The railings were shown as horizontal in the 2019 land use review, which amended the previously approved design. He's referring to the type two review habitat got for minor changes. They weren't minor, but I digress. It didn't even mention railings because a single staffer could not and did not amend a condition of approval decided upon by the design commission during a type three review. The idea that an architect's drawing could do that is absurd. To amend this condition, habitat would have had to get another type three review. Here's a supervisor telling them this via email in 2019, any condition of approval not met would require a follow up. Type three please meet all conditions of approval. So another type three dc is not required. But then, like so many things that were required for cherry blossom habitat just didn't do it. And the city just signed off on it. And there were zero consequences unless the kid falls, I guess, or until a tree falls on a house or there's a fire, then there will be consequences. Thanks.
15 That concludes testimony.
16 Thank you again for folks for testifying in front of us today. Always an opportunity to share your experience at committee. Diego, go ahead and call the next item or actually please open items three through 16.
17 Item three document number 2026-247. Initiate foreclosure action on 7545 northeast sandy boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item four. Document number 2026-248. Initiate foreclosure action on 7545wi slash northeast sandy boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item five. Document number 2026-249. Initiate foreclosure action on 6307 north montana ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item six document number 2026-250. Initiate foreclosure action on north columbia boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item seven. Document number 2026-252. Initiate foreclosure action on 7250 northeast. Sandy bull. Excuse me. Northeast lombard street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item eight. Document number 2026-253. Initiate foreclosure action on 7101-7103 southeast division street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item nine document number 2026-254. Initiate foreclosure action on 1625 southeast 35th ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item ten document number 2026-255 initiate foreclosure action on 2706 southeast 122nd ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 11 document number 2026-256. Initiate foreclosure action on 2734-2738 northeast alberta street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 12. Document number 2026-257. Initiate foreclosure action on 4324 south east 65th ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 13. Document number 2026-258. Initiate foreclosure action on 6627 southeast woodstock boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 14 document number 2026-259. Initiate foreclosure action on ten 10104 southeast herald street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 15 document number 2026-260. Initiate foreclosure action on 5706 southeast lambert street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property. Item 16 document number 2026-261. Initiate foreclosure action on 855 northeast church street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
18 Thank you. Diego. All right, give me one quick second, folks. I am clarifying some changes that were made. Okay, so at the mayor's request, we are withdrawing two items from the agenda and referring these back to the mayor's office. That is item nine, document 2026-25 for property located at 1635 southeast 35th avenue, where the owner has satisfied the balance owed on the liens and item ten document. 2026-255 property located at 2706 southeast 122nd avenue where the owner has closed their open case and entered into a payment plan. Additionally, before we take on the remaining items, I'd like to note that I will not be calling for a vote today on item 14, document 2026-259. The harold street property in district one, based on information that has recently come to my attention, I believe additional time is appropriate to allow the property owner's family to determine whether they can resolve the situation without the need for foreclosure, and we can ask questions, on that if you'd like. And then as a reminder, we continued this ordinance package to allow more time for community member questions about specific properties that are eligible for foreclosure under city administrative rule. So, I will ask kevin foster, our foreclosure prevention manager, to provide us with any updates on the properties and potential resolution, and then we will open it up to committee questions and discussion. So with that, take it away.
19 All right. Good afternoon, chair Avalos, vice chair, Green and housing committee. The record. I'll state my name. Kevin foster, foreclosure prevention manager for the city. Okay. As we as we discussed, these are the two properties that were removed within the last two weeks. So actually we're taking off one more today. So there's actually going to be 11 properties that we're moving forward with. All right. And where would you like me to start? Travlos.
20 Wherever.
21 Okay. Okay. So this is the, this property 7545 northeast sandy boulevard. We went over it last week. There's been no engagement with the owner, or any of the parties of interest. In the last two weeks I did speak with one party of interest, like I told you last time, and they told me there's nothing they can really do. So of course this is why it's remaining on the list. Now this property. 6307 north montana avenue. We received an email within the last hour, and they've been able to the attorney that's working with the lender, they've been able to, get closer to resolving the property, resolving the issues at the property, and getting a certificate of occupancy, occupancy and certificate of completion. So this one, we won't be moving forward with. So I think what I'm going to do. Is because I've already gone through the presentation with you guys before, if we could just get to some, maybe you guys have specific questions about properties and I could just go from there.
22 All right. Sounds good. We will kick it off with councilor. Pirtle-guiney.
23 Thank you, chair, and thank you for being back. There were two properties I had asked questions about the previous time you were here. It sounds like one of them. 10104 southeast herald were not moving forward today. The other was 855 north east church street. You told us a few weeks ago that the property owner there had plans for the property, but hadn't been able to provide any proof of engagement with a contractor or anything else to show you that they were moving forward with those plans. Have there been any updates over the last few weeks? Have they been able to produce anything, or are we still in a situation where they are reporting plans, but not able to give you any concrete information to show those moving forward?
24 Yes. Right now we're still in that same state, but she is out of town right now. So that's why one of the reasons when I spoke with her last, she was out of town, I believe she comes back either late this week or next week. I wanted her to have the contractor just call me just so I could speak with someone and, and get this removed from the list. But we haven't been able to do that yet.
25 Do you think that she'll have sufficient time between when this moves out of committee and when it moves to full council, to be able to be in touch with you, given what you know about her, her schedule and her ability to have her contractors in touch.
26 And the good thing about it is once it goes to it's not going to full council until September 9th. We still have a month until then, but but you won't be voting that day either. So you won't be vote on the ninth as well. You guys vote like I think two weeks or a week later. So we still have time to remove it if we're able to get some commitment from her.
27 Chair, given that timeline, and I think there's been more clarity in what the city needs from this property owner since we first met. I am comfortable moving this one forward today. I would ask that, as you have conversations with the council president, these not be put on the consent agenda. I don't know if that's something he's been planning for or not, because I would like the opportunity to ask about this property again at full council, with the hopes that there are some updates within the next month.
28 Remind me the document number for the property you're mentioning.
29 Let me find it on the list, I apologize, I was looking at the address. It is. Give me just a moment. 16.
30 Okay. This is the one that we're talking about. The same property. Is that what we're.
31 I thought you had said that you were pulling document 14, nine, ten and five off the list.
32 I don't know if my numbers are correct. So tell me the document number.
33 Oh, 2026 261.
34 Okay. 261 yeah, that's why it's, it's numbered differently on my end. So that one you are saying you would like to move forward with is what I'm hearing.
35 That one I'm saying I assume we are moving these forward today. And if so, I had raised concerns about this property. What I'm sharing is that if you are hoping to move all of these forward today, I'm comfortable moving this forward with that, but would ask that it come to council in such form that I can ask questions about whether progress has been made over the next month when we're at full council. So if you are having conversations with the council president about either a consent agenda or bulking items for a vote at council, I would ask that this not be included in any actions like that, and that it come forward as a standalone item where I'll have the opportunity to check in on any progress.
36 Great. Sounds good.
37 Thank you chair.
38 Committee. Any other questions? Okay. Was there anything further you wanted to share, mr. Foster?
39 No, that's all I had.
40 Okay, great. Well, then in that case. I'm just trying to get the right language up here. So like I said last time, we are able to move them in bulk. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to name all of the properties as was stated. Let me just check one two. Okay. Yeah. So 11 total properties that I will read. Are we on the same page about that? Yes.
41 No. Ten properties.
42 Okay. We're not on the same page. Let's figure out what the discrepancy is. I have why don't so the numbers that I have that we are approving today are moving forward. I'm going to list them. 2472 4824 9250 2522 53256257258260261.
43 Chair I think and kevin can clarify item five which is 2026-249 is the 6307 montana. And that one you are asking be referred back to the mayor's office, meaning the committee does not need to take action, correct? Yes.
44 So are there three that are getting referred back to the mayor's office? Yes. Because on my list I only have two. That's my yeah.
45 This just came in within the last hour.
46 Okay. So two and the numbering is off. So don't tell me the number of the item. Tell me the actual number of the item. So 249.
47 Chair point of information. I'm sorry. You all are talking about three items being referred back to the mayor's office, but I thought you had said there were four not moving forward. Could you help us understand what the fourth item is?
48 So the three that are not moving forward were are from the mayor. Two, five, nine is going to just live in limbo, essentially is what I'm understanding. It's it'll be it'll be in committee, stay open and can be scheduled at a later date.
49 We did consult with the city attorney on this chair and the advice we got is, so it's a little bit different than the other three that are being referred back to the mayor's office. So effectively, with unanimous consent from the committee, you can continue the item to a future to be determined date that you don't need to state that keeps it alive, but it would not that item 250 sorry, 2026-259 would not be moving on with the package to council at that September date.
50 So should we understand as committee members, that the other three are being removed because of actions that have taken place with the administrative office, and that this one is being removed for other reasons.
51 Being delayed. So that's why it's not being removed. It's still going to be on the committee docket. The other three are getting officially removed from the list. Two, five, nine will stay technically on the list and just kind of live in limbo. While we give that homeowner some time, we've gotten some information that they need some more time, and then we can put it on another committee agenda in the future.
52 And is that the recommendation of the administration, or is this an action that you're asking for separate from the recommendation of the administration? I think I misunderstood and thought that this was a an ask from the administration as well.
53 It is an ask from me. Am I correct that that's how we're phrasing it? Let me check with my team. Okay. The info that we received was from mr. Foster, but this is my request. Correct? Okay. Questions on that. Or thoughts on that. Like I said, it is simply being delayed to be put on another agenda once we get more information because we've they've been in touch and they need more time is what we were told. Yeah. Okay. So to confirm, two, four, nine is what I need to cross off my list. 249254 and 255 are the ones that are pulled back by the mayor's office, correct?
54 That's correct.
55 Okay. So let me cross this out so I don't get confused. And so then therefore there will be ten as we said, because we took that off. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and move forward with, entertaining a motion unless there are other questions or discussion on this. Okay, so I am going to entertain a motion to move the following ordinances. Document number 2026-247. Document number 2026-2482026-250, 2026-25220262-2532026-256, 2026-257, 2026-258, 2026-260 and 2026-261 to the full council, with a recommendation to pass. So I entertain a motion, so I need somebody to move it. So moved. Okay. Moved by vice chair Green second. Seconded by councilor Novick. Okay, any further discussion? Okay. Please call the roll.
56 Koyama Lane. I Novick. I Green aye, Morillo pirtle-guiney I Avalos I with five eyes. The motion carries and the ordinances. Document number 2026-247, 2026-248, 2026-250, 2026-252, 2026-253, 2026-256, 2026-257, 2026-258, 2026-260, 2026-261. Will move to the full council with the recommendation that they be passed.
57 Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. Diego, please read the next item.
58 Item 17, document number 2026-272. Appropriate grant award of $35 million for section 108 loan guarantee program.
59 All right, so this ordinance appropriates award funds from HUD section 108 loan guarantee program for the city's use in supporting regulated, affordable housing. The funds must serve households earning 0 to 80% ami and can be used for property acquisition, conversion or rehabilitation of existing affordable housing properties. So I will go ahead and hand it off to our colleagues in the grants office and the housing bureau. Go ahead.
60 Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Okay. Great. My name is carrie and I'm with the grants management division. I'm stepping in for sheila craig, who was taken away today. Not taken away. That's the wrong language. Pulled aside for other things today. So, budget appropriation ordinance for the item that you just mentioned, appropriating the award for section 108 loan guarantee program for $35 million. Let me get. There we go. So this, as you have just outlined, I will just say again what you've just said, the ordinance amendment amends the budget to appropriate funds awarded by the u.s. Department of housing and urban development into the grants fund. This grant application with sap I'd hc204 was submitted on, July 1st, 2025. Hud notified the city of the section one affordable housing loan fund award to the city in the amount of $35 million. Typically with awards, there is a period of performance, but there is not one with this award agreement that has been specified. And the housing bureau expects to fund a pipeline of projects over a five year period. First loan may close as early as the end of 2027, meaning the repayment period period would then run from 1220 27 to 12 2052, which is 20 years from the date of the final loan closing. The award does not require any matching funds, and it is intended to supplement, not replace existing city revenues. I'll just do a high level overview of what the award will fund. It's seeking to support the creation of an affordable housing loan fund targeted to projects that create or preserve housing affordability to low and moderate income households. The proposed affordable housing loan fund seeks to address portland's need to add 38,000 units of affordable housing to households earning 0 to 80% ami by 2045, as described in the city's 2023 housing needs analysis. The Portland housing bureau is in the process of developing a recommended spending plan, as well as investment requirements and preferences for an upcoming solicitation for funding requests to use these section 108 funds, and generally section 108 funds can fund the following types of projects rehabilitation of existing regulated, affordable rental housing and units owned by low and moderate income homeowners. Acquisition and rehabilitation of existing office or residential buildings for conversion to affordable housing and activities to facilitate new affordable housing development, including land acquisition clearance, site preparation, infrastructure remediation, relocation or other eligible uses. That is the end of my presentation and I welcome questions about the award process itself. And we have some folks from the housing bureau, if there are, specific questions as well.
61 Great. Before we do that, do we have folks to sign up to testify?
62 We have one individual signed up. Would you like.
63 Me to, without objection, are we okay to take that person and then come back to questions committee? Okay, let's go ahead.
64 Home dash forward dash cages dash people dash for dash profit and dash the dash suffering dash now. That concludes testimony.
65 All right, well, then we'll go ahead with questions in the queue, starting with councilor. Koyama Lane.
66 Thank you for being here. First I wanted to say thank you and congratulations to the staff at fbw for working on this, for the work in securing the funding. I understand that these are are long processes and appreciate the hard work and public engagement and dedication to this. I'm wondering if we can hear a little bit more about the types of eligible projects, looking to support through the affordable housing loan fund and also the outreach plan to, and how, what the intention is to let partners know more about this.
67 Absolutely. I'll rely on my colleague amanda saal from the housing bureau.
68 Good afternoon everyone. I'm amanda saul with Portland housing bureau. Thanks for your question. I think we're still working on figuring out our implementation process. I think initially we will focus our focus the funding on preservation of existing affordable housing projects, because that's where we're seeing the most need in the community right now.
69 So those are ones that are already in the process of.
70 Those are ones that are already that already have affordable housing restrictions and may have had, you know, renters living in them for 20 or 40 years. And it's time to do a big rehab, replace the roof, replace the hvac system, sort of do a whole rehab plus financial restructure. And that's what these funds, are often used for.
71 And will be going out to do outreach to figure out those or partners can come and say, hey, what about us?
72 Yeah, we, we, often when we allocate our funding, do a no solicitation process. And so we will create a solicitation that says these are our goals and priorities for this funding. And then people will, will bring us their projects and apply.
73 Great. Thank you.
74 Yeah.
75 All right. I am next in the queue. Thanks again. We all know that Portland is continuing to face a significant shortage of affordable housing. And one of the biggest barriers to getting projects built or preserved is access to financing. So I see today's ordinance as adding to another financial tool to our toolbox. And this action, while it appropriates the 35 million federal award, it's important that we remember that the section eight, section 108 program is not a traditional grant. So it's only allowing the city to borrow federally guaranteed funds and then relend them to affordable housing projects over time. So I do think that used responsibly, this can help stretch our local resources and make more affordable housing projects financially feasible. But at the same time, because the city is ultimately responsible for repayment, I think it's important that we understand how php plans to manage both the opportunities and the risks with the program. So you mentioned that php previously operated a section 108 loan fund. Can you just talk me through what lessons from that experience are informing how this new program is going to be structured?
76 Yeah, thank you for your question. I appreciate that you made it also very clear that this is a loan. This is not a grant to the city. This is a loan to the city. And so one of the things we're thinking about structuring, this time is that we loan these funds to the project at the same interest rate and with the same term that matches the, the loan from HUD to the city. So that repayment is more, assured. In addition to that, we will, we plan to set aside part of our annual cdbg entitlement that comes to the city to help fund any gaps that might happen or lags in payments from the borrowers.
77 And how do you envision this financing tool complementing php's existing affordable housing programs rather than duplicating them?
78 Yeah. So, I think it could be done in a couple different ways. I think, you know, I could imagine this complementing PCEF funds to do preservation projects. So it's providing a low interest loan less than what the market provides. And in addition to that, some cf funds that support specific energy upgrades. I might have forgotten the second part of your question. I'm sorry.
79 Yeah, I was just asking in general, how we felt that we were complementing our existing programs.
80 Yeah. Thanks. Traditionally pf b provides cash flow contingent, contingent, subordinate loans to its to our affordable housing projects. And those funds recycle over time and this will be just like a little bit different because it will be a loan instead of a cash flow contingent loan. It'll be a hard debt likely in first position. And so, traditionally pf b's funding is sort of behind your first mortgage position. So it, it, it's layered with that. And in this case, the section 108 loan guarantee program will take the the first position. So it doesn't allow for quite as many layering opportunities other than funds like pcf.
81 And what gap in the current affordable housing financing market do you believe this? This loan fund is intended to fill?
82 I think, we've come through a period of having Portland and metro bond funds for many years, which helped to create thousands of new affordable units in our community. And now we've allocated all of those funds. And so this 35 million from HUD will help fill that gap to preserve our existing projects, from, from sort of this period of new construction that we've been in to until we have our next housing resource.
83 Thank you so much. Yeah. Again, I think it's just important that the city, because we're ultimately responsible for repayment, that we're just seeing how we're managing this program with strong underwriting and thoughtful project selection and of course, ongoing oversight. So I'll be interested to track how this program is performing over time, both in terms of the affordable homes that it helps create and preserve, or how effectively it's leveraging the federal financing while protecting the city's financial interest. But I appreciate the work that's gone into securing this opportunity and looking forward to seeing how it helps our affordable housing goals. Next up, we've got councilor Pirtle-guiney.
84 Thank you, chair, and thank you for moving us into that line of questioning about how this we are calling it a grant in this, posting, but it's really a loan will actually work for the city. I want to dig into a few things that you all said in response to questions asked by the chair and a few things in the presentation itself. So in the presentation, you say that you expect to fund a pipeline of projects over a five year period. So with the repayment that we will have to make of this loan, is the goal to only cycle through these funds one time before we have to repay them? Or is the hope that we will fund projects, be repaid on the loans for those projects, and then be able to fund additional projects and get a few cycles through before we need to repay the federal government.
85 Yeah, I, I think that we will only be able to get through one cycle, but I would have to like dig into the loan agreement with HUD to be able to understand that a little bit better.
86 Okay. And you said that the the loans will be given from the city to local, either developers or owners, right at whatever the terms are that we receive. So what is that term and at what interest rate will we be lending this money?
87 Yeah. It's floating and it's, it's based on an indices that HUD sets and it floats. And so I can't tell you do I.
88 Tell us the range just so that we know what to expect here.
89 Yeah. Sorry. My subject matter expert is coming up to help me.
90 Fantastic.
91 Hi. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney. My name is kara hamilton with the Portland housing bureau. So the the floating rate is the three month treasury bill rate plus 35 basis points. So right now that's about 4.17%. So significantly lower than, a for profit lender would be lending at.
92 Okay. So the benefit here for the community really is in receiving a lower interest rate. They're not forgivable loans. We are not able to extend the loan period over a longer period of time. It is really just access to that federal interest rate that we're able to provide through this process. Is that.
93 That's correct. We could choose to do a longer term than what the city has with HUD, but our recommendations are that we stay consistent with what the term is between the in in the agreement between city and HUD.
94 And that's a 20 year term. And can you speak a little bit to the cbdg repayment makes me a little bit nervous to hear that. So I'd like to hear both what within the cbdg funded projects, we would be doing less of. And how much you think we will need to pull from that source. And then I guess a secondary question to those, do we expect then as payments presumably catch up to be able to, recapitalize the cbdg fund with those excess payments? Or would those additional dollars go somewhere else? Or do we expect that there won't be excess payments because we're assuming some amount of, of loan not being repaid?
95 Yeah. I think, our goal, the way I think of this is that we are forward allocating our cdbg, right? We are sort of we, we, the city will be borrowing against our future cdbg allocation. And so I think of being able to do more preservation projects or acquisition projects in a shorter amount of time, rather than waiting for our cdbg, annual entitlement to sort of grow to a place where we can do a number of projects. But we will, we, we have talked to our finance department who's also here just in case we need some more support or you have more finance related questions. We have planned to set aside some of our annual cdbg entitlement as a reserve, in case we need those funds to help pay back HUD.
96 And what won't we be doing with cbdg because of that?
97 Yeah. So typically we use cdbg for preservation projects. So we will be doing preservation more preservation projects sooner than if we wait and did them just through our annual entitlement. We also, we also use some of our cdbg for some of our single family, homeownership programs. And those won't be impacted by this. That will sort of stay steady.
98 So in terms of the risk to other programs at the city, the plan within the bureau is to absorb that risk within the portion of our cbdg funds that are funding similar work. So we are betting on having we are we are risking having a little less in the future in order to front load for a need that is in crisis right now, but the bureau's plan is to make sure to protect other programs both within cbdg and outside of cbdg. We shouldn't see an impact in any other part of our funding portfolio, other than the potential for a small impact in the future piece of the cbdg portfolio that funds similar preservation work.
99 Yes, I would say that that is our goal and our intention, and that's accurate.
100 Okay. I'm comfortable with that intent moving forward. Thank you. Yeah.
101 Vice chair Green.
102 Thank you. Chair Avalos, thank you so much for securing the grant. Couldn't come at a better possible time. And so I just want to uplift the work that folks in the bureau are always doing to look for ways to secure external resources. Even if they are loans, they are liquidity tools that come from the federal government, that are important parts of the mix. I guess, I mean, this is a slam dunk for me, but I will take the opportunity to ask, do you see this as maybe an opportunity to braid with some of the other debt buy down funds that council has already secured? Because this seems like if we're targeting the, the sort of whole portfolio of properties out there that are months away, year away from basically going into receivership if we don't take action, do you see this really targeting that, and then maybe using an opportunity to take this grant and braid together some of the stuff council secured as a way to kind of really leverage something?
103 Yeah. Thanks for the question. We actually considered that we considered putting some of this funding out with the rent, with the mortgage and rent buy down. That council passed back in April, and decided that we need more time to figure out the implementation and we really want to connect this, more to the unified housing strategy that will also be coming before the council soon. And so we and because there is such a need in the affordable housing community right now, we decided to get that 8.8 million out as quickly as possible and do this as like a second step, later this year or early next year.
104 I think that's the right call. These are not all going to come at once too. And you want to do some due diligence when you evaluate, how to rank order these things and do triage. I appreciated the discussion up here about kind of the, in some sense, the counterparty risk that is present where we borrow from the government, then lend on behalf of the city. Well, yeah, anyway, there's that chain of kind of lending and underwriting essentially that's happening here. Any questions I would have had have been answered in that, I appreciated the council. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney question about sort of making sure we were mindful of the, previously standing mission and goal there. And so I feel comfortable with this. I want to thank you for your, your work in securing this. This is a sizable and meaningful, line of liquidity that we can use to support, what is an increasingly urgent problem. So thank you. I'm going to support it.
105 Thank you, vice chair Green. All right. I don't see anyone else in the queue. So if we're ready we can go ahead and move forward. I would like to apologies. Here we go. I'd like to entertain a motion to move the ordinance. Document number 2026-272 to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
106 So moved.
107 Second.
108 Moved by councilor Novick, seconded by councilor Pirtle-guiney diego. Please go ahead and call the roll.
109 Koyama Lane I Novick.
110 I work I. Green I.
111 Pirtle-guiney I.
112 Avalos I.
113 With five eyes. The motion carries and the ordinance document number 2026-272 will move to the full council with a recommendation to be passed.
114 Thank you for your time.
115 Thank you.
116 So colleagues, we are a bit ahead of schedule. And so I'm concerned that maybe our guests might not be here. So could I get a check on that? Claire, do you have an update on that?
117 For the design competition? We are not quite all assembled with maybe ten minutes.
118 Okay, well, then why don't we go ahead and take our break now? Let's just, how about we give it until 305 just to give ourselves a little more time? See you at 305. Thank you.
119 If you have.
120 All right. We are returning to the housing and permitting committee. Diego, go ahead and read item 18.
121 Item 18, document number 2026-273pnw. Single stair design competition.
122 All right, so vice chair Green and I have invited Portland neighbors welcome and their partners to tell us about a single stair design competition that they recently organized. The competition is part of a broader initiative focused on midrise housing development and single stair building code changes. And our intent here is to just talk openly about these kinds of innovative ideas and see how they fit into our broader housing discussion and vision as a committee. So with that, presenters, please introduce yourselves and take it away.
123 Well thank you. We're here representing Portland neighbors. Welcome and strong towns. Pdx will be talking a little bit about single stair reform and highlighting the recent design competition. And it's a real pleasure to be here. My name is ian crosier. I'm a volunteer with Portland neighbors.
124 Welcome michael anderson. I'm with sightline institute.
125 And I'm wes harris. I'm with iris design build.
126 And michael's going to kick it off.
127 Yeah. Thanks. So I'm here to talk about the sort of context of how we got here. And then I'll hand off to ian, who's going to talk about why this is all a good idea to think about, talk about. And then wes is going to talk about some of the practicalities. I think in general, the idea, the national context of this is changing every month. But the states highlighted here have all passed some version of legalizing single stair codes. That is to say, small multi-family buildings. We'll get into that in a bit above three stories, including his local options. And then various cities have also directly passed these. And some in some cases, there's a local option passed by the state. And in some cases, the state has simply said, no, we're going to legalize these throughout the state. This is a change to the building codes that allow this type of building. The. Sort of model for how people started talking about this concept was something that we've been doing in seattle that has been happening in seattle for decades, since 1977. The city added a sort of code option that lets buildings up to six stories be built around a single staircase, with various safety measures above and beyond what you would see in a standard building. And it's happening all over town on these small lots where you can fit not a large building like you might see along powell boulevard today, but just a pretty small scale neighborhood scale building that, unlike a lot of large apartment buildings, actually has windows facing on multiple sides. We'll get into the benefits of that in a bit, but the model really here is seattle, another city that's even closer to home. Vancouver, Washington allowed to create a special building code path for these. Just a few months ago. Portland's story, starts sort of on this in 2023, when the Oregon legislature ordered the state to encourage sunlight suites through building code reforms. And they left that somewhat open ended. And so it was up to the state to settle on the code for that. It did. In 2025, the state added a four story sunlight suite option in appendix q of the state's building code. The building code, as usual, was adopted by the city of Portland this last November, and the city of Portland issued a news release. It said, hooray! We've got this new option. This is great. And a week later, the fire bureau said in the daily journal of commerce that actually these buildings wouldn't get what is a standard option for roof access that other multifamily buildings have typically gotten. Obviously, roof access is very important in a fire, no disputing that. But the ways to do that are unusually limited for this type of building. Under the current codes in Portland. Since then, there's been no further action. And no buildings have been built or proposed to my knowledge, using the new code. And it's not entirely clear that they could be because of that special restriction that applies only to this building type that the city has been, you know, seemingly trying to legalize. So we're here to call attention to that somewhat. Meanwhile, the future is that in 2027, the next national model building code is expected to allow four storey sunlight suites. So it's actually slightly more liberal than our state code has allowed the city to be. There's possibility that not only will Portland not be ahead of that curve, it'll end up behind that curve if no further action is taken.
128 Thank you michael. So why single storey buildings? It's a it's a funny nerdy little change that that can unlock a lot. The way I think I'd like to think about it is that there's a way that they build apartment buildings in pretty much the whole rest of the world. And there's a way that we do it here, and the way that we do it here can reduce the amount of ventilation available, reduces the amount of of daylight that can be accessed from most units, because you're only getting windows, usually on one side of a unit. If you visited someone's or live in a in a recently built apartment building, you're probably familiar that it can be a very long, narrow, dark corridor. And, but a single storey building by nature of having more surface area relative to the floor area can have windows on many sides. Like I said, this is the way they build apartment buildings and almost everywhere else in the world, the, the beautiful streets of paris where you walk down and there's a, there's a perimeter or many european cities, a perimeter line of buildings with many different openings. Those are single storey buildings. The way they build in japan and australia and all over south America is, is, is based around this, this, this, this single stair idea as well, which also includes elevators. We should add, it's not just a stair, it's a single stair with an elevator. United states and canada are outliers in this regard. United states generally just allowing up to three storeys in canada even worse. Unusually allowing just two storeys with a single stair. The like we like, michael said. And like wes will, will will say, will help dig into the, the typical apartment building that we're all familiar with is, is a large building. You see them on commercial corridors very often because they need large sites. They have, it's a double loaded corridor. It's like a sort of like a sardine. You've got, you've got a central spine and you've got, rooms that are like narrow ribs coming off on either side there. It's a long walk to the elevator. Those, those corridors are eerie, and have no windows and can feel, anti-social. And, and while there are two stairwells, they are shared by a very large number of units. And it may be a long walk down the hallway to get one in the case of a fire, a single stair building or point access block is another term. Allows it to be much easier, like we said, to have, have rooms with cross ventilation. It's a short distance to get to the stairs and elevators. And in these, these buildings are much more flexible. They can be, be skinnier buildings. They're double loaded corridor, often 70, 80, 90ft wide. A single stair building might just be 30 or 40ft wide. And they can therefore they can fit on a much greater variety of lots. Michael eliason, who founded larch lab, was, created these graphics and, and has led much of the movement to raise awareness around this building typology. One of the important things also to note is that single stair can work much better for family size apartment buildings. It works fine for studios, but it also can work well for live work units, two bedrooms, three bedrooms, and an even even larger, and also creative combinations of those where it's not all just the same product. One size fits all. With, with all that it's been, it's been quite inspiring. And we at Portland neighbors welcome wanted to explore these ideas, these really exciting benefits of this building typology and what see what it would look like in Portland. And so for that reason, we were working with strong towns. Pdx organized a design competition around single stair residential buildings for here in Portland, Oregon. The. The competition is open to architecture students in Oregon and Washington and tasked them with building a six floor, single stair residential building, so much so taller than what would be allowed in Oregon today. Under the under, under the Oregon building code with up to four units per floor, they would meet the criteria of having a district scaled approach. Be resilient in a world of a changing climate and with predictable natural disasters would be sustainable. It would help affordability and would be have be compatible with modular construction technology that can be made offsite. We received six submissions from student teams, all of whom were architecture students at the university of Oregon, and they were tasked with choosing, one of four 5000 square foot lots in the inner east side, for their design, something we want to highlight that these were lots, these lots, were for their designs were located in the inner eastside Portland neighbors welcome and strong towns. You may recall, we are very excited about inner east side for all. We think it's an incredibly important policy for the city of Portland in terms of sustainability, affordability and equity. And, and if zoning were to get out of the way, allowing housing in a part of the city, that's transit and amenity rich. At the same time, the zoning change is not going to achieve its potential if we're not able to also address other barriers to infill housing in dense, built up parts of the city with small lots. So we see single stair reform and inner east side for all of two sides as two sides of the same coin. And that's a big motivation for, for the competition. The competition, the, with the committee organizers, including myself, rj shepherd, colleen dixon, victoria villa, and lee shelton and sam stuckey, we helped organize tours of different buildings around town to help inspire the students. Several of the student teams were also in a concurrent class at university of Oregon. So they they got to work with their professor on their designs as well, and produced these beautiful, physical models to accompany their designs. Some of us from the committee, as well as some of the professional mentors that were, that were recruited to help, guide the students throughout the process were able to attend the review. And so it was quite, quite wonderful to hear the students, the reasoning behind their designs and see the models and, and even they created videos to accompany the posters. The competition kicked off with a, with a, with a kickoff event featuring michael eliason, the architect who's based in seattle, who drew from his experience working in germany in the united states to raise raising awareness about single stair or point access blocks a few years ago and has been really leading the charge to get people around the country to care about this extremely nerdy building code detail, but that in its in its huge potential for for changing and improving how we build housing in the us. And then we, we, we concluded the design competition with an award ceremony on may 28th, which was a really fun event. It brought together a broad cross-section of people who care about housing and affordability and design from professional architects and planners, the students and their friends, members of the, of the, the organizations and then just folks who heard about it online and they were all there together having conversations. We, we got to announce the awards at the ceremony. Based on the scoring of our, of our, our interdisciplinary jury, which included councilor Green, along with, planning commission chair steph ruth and michael eliason and a lot of the leading lights in the, the architecture and housing, scene in Portland. Really, we were just really grateful for the contributions, and of the time and, and thoughtfulness that from everyone in the jury went into it. And we are, we also want to, to just celebrate and appreciate the beautiful designs the student teams produced. We're just going to go through three of them now. You should have hopefully all of the submissions in your agenda packet. And, and they're also available online. I see some hands up. Should I pause for these? Okay. Don't know about normal zoom protocol here in council chambers. Thank you. I'll continue. So the first place design was called well on first.
129 Apologies apparently. Yes, we do have one quick question.
130 Oh, great. Okay, cool.
131 Just as you get into these, could you say a little bit about the parameters that you wanted because there's certain lot size parameters that are really important to this. So can you just sort of level set so everyone understands like why those parameters are chosen. I think that can be helpful.
132 Yes. And, and wes will speak to that as well a little bit. But and so, yeah, so these and you can, as you can see from this design, it's a, it's a compact building. And so that was part of the, the, the, the submission criteria was to design for one of these, these 5000 square foot lots and 5000 square foot being being the key. That's, that's by far the most common lot size in the inner east side of Portland. And it is much smaller than it can be typically developed for, for, for multifamily development, using conventional approaches. So. Yes, they also were trying to meet the criteria of that of resilience, sustainability, the district scale or the then, and then each one received a score based on those criteria. And yeah, in west, we'll dig into the sort of the important economics around that lot size, I think a little bit more. So thank you for the question. So this team, richard wan, colin george created this really beautiful design. It emphasizes access to light and air. It's the designed for cross-laminated timber construction. It has a variety of different unit layouts on different floors, but they have a sort of a vertical structure, these vertical vertical structures system that is sort of same throughout, but works with with the different layouts. And it's got their, their submission had just really lovely, clean visual style that did a great job highlighting the benefits of single stair design. Moving on to the one of the, one of the second place winners, reframing their tagline was, reframing proposes housing as a framework for care, and their design emphasizes accessibility, universal design, aging in place, and accommodating multi-generational families that may include caregivers. They've got these cool, adaptable layouts with connected studios. It's sort of like a house and a mother in law unit, except that's all on the same floor as an apartment building. It's, they've got really these lovely, bright, warm graphics. I think I teared up a little bit. This is one of one of them that that was quite moving when I was first going through and looking at them. And that is, just really impressive work. You can see the blue, images there on the top are different accessible, designs to allow people with different, different levels of ability to, to, to, to do what they need to do in their home. Just one example of the really thoughtful work that went into it. Finally, the one I want, the last one I want to highlight is called Portland access block. That's a pun on the point access block. This designed by anna, danny and griff, features reconfigurable layouts with a cross-laminated timber panel system. It emphasizes interactions, social interaction with some shared porches, and a mix of different unit sizes on the same floor, and the idea of getting people to talk to each other with different sort of household sizes, and an adaptability for shade, privacy, openness, and airflow. Like I said, there's three other designs that are also beautiful and excellent, and encourage you to check those out. We think these, these images are really important and powerful tool for communicating about housing, a positive vision for housing in our city. It's human centered, beautiful, abundant, and contributes positively to our neighborhoods. And, but these, these designs are intentionally very aspirational and hopefully inspirational. But in order to keep the thread today with, with the actual development conditions and the actual city of Portland and why single stair reform is so important for, for building housing in those actual conditions. We wanted to, have wes ayers, a developer of small scale housing here in Portland, share his knowledge about that. So thank you.
133 Thank you. Ian. My name is wes ayers. I'm principal at ayers design build, and we help developers design and investors design and build medium and small scale infill housing here in Portland. I'm
134 Familiar with small scale development and single stair. So I'm here to give you some background on the economics of single stair buildings and how allowing taller street scale apartment buildings on small infill lots can bring a lot more housing to the vibrant fabric of our historic mixed use and urban. And I apologize in advance the, the slides aren't totally aligned with what I'm going to say, but, we got this. So, portland's inner urban neighborhoods were platted about a century ago. They're small blocks, dense blocks, and a typical lot size, as ian pointed out, is about 50 by 100ft. I think we're all familiar with the north northwest alphabet district, buckman, Hawthorne, mississippi. Each has frequent transit sidewalks, street trees, corner stores, vibrant restaurants, and errands can all be accomplished on foot or bike. Most of these neighborhoods already have old brick apartment buildings in them, and anyone who walks through northwest Portland, kerns or buckman has seen them mixed right in with all the foursquares and all the bungalows. Right? And nobody feels that they're out of place. So these buildings were legally legal when they were built. And we stopped building them. And the apartment buildings we build today don't fit on a typical Portland lot. So why don't they fit? The standard American apartment building is an archetype familiar here in Portland. It's a hallway down the middle. Apartments on both sides and a stair at each end. And we call that the double loaded corridor. And it's an efficient layout that maximizes the number of units per floor while meeting all the fire and life safety requirements for that building type. So each apartment has just enough natural light, and it connects along a long hallway with two exit stairs and an elevator, as ian described earlier. So these apartment buildings are economically efficient and generally developed by large institutional investors. And if you've played the, you know, the apartment game enough, which I have, there's a prototype. We stick to it. You know, we try to play with this facade to keep things interesting, but for the most part, these buildings are spreadsheet driven, right? And we're maximizing the number of units on each site. So they require about 55 or 60ft in width to really maximize that double loaded corridor. And so that's, and we're familiar with these buildings, right? We see them in slab town, we see them in the pearl district, we see them, along division. We see them kind of at all these places that, you know, we see these large apartment buildings. And so, the reality is that portland's typical lot is relatively small. And we have already developed much of our inner city sort of large lot capacity. So those apartment buildings, they require large lots. Most new large sites would be need to be assembled from lots that already have people living on them and the buildings that would need to come down to consolidate those lots will likely be older and less expensive. That's our naturally affordable housing. So land value in Portland runs the way I think anybody here would expect. Any inner urban areas carry the highest land values, which means that consolidating lots in our transit rich and commercially viable neighborhoods where everybody wants to live is an expensive endeavor. So currently it's both so expensive and restrictive that very little of almost no new developments happening right now. So portland's own housing needs analysis, which I think some of us are familiar with, calls for about 120,000 new homes by 2045. And that's less than 20 years from now. And we're not building anywhere near, at the rate in order to achieve that. So we'll have little chance of actually meeting that goal if we wait to assemble these lots, right. To, for these big apartments. And so we need a different strategy. And I think we need the ability to build residential density on the existing lots we have, but those lots are small. So what fits? Well, double loaded quarters don't fit on small lots and are typically too wide to retain the economic efficiency. The second stair and the connecting corridors erode the net available housing area for each floor. And then the fire code further restricts the distance between the two stairs. There's actually a minimum distance or a maximum or minimum distance. They're allowed to be, to each other. And the result is a building that's constricted by egress requirements and the ability to, and they can only basically provide either smaller units, right? Or a limited number of units per floor. So, so this is kind of why we don't really see a lot of double, stared buildings on small sites. You just don't see them. Single stair layouts help a lot with only one stair circulation space is reduced up to, a third of what it would be here. And you can see with this slide how much circulation space is required per floor versus, you know, having a single stair. So with only one stair, the circulation space is reduced up to a third of the space required for a double loaded corridor and allowing one more unit, or more area room for larger two and three bedroom units. And again, as ian pointed out, with larger windows on each floor. So not only are these units more economical, they feel more feel more like homes. So this is why single stair buildings are common on single lot types. For up to three stories in residential multifamily zoned areas. So what's the problem? Well, in order to build more housing for more people in well connected and desirable neighborhoods, we need land. And because there is very little vacant land left in these neighborhoods, we likely need to remove existing housing, which comes at both an economic and a displacement cost. So on a typical single lot in portland's inner neighborhoods, a single stair, three story building that's up to about four units per floor times three floors. Right. And then we lose a floor to the first floor for, you know, circulation, bike rooms, all that kind of stuff. And so we end up with 11 units. And that's with sort of even sort of the best zoning we could get. And most of our lots don't even have that. So we end up with really small buildings. So the economic viability of any development is dependent on the number of variables, including land cost, demolition costs, and all these costs that go into making buildings. Right. Well, right now, and all of that has to be paid for by either rent or a sales price, right? And right now, the rent and the sales don't cover the cost to develop on most of those sites with three story buildings. So each development obviously must clear the cost to develop before it can actually become more housing. And as land becomes more valuable and fixed costs continue to increase, we're limited in our options. And the ready remedy to us right now is capacity. So increasing development capacity reduces cost per unit. This may seem obvious, right? But I think it's worth saying out loud. Roughly two thirds of a development at the scale that we're talking about right now scales per unit, right? So every unit needs its own framing, siding, windows, drywall, cabinets, appliances and wiring. But the other third remains relatively fixed per development. That's land design and engineering, excavation, the foundation, the bike room, the roof, all of those things are fixed regardless, regardless of how many floors you have. So when each additional floor adds four more homes, because that's a limit for single stair buildings, right to those fixed costs, right? The cost per unit drops substantially every floor we add. So the result of each floor of building capacity is substantial. Take the same lot, the same foundation, same roof, and roughly the same set of drawings. And the only thing changing is the number of floors, three floors, and that's 11 homes. And each one of those costs on some of our more recent models, about $278,000 a unit, to deliver. And then if we add a fourth floor, we get down to 236,000. If we add a fifth floor, we can get down to, 226,000. Right. And that so each additional floor only costs an additional $179,000 per floor. Right? So you can see how quickly adding a floor really reduces the amount, the cost of each additional unit. Small infill lot does something that large projects cannot. A 15, home building on one lot is a project that a local investor or developer can finance or manage. Granted, it's still a lot of money, right? But you don't need a large institutional loans to kind of build this kind of housing. A 200 unit building on an assembled lot requires, you know, many millions of dollars and years of lot consolidation and predevelopment. Only a handful of firms in Portland can do that. And Portland already has plenty of builders doing houses, adus and small multifamily, making a fourth or more floors possible on a standard lot puts apartment construction within the reach of a lot more investors. Right? So, basically there's a few things that I just kind of want to kind of put out there, right? One is that what's limiting us? Right? Well, right now, as was mentioned, we have some fire apparatus issues. Portland's code guide allows for stories on a single stair, but it requires the street facing side with 26ft clear for a ladder truck and our power lines overhead. That's not basically, there's almost no lots that comply with that. And the second is zoning reform, which Portland neighbors welcome, is ringing the bell on for the inner city side for all. So even if we were out, the building code were allowed would allow a fourth floor. The zoning in most of our multi-dwelling neighborhoods still limits us to three floors regardless. And then the third thing is that four stories is the current maximum for single stair in Oregon. But seattle has allowed six since 1977. As michael pointed out, new york allows six. British columbia allows six. And as land costs keep rising, we need the capacity to expand up, not out. So none of this is experimental. New york has had about 4400 single stair buildings for over three, over three stories. And their fire death rate is no different. And this is from pew, than any other apartment building in the city. Seattle has been building them for 50 years. So, so that's it. That's what I've got. And, and I guess we're all happy to answer any questions.
135 Thank you so much for the thorough presentation and really just excited to see the innovation that's been shown in the competition. And hopefully we're about to enter into some unified housing strategy discussions. And I'm really looking forward to this being part of it. So we've got a couple of folks in the queue, and we'll start with councilor. Koyama Lane.
136 Thank you for being here. Thanks for the presentation. Always love hearing about a student design competition. It's awesome. Can one of you share a bit more about if and how single stair design could help us? Plan for more accessible housing, especially for people who use wheelchairs.
137 I can take a crack. The. Key thresholds for accessible housing, I would say are first, does it have at least 20 homes in the building? The 20th home triggers a type a accessibility mandate for at least one of those homes. And, so once you are able to put 20 homes in the building, one of them absolutely has to be pretty wheelchair ready. That type a is quite a high standard and effective at it. The, if you're only building to three stories at a single stair layout, that's only going to be 12 homes, four stories gets you to 16, five stories gets you to 20. So we're not with this layout on the vast majority of lots. Even if we were to allow small apartment buildings on the vast majority of lots in close in neighborhoods, they likely wouldn't be built. They wouldn't trigger the a threshold. They wouldn't trigger inclusionary zoning until you can get to at least 20 homes in the in the building. So that's one part. Another threshold is, is there an elevator? If there's an elevator, not only do you have an elevator, you also have a type b standard that applies to all the buildings, which is a lower standard of accessibility, but works for people who don't need a mobility device. But still, you know, benefit from some accessibility features. So both getting to five stories and for the sake of making the elevator feasible, you know, the floor is two, three, and four benefit from the existence of that fifth story that makes the elevator feasible. And, and from getting to the higher unit count.
138 And then jumping on, on to that again, this, this single stair aligning with entry side for all, allowing apartment buildings in more locations off of arterials. If, if we have a building typology that that is, is feasible to build in those areas, all of a sudden that opens up much vast areas of the city that people who need a wheelchair, are able to live in. Whereas currently if, if you need to live in a building with, with an elevator, you have quite limited options that are mostly on, on large arterials.
139 And also, can someone expand on how single stair plans could be adapted to support residents over time? So for people who are, community members who are aging in place.
140 Sure. I think the, honestly, the designs in that came out of the competition do, do that quite beautifully. One of the and, and it's, and we can't say what any, any particular building design or building owner is going to do with their building. But in general, the, the layout, the single stair layout creates options because, because it, it takes up so little space because it allows the flexibility in unit layout and in light and air, it's there, there. That means that it is, it is, there are many more possibilities to design a building that is going to work for a multi-generational family that is going to, have maybe a variety of different layouts and parts of the building. That would be appropriate for a person, a different, different life stages. Of course, the accessibility benefits that michael just mentioned. And there's also in terms of the social component, there's is some nice studies out there that, that focus on the, the kinds of small public private spaces that we occupy. I mentioned those, those long eary hallways that are associated with double corridor buildings. That is a, when you are sharing that space with potentially hundreds of other strangers, that that creates a different social dynamic that in, I think, generally speaking, is does not promote socializing because it's just too many strange people. Whereas when you have a four, four or 6 or 8 folks who are on, on just a single floor of the building or even up to, you know, a little more than a dozen units, that is a small enough group of people that it becomes much easier. And there is, and there is literature that has looked into this that makes it much easier to build social connections, which we also know is incredibly important. As, as people go through different life stages.
141 Thank you. And I'm looking at slide five. You can see it's very, it's like November 4th. And then a week later, here from the fire bureau, I'm wondering if, if you all have been able to have conversations with leaders in our fire bureau or even the fire chief, do you know some of their perspectives and, and then secondary looking at cities like Vancouver, Washington, seattle that are moving forward with this, do you know how that has worked with their fire bureaus? Have they been able to find some compromising, some working together or can you share a little bit about that?
142 I don't think any of us can speak for fire bureaus here or elsewhere in particular, but the. I spoke with, member, the fire bureau team a couple years ago when I was, gathering information for the conversation at the state level, and was part of a subsequent conversation with some, building code and fire code people here in the city. Soon after that, it seemed to me like at the time, it was a very forthright conversation about trade offs and ladder angles and so on. And I was pretty optimistic that, everybody was headed to, a useful outcome. I have not personally been able to speak with any folks since that November, decision. And I know we've been in conversation with a couple council offices about it, but I don't know what may have come of that. I would love to.
143 I just got sent, an official statement. Okay, so it sounds like there are some pretty strong feelings. Do you can you share it all about studies around fire safety, around single stair design and what those studies show.
144 Again, but do you want to please. Okay, so, there was a close analysis that wes mentioned of the safety record in new york city, that concluded that the it had the exact over the course of, the last 25 years or so, the number of homes in those buildings compared to every other existing building in new york city had the exact same rate of fire deaths for the single stair and the other housing types. There is a different analysis of national data comparing multifamily buildings, old multifamily buildings, old single family buildings, new multifamily buildings, and new single family buildings. Of all of those, by far the safest housing type is the new multifamily building. And, old multifamily buildings and old single family buildings significantly less safe. So in the aggregate of what we should be doing, moving to buildings with sprinklers is a huge, huge safety improvement. Now that can be a big building with sprinklers or a small building with sprinklers, small buildings with sprinklers. I think it's likely reflected in that new york fire safety data. The smaller building is, the fewer people are affected by any single fire event. Right? And so that's also just the mere small size of a building is a huge safety benefit to, the calculation that I think has sometimes been lost in the conversation about number of staircases. We're talking about increasing the number of staircases per home in these buildings, right? Because one small building with a staircase and four units per floor is way, way, way more stair capacity than one giant building with two staircases, if that makes sense. So that is one way to think about it.
145 And on that slide five, where it says 2027, it sounds like it's saying it's very possible that nationally this might change. That's what.
146 Yeah. So there's been a conversation, a conversation in the national building code, world about this and, a very similar set of conditions to appendix q is headed for the international building code, international building code in 2027, and would be expected generally to be integrated into the 2028osc in Oregon.
147 Is there a certain date that that's adopted or just sometime in 2027 and then it's 2028.
148 When it goes to the ibc is on its own schedule. And then typically Oregon follows a year later and integrates things. But Oregon has the option to deviate from the the national model as it sees fit.
149 Thanks for answering all my questions.
150 Thank you councilor. I am next in the queue and I. Well, first of all, thank you for being here. You know, obviously housing affordability is one of our most pressing challenges and we need to get serious about increasing housing production. And so I think that the single stair buildings have become an important topic in housing policy, because they raised the question of, are there opportunities to safely build more housing on more sites by modernizing regulations that were developed decades ago? So I'm grateful that we're having this discussion. We're engaging students and to envision what the future looks like. I wanted to pick up on the dialog around accessible housing. You know, I think that as more people, if you look broadly at housing and kind of what's going on with where, what kinds of housing people need, obviously, we know we need more family sized housing. That's been an ongoing need. But this conversation around people who need to size down due to costs or whatever other reason, I, I just, I guess I'm just concerned that I don't hear a broader conversation about more universal design in our housing because at the end of the day, we are all only temporarily able bodied, right? And mobility challenges only increase with age. And that's on top of people who, you know, have these different challenges. And so I just, I, I guess I'm just thinking out loud that it concerns me that I don't know that as a whole. I'm seeing a lot of discussion on how we like making something accessible for someone in a wheelchair makes it accessible for everybody. That's the whole point of universal design. It's not about making things just for people with wheelchairs. It's about making it so that if it's, you know, you're, you know, maybe you have a mobility challenge or you develop one or if we're looking at trying to increase our housing stock, knowing that a lot of elderly seniors are going to have to size down and knowing that a lot of our homeless population is increasingly people over age 65 and our homeless population is overrepresented in folks with disabilities. And so just again, you know, as I was hearing you explain kind of the different trigger levels of when you should have a accessible home in a building that just feels very, paltry and doesn't feel like we're, I would just want to elevate that as an important part of how we talk about universal design and housing. So just wanted to state that because I think that's a key, to how we're going to help a lot of the folks that are currently unhoused get into housing and they're going to need more accessible housing. So this was a lot of wonky land conversation. So for those that are listening in and lol at the people who I said, the five of you listening in, I got those five people message me and said I was one of them. So for all of those folks that are listening, can you, tell me what is the core problem that the single stair reform is trying to solve? Can you summarize that for us?
151 The way we build multifamily housing is inefficient, backwards, expensive, inflexible, and does not produce the results that we deserve.
152 Okay. You want to take a crack at it? Anyone else?
153 Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take a crack. I've sort of enjoyed kind of putting this together. So what's become, I mean, we already kind of know being in the industry is that, you know, every, every unit that we add, you know, per floor plate obviously decreases the cost per unit. But what's so amazing about single stair is that we can actually start to develop these small lots. And we can get a lot more housing like in the neighborhoods that we already have, all this infrastructure for and Sameer came to our sorry, councilor Kanal came to a meeting, the library in hollywood, just, I think it was last week and really kind of put forth like how critical our infrastructure is right now that we need more people, we need more people, you know, paying into the system. You know, it's, it's older and, and if we just continue this sort of suburban kind of inner east side vibe, like we may not be able to support it. And, and building apartments, you know, these big ones requires a lot of resources and, the, the accessibility, right? The ability to build these small buildings that are more neighborhood scaled. And that still provide, you know, like house like homes, right? You can actually get two and three bedroom units rather than these shotgun, you know, so I think just the quality of what we're going to build is going to be better. The accessibility to the people who can actually finance it is easier. And, and just to comment a little bit on your accessibility, comment there, elevator reform, you know, at the state level would take us a really long way to providing more elevators because the market wants elevators, right? We just, there's, there's just a big elevator wants to keep them expensive. Right? And there's other reasons why, and I won't get into that. But, I think if we had more accessible elevators, we could actually do a lot more for the people who need that.
154 Thank you. Did you want to.
155 I think a key to our strategy going forward should be trying to create homes that older Oregonians want to downsize into. There are a lot of homes in Portland that are, you know, 1 or 2 people in a 3 to 4 bedroom home. In many cases. That's fantastic. I don't want anybody to have to move out of that. But lots of people want to move out of that. They just need a place to want to move into. And this opportunity arises even in a context where we don't have a growing population, we have a growing senior population, and we have a huge population of people who would love to move into those larger homes if they were available, because somebody decided they wanted to move into a smaller place. This makes those smaller places possible on every lot in every neighborhood.
156 That's helpful. So as you said, Oregon has already adopted portions of this building code. But, many you suggest that very few projects have moved forward. So can you just again summarize like, what do you see is preventing some of these getting built and how much of these challenges are building code itself versus the zoning and permitting and fire bureau? Just give us, paint us a picture of like, what are the main barriers that you're seeing to getting this, getting more of these kinds of homes built?
157 I mean, not very many homes are being built in Portland right now at the moment because population has been flat. And, the, I think we are all a ton of your work is preparing for the possibility that population starts to grow again and making the most of that when it happens, making sure that catastrophe doesn't follow. Right. The. Things that are standing in the way of this being part of that future of single storey buildings, being part of that graceful growth in the future are coming up with some reasonable fire safe rules that could allow for five, potentially six stories to exist. Some of that needs to happen at the state level. Some of that code work needs to happen at the state level, too, and some of it needs to happen at the local level. And I'm not a fire safety expert. I'm just trying to have a conversation about the benefits side of the ledger. So that people who know more about the, the trade offs can think about those.
158 I'll weigh in just to say that there are a few single stair buildings being built in Portland, and there are three stories or less. And we went and toured one, with the students down on division. Actually, there's a pair of buildings called e and hutch designed by a firm called quad architects. They're very nice. They're lovely, compact. It makes great use of the lot, a small lot that would be, like we've said, would be difficult to, to develop, with a different kind of building. But it's because it's only three stories. And partly because of some zoning, some other zoning things that we'd like to change. It had to be three stories. It, there's only so many. Well, anyhow, I should say, because there's only three stories, the cost per unit is quite high. You aren't able to divide that cost over more units. So you do in fact see some of these. You see some six plexes and 12 plexes in different parts of the city. But we would certainly see more if you could have more units per per building.
159 Thank you. My last question is you all are arguing that single stair buildings can unlock housing on smaller infill lots. That seems to be a big part of this. So, do you have a sense of how many sites across Portland could become more developable, developable if those remaining barriers were addressed? I'm just trying to get a sense for what can we unlock if we move forward with this?
160 I did some math. I'm happy to send it to you. It's in the order of tens of thousands.
161 Yeah.
162 Tens of thousands. Okay, well, that feels urgent to me. Thank you again for the conversation. And, also just want to thank the student design competition. It's really encouraging to see emerging designers thinking creatively about how Portland can grow while maintaining our livable, attractive neighborhoods. So thank you again for leading on that. And with that, I'll pass it to our next person in queue, which is vice chair Green.
163 Thank you so much, chair, and thanks for scheduling this. You know, I, I was really honored to receive the invitation to help be a judge on this panel. And I was really grateful that, you wanted to kind of help bring this because I think that a lot of what we talk about up here gets down into the weeds. It's sometimes unpleasant where we're initiating a foreclosure action, or we're doing something that's extremely wonky and frankly, boring, important, but frankly boring. And so envisioning what our city could look like. And it would be a beautiful transformation of our housing stock. I think is really important for, connecting kind of that future vision state with portlanders. So then they, they can say, yeah, I'm going to stay here. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to move in one of these buildings later on down the road. And, I want to talk through just briefly off the top of my head, some of the, some of the designs I looked at that frankly, kind of brought me to tears as I was, evaluating them. There was one in particular. Councilor. Koyama Lane. I know this is an issue you care a lot about is like, the ability to age in place, ability to kind of like, are we building houses and spaces and neighborhoods for the entire spectrum of generations? And there was one design that a student put forward that was like really all about, modularity. And it was like building out a space where you could move walls like, and create sub little rooms inside larger rooms. So like, for instance, you've got a new child and you want a little special nursery for that kid. And then once they've grown, then you move a wall and it's all on this track system. And now you've got a larger bedroom. And then there was this other, envision where like, you know, with these plans, you might envision a sort of like almost like an accessory accessory dwelling unit for like a mother in law suite as someone is retiring and wants to be in the house. So they really leaned into this idea of multi-generation housing inside of a multi-family lot. And that got me a little closer to what I was, what I saw in europe when I, when I did my trip to vienna, there was a lot of housing stock just like that that was built as workforce housing or sort of all ages, stages of wages, housing. And so just kind of seeing that that's what the students were dreaming up, given the design parameters, was really inspiring. And it kind of keeps keeps you connected to the work and it makes it really urgent to ask the boring questions like, so I'll get there. And that's where I'm going with this. But, so accessibility is kind of at the forefront because there's a lot of different ways, like you might have imagined even going beyond class a accessibility, which is why I saw in some of these designs. But, as you had said something about single stair could provide maybe more solution space. So more developers who maybe, maybe can't play at the level of the 100, multi hundred million dollar project play, but can do something at a much smaller scale like that opens up a sort of broader portfolio of capabilities and talent. When I heard that, I was thinking that there are, there are sort of cost hurdle barriers to the firms who can be involved, which also implies that the kind of money that comes into the capital stack depends upon your access to international capital markets that are quite frozen, frankly, right now. And so do you see this as an opportunity for us to say, if we can make some policy changes at the local level and in partnership with the state, then we're basically, sort of lowering that hurdle rate. So it's less expensive to, to invest and kind of get the job done.
164 Yeah. We have three projects right now that were put on hold recently in the past eight months, all of which are really close to financial feasibility, right? The sdc waivers help a lot, but we, we, we reworked the numbers and we're still just a couple units shy of, of something that they're interested in actually putting their money towards. And these are, you know, they're, you know, 2 to 3 million, $4 million buildings. That's a lot of money to do a lot of people. Right. But, you know, to certain investors, that's, that's something that they're, you know, somebody, you know, these are employed people, lawyers, doctors, you know, people in tech who, you know, have gotten together with friends of theirs and they want to invest in real estate right here in Portland because they believe in Portland. Right? So this isn't, you know, this isn't large institutional money. And we're really close to being able to pull the trigger on some of these buildings. But right now, we can't. If we were able to add another floor or add some f.a.r to these buildings, you know, I'd like to say that we could build more.
165 And that probably also implies that if we're imagining other types of home ownership models, like limited equity co-ops, for instance, your ability to pull capital from like maybe a group of 1920 prospective buyers into a building from the, from the start where you sort of get together and choose an architecture from the start, like then your hurdle rate is also lower for that group of pooled kind of, for lack of a better term, homeowners who are coming together on it, would that be the right way to think about it?
166 Yeah, absolutely. I think there's some, sort of some hurdles at the state level, you know, and that maybe michael could speak to better than I can about some liability around, sort of the ten year, you know, condo stuff, right? That kind of restricts some of these sort of flat type condo housings currently. But if it weren't for some of those barriers, I think we'd see a lot more flat type condos come around again. And this is kind of product where, you know, if you could have a three bedroom flat, you know, in a, in a close knit neighborhood, for a reasonable price like that would be pretty awesome.
167 That's, that's great. I think that, I think it's gonna be a while before we. The interest rate environment is still not great. And I think it's going to be a while before there's a big pile of magic money that we can just throw subsidy cash at. And so being able to take whatever measures we can to, to provide more solution space. I think there is a metric there that said something like going from sub 90% efficiency to 92% efficiency that like in dollars and cents, like give me a sense of scale, like what does that do to the price of a, of a unit? Like how does that pencil?
168 So in the most recent study I did over the past few days in preparation for this, right, looking at a 50 by 100 lot and assuming, you know, some make believe zoning, right? Right. So arm three arm for something, a hybrid of that, we, I was basically calculating on the low end and 11%, increase per floor plate and all the way up to 16% depending on different finishes. So, you know, really at 11%, that's still 1 in 10 for units essentially, right? Or the ability to reduce the price by that much at 16%. That's, that's, that's really meaningful. So, I don't know. I mean, I got, the more I dove into this over the past week or so in preparation for this, the more excited I got. I think it's a really good idea.
169 And finally, I think just to kind of go back to this question, I think the comment was made. I can't remember who made the comment, but, michael, I think you made the comment that our slow housing production is largely a function of our slow population growth. And that's like a supply and demand argument. And I think that's right. But I think if we wait for the population to come back to then adopt this, then we're going to be in scarcity conditions where you're going to drive that displacement. That displacement will be much higher than if we were to sort of move forward now to create extra capacity in terms of like the buildable lots, so to speak. Is that the right way to think about it?
170 Yeah. The lower costs get, the less we have to wait for prices to rise before his investors can invest, right? So like, we can wait for the population to rise and for the prices to rise and for more homes to be built. That's how we've always done it in the past, but that's not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to cut the costs so the prices don't have to rise before the homes can be built.
171 That's what I hope. Hoping. I was hoping you would say that in your own words. So thank you. Yeah, I think this is great work. And, yeah, obviously I'm a fan. Thanks so much.
172 Councilor.
173 Pirtle-guiney thank you, chair.
174 Avalos thank you all for being here. You know, there's some really inspirational pieces to some of these designs that you brought forward. And I wish that we were in a space, and I know it will require a lot of different things to move us in that direction where developers were including these pieces in their designs. Now, I mean, imagine having some of the, the units that are being built in Portland today have those modular walls or those accessibility features. And, and there really isn't anything right now that prevents that. Right. Those came forward in a design competition focused on single stairway because design competition are where students are able to highlight really cool cutting edge pieces. But this change doesn't lead to those things, does it?
175 Not necessarily. You're right on in pointing out that there is a, there is the design. Competition has a role and the role is not to show us exactly what will be built. Under, under the, under the most realistic scenarios. But the role is to, because it's so valuable to dream big, like you said, and, and it's valuable for the students, of course, as well to, to explore and to, to try out new things. I think all three of us would say that all the same, we by opening opening doors. Speaking of accessibility in elevators and everything, you, you make, you make these, these outcomes more likely, and more likely in certain situations, there's a, there's a vast range of different buildings being built in the city. And we know and can see them all, or know what they are like, but by, by increasing the, the options about what people are allowed to build and by increasing the flexibility and reducing the costs. Those are exactly what you would want to do to, to create, a greater wealth of, of options and creativity.
176 Absolutely. And I think, I think finding ways to decrease costs is certainly important. The presentation today, you didn't talk about a specific number of stories you would want to see, single, single stairway allowed in. I don't know if that means you're hoping for any number of floors, or if there's another level that you think would be an appropriate cap. You don't need to answer that. That's okay. But I say that to say, it seemed to me that a lot of what you were talking about focused on a five or a six story level under state building code, because we are beholden to state building code, right? We have that single code in our state. What level are single stairways allowed until is it the four? I think that's what you said at the beginning. Or is it allowed until 5 or 6.
177 So the, the current building code in the state, the base building code allows three stories. The appendix q that was adopted in response to the recent legislation, allows a fourth story under certain conditions, and then it also requires sign off by the local fire service.
178 So even if we were to make the changes at the city level, that would allow up to four stories. It would be one additional story. State code has a limitation at a hard cap at four stories. Is that correct?
179 It does today. Okay. Many of the states that I mentioned have gone further and the state may go further in the future.
180 And you had some numbers about cost savings. I think they were $10,000 per unit. Is that accurate? Do I remember that correctly in the presentation?
181 I can tell you, and this is based on just one model, right. And that model, assumes 2500 square foot square foot floor plates, and a certain fit and finish, right? I mean, I have to create some sort of baseline, right? So, it was based on a building that we built on north killingsworth, at $278,000 per unit, with an additional floor, we ended up at 251 at five floors. 236 and then at six at 226, that sixth floor, I'm going to put an asterisk on because with six floors, based on the current building codes, we wouldn't be able to build five stories of wood frame construction. We'd have to add concrete. So that's probably not a realistic number.
182 So about 15,000, 10 to 15,000.
183 10 to 15,000. It's a lot more than that. So we're talking up to $40,000 or more per like once you add get up to the fifth floor.
184 Per floor, per floor, it sounded like it was 10.
185 To 15,000.
186 Per unit. Per unit. Okay. And that's not the sales price reduction. That's the reduction in the cost of building that unit. Is that accurate?
187 Right. And we can just always assume that our sales price is going to be highly correlated to our our construction costs, because that's.
188 10 to 15,000 less per unit for construction. Maybe it's, I don't know, 7 to 12,000 less in sales.
189 But we sorry, it was 40,000 per unit. Less was was the was the number.
190 I'm not hearing 40,000. I'm sorry I want to yeah we heard a lot in the presentation about all of the many benefits we're trying to get to. And this one panacea, a single stairway. And I didn't hear the connection between those two things. And I have some questions about that later, but I'm trying to understand the basic facts here because there was like, like I said, it sounded like this presentation is saying this is a panacea to get everything we need fixed in our housing structure. And I just don't think any one thing is going to do that. So I'd like to make sure these numbers are accurate because you're saying 40,000. What I saw on the numbers you put up and heard you just say was 10 to 15 per unit per floor, right?
191 So let me clarify. So our baseline at 2500ft■!s per floor plate on at three stories, which is 7500ft■!s and, is $278,000. And that's based on real world construction on a building we recently completed. Right? If I took those same costs, right. And I took, essentially the fixed costs like the roof, the foundation, you know, the utilities and all of the things that I can identify in the budget that are more or less, you know, going to basically not be.
192 You need those no matter what.
193 Right, right. And then I divide the rest by each floor plate. I can sort of extrapolate, right, what each additional unit savings there would be. So, at four floors that nets 15 homes, right at about $251,000. So the additional floor is saving, 17, sorry, $27,000 per unit, right. By adding one additional floor. Then at five floors, that nets 19 total units, right? And we get down to $236,000, which is a difference in 20, sorry, 42,000. Yeah, $42,000. And where I added the sorry.
194 251 to 236 is not 42.
195 Just going the base, the baseline currently allowed today, right? Three floors. So it's, it's going from the baseline. What's allowed today to, to what we would to, to allowing five floors. That's that's the you get $42,000 in benefit.
196 Total, right from 278 at the three floor unit.
197 So for two floors.
198 Two floors additional.
199 Okay. And I was trying to get the number per floor.
200 Okay, I apologize.
201 Right. Okay. It's not per floor, it's per unit. And that's why it continues to scale.
202 Understood. I'm sorry. Per unit. Per floor was the number I was trying to get to. So per unit for two floors, you're saying 42,000. Okay. I'm just trying. So per unit for a single floor edition, it scales. But we're talking about for the first floor, 20 to 30,000. Then it sounded like it was about 15,000, then 10,000 per floor that we add per unit that the construction cost goes down, the sales cost goes down, some amount of that. We don't really know how much cost savings, but some portion of that.
203 I think it's safe to assume that it would be directly proportional, because we're always having to make some profit even on the baseline. So if we say our profits always, you know,
204 So it's a portion of.
205 It, right?
206 Okay. And you had said something about tens of thousands of lots that could be affected by this, is that the total number of 5000 square foot lots in the city that you were referring to, or is that based on some sort of criteria around how likely something would be to be redeveloped? What is what what should we expect that number to actually mean?
207 It's been a little while since I put that memo together, but that actually speaks to your earlier question. I appreciate the questions about cost reduction. The other calculation here for the sort of calculating the possible benefit of the policy is it greatly increases the size of the denominator, right, that the number of possible lots where you can add housing increases, the taller you can go. Right. So are you.
208 So looking at total number of 5000 square foot lots, right.
209 No, there's vastly more 5000 square foot lots in the city. What I did for that calculation was I assumed, a certain, development, value on the existing lot. And then I took a low percentage of that share to estimate the number that would turn over in a given year and the number that would develop in a given year and so on.
210 Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you. It would be great to see.
211 I'm happy to.
212 Yeah. It sounds like you have a report that includes them somewhere that's separate from this. Okay. I want to go back to the question I asked about state building code at one point. I don't remember who, but somebody talked about sprinklers as a defense and maybe the, the safety information that's out there. At least on the life safety side, isn't as great as some have portrayed. When do you sprinklers become required under our state building code? I'm sorry, I should know this. And it's been a few years since I worked on state building code issues.
213 Yeah. So the three story building that we're using is the baseline is required. Like it's already sprinklers are already required. And then any building that would be four or 5 or 6, they all require sprinklers. And so then there are other thresholds depending on which type of three story building you build and which type of, essentially address addressable system. Right. Is it in effect? And this is your fire alarm system. But I believe recently that was also upgraded. So any four story building, any, any sort of taller building that we're asking for would be complying, you know, to the highest level at this point. Okay.
214 That's helpful. Thank you. I have like ten more questions that came up during the presentation. I'll hold those. But I do want to make a few comments. There was a lot in that presentation where I am worried that we are confusing cause and effect, or maybe seeing a single solution as a panacea to fix all of the problems we have in our housing market right now. And that concerns me because there are portlanders who are listening, maybe only five. As the chair have said, I assume that more people listen and that we're far more popular than that, though. Chair Avalos, and I don't want people to think that this one change is going to fix everything, because I don't think it will. There was a great picture that you all had on slide 21, about a common lobby with three units around it, but I could draw a line between units one and two and draw a stairwell on the side. And we would still have a common lobby and have a secondary stairwell and only slightly diminished the total square footage of those units and have that, that safety escape there. And so I'm struggling to understand why all of the many problems you named are solvable only if we move to a single stairwell, and not if we design differently with two stairwells. I understand that there is some mixed data around life safety. And when we talk about life safety, if we mean strictly people dying, newer buildings mean fewer people die. So yes, if there is a single stairwell in a newer building compared to an older building. Absolutely. People are safer. But we still have impact. We still have, firefighters who can't move smoke to one stairwell while evacuating people down another. We still have firefighters trying to evacuate people with mobility challenges down the same stairwell that hose lines are coming up right. There are still it still takes longer to evacuate a building. Especially if it's a larger building, which means there's more smoke inhalation and long term health impacts. So when we narrow our concern to life safety, meaning people who die, we're missing the extra work, the extra firefighters who are needed, who can't respond to other calls, the longer term health impacts. And it may be that we ultimately need to move in this direction. But I am I am struggling with thinking that what I'm hearing here is that we need to take on a risk because it is a risk, in order to get any of these benefits, in order to get units that have two sides of light or that, can have smaller buildings, right? I heard a lot of conversation about long dark stairwells in big buildings compared to common areas, but what we were shown were pictures of long, huge buildings compared to a few small buildings on the same lot. Well, we can do that again. Back to slide 21 with the single stairwell still. And if we need to talk about distance between stairwells so that we can have smaller buildings, let's talk about that, but still have that benefit. I would love to see us or maybe even be part of a broader conversation about what portlanders want to see on what we've historically considered single family lots that now actually have a lot of flexibility to build in many different ways on them. Those 5000 square foot lots. But I'm hearing a whole lot of concerns brought up, and I'm not seeing the line between this one change, which does bring those safety risks. And all of the many solutions or all of the many problems that it seems to be solving. I just, I don't see that in the pictures we're showing. So chair, I assume that we're getting this presentation because I think you and your vice chair are really interested in this policy change. And I want to say all of that because I am very concerned that we are conflating what could be an important policy change, but brings with it real risk that I think is being downplayed with building types that are so different from what we're being shown. This would be used in that. I don't see how a equals b, so I hope that if we're going to talk about policy here, we do it in a way that is much more, that that is tighter and that is clear about what the actual benefits from a single change would be and honest about what the risks would be. Thank you.
215 Okay. Thank you, councilor Novick.
216 Thank you, madam chair and councilor Pirtle-guiney, as a baseball fan, you should know that there's no such thing as a panacea for anything. Because if shohei ohtani can play for the california angels, and the angels can still suck. That just shows that no one thing solves anything in the world. Thanks for asking the question about sprinkler requirements. I was going to ask that too. I'm looking at this pew study from, I think early last year that said that, construction, that the requirement of a double stairway adds about 6 to 13% to construction costs in a 4 to 6 story building on a small lot. One of the things it said, which I've now lost and can't find, but it said that you could have in addition, if you're going to allow single stairway buildings, you could add additional safety requirements such as reducing floor area or requiring smoke control measures or, insisting on short distance to exits. And I was just wondering if those are options that, you have you seen play out in seattle or new york? Have those kind of requirements been adopted? And if they were adopted, what do you think the cost would be and how much would that limit the positive cost impact of allowing single stairway buildings?
217 I think all those are part of the seattle code, as I understand it. And also most of those are part of appendix q as well. So we're certainly talking about a multi-variable situation where some things trigger at different heights. So you get full sprinkler coverage with the fourth story, when it would have previously been the fifth story, things like that. Yeah.
218 What smoke control measures can you adopt?
219 I think that might be a reference to the pressurization of the stairwell that seattle requires. So they require essentially you put a fan, as I understand it, not my expertise at the top of the stairwell. Right. And I've heard different reports, including from people in the fire service, about how effective that actually is as an active system. But, that's something that seattle decided to put in as a way to ensure that smoke is not flowing into the stairwell during an event when there's smoke in one unit.
220 And do you have like the names of actual people in seattle or new york that we could call to sort of ask them, you know, their perspective on what they've done?
221 I promise you that the seattle fire and building code folks are sick of getting this call from every city in the country. But, yeah, so, I do not know the names myself. Maybe somebody else does.
222 I don't need to have it today. I was just wondering if you if you could find the least sick seattle building code person to call, that would be great, because I really would like to do that. Do you think one of you might be able to find a name? Okay.
223 Certainly.
224 Thank you.
225 Vice chair Green.
226 Yeah, I just wanted to address some of councilor Pirtle-guiney comments and concerns. I think just to level set here, the invitation to have the presentation was to I don't have any immediate policy goals here, nor does the chair, aside from my just general interest in up zoning, which I think has been abundantly clear across a range of issues, but, was a desire to see opportunities to pull into this committee, some of the interesting conversations that are relevant to the committee that are informal and then happen outside of it, because I have the opportunity to be part of a conversation with a bunch of design students and some practitioners, some architects and developers, and being able to share that with members of the committee who have a vote and a voice here, felt like a really good use of time. But then also to have this dialog. So, I, if we were to adopt anything that's not already on the books, it wouldn't pass muster if we couldn't answer very clearly, like what all of the trade offs are and what sort of like interactions there are with life safety and the like. I think part of the purpose here was to also recognize that even even under allowable circumstances that have already been adopted, it's challenging to even do what we're allowed to do because we've got some other sort of corner pieces that haven't been solved for that are, frankly, on the administrative rulemaking side, the fire marshal and the like. And so starting these conversations just openly to say, if we are going to make tweaks and ask our partners in public safety to, to work with us and be partners on kind of, trying to benchmark. Well, first of all, come with that conversation with us. We, we start, I think, in the visioning process too. So it's not completely just disconnected, I think from the, the design principles. I also want to note that, these would be new construction buildings and the fire risk that exists in most of these situations are because they're old building stock with antiquated systems, that have building materials that are given over to, fire conditions and you know, likely. Well, what I would like to see, I suppose. But what I have seen is a lot of use of engineered timber materials like mass timber, cross-laminated timber, which is very fire resistant. And so I think I think there's a way to have this conversation that says, these are not static, like fire risk is not a function of static variables independent of each other. But like when you take together all the variables of what goes into making a building and what goes into making a place where someone lives, they all interact with each other that then contribute jointly to the fire risk. And so if you're saying, okay, we have one fewer staircase, but we built this thing with cross-laminated timber, and we have egress opportunities that are closer to where people live and so on and so forth. Then you might have the case where it's, it's, it's a joint like on the whole, it's safer for everyone. I think that's what I've seen when I've been in these conversations. And so what you're seeing here is a sort of like, hey, let's, let's pull some of the conversations I get to have outside in my district. And, and, and start to talk about it there. So I rest assured I don't have something waiting in the wings. I'm going to plop down here. I think some of this stuff probably needs some painful land use, process and maybe some state action, but, you know, and some tough conversations with, the fire marshal maybe, but we want that to be generative. We want that to be grounded in like us caring about, you know, I think the thing you care about. So just wanted to add that and respond to that.
227 Chair. May I thank you, vice chair, I, I appreciate the response and, and I think there's conversation to be had there. What concerned me was hearing this, this kind of broad array of benefits that looked to me in the presentation and the pictures, like they were dependent on a lot of different changes, not just a single stairwell. And I think sometimes there is an inclination, not by this council in particular, but in, in lawmaking and in policy work to get excited about one solution that has some benefits and attribute many other benefits to it and move forward in a way that creates risk without being clear about that risk and with promises that don't come to fruition. And if we're talking about a lot of lots, probably in my district, I'm not willing to have us do that. I think a conversation holistically about how we create safe buildings that provide the living environments that portlanders are looking for is really important. And this should be one of many factors that we, that we weigh together. But to move in this direction quickly, which is what I was worried was coming next, that sometimes happens here. We get a presentation and then suddenly we're moving quickly was, is, I will say pretty concerning to me. I know that there are studies that take into account different variables that show different options, different, risk patterns. But I think there's a lot more for us to understand about how those risks interact. And I think we need to take seriously the practitioners who are saying that this could make their jobs harder to do.
228 Right. I don't see anyone else in the queue. Do we have any final thoughts, committee or panelists?
229 We just like to say, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today and to talk about this, this subject that we think is very important. Thank you, thank you.
230 Thank you so much for your time with that. Colleagues. Our this is our only committee meeting in August. So our next meeting is going to be on Tuesday, September 1st after the council recess. And we're going to have updates soon on that agenda. But I will go ahead and adjourn this meeting at 4:34 p.m.