The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-11-18
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,702 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On November 18, 2025, the Portland City Council Homelessness and Housing Committee met to review three agenda items. The session opened with remarks about upcoming committee efforts to gather testimony from residents facing permitting barriers, followed by a presentation from Portland Permitting and Development on the bureau's funding structure, reserves, staffing levels, and permit review timelines; figures on FTE counts, reserve balances, and revenue were presented, though some figures were stated inconsistently across the discussion. Topics included the SDC waiver, cost recovery gaps for transferred programs such as urban forestry and transportation review, permitting reform efforts including collaborative plan review technology, and questions about code complexity, seismic requirements, and regional competitiveness. The second item was a Portland Housing Bureau update on the Inclusionary Housing Program, covering its 2016 origins, 2023-24 periodic review, changes to property tax exemption boundaries, and program outcomes including unit production and fee-in-lieu collections, with extended discussion about impacts on development scale and data limitations. The third item was a renters' feedback forum in which multiple community members and one councilor testified about rent burdens, maintenance issues, corporate landlord practices, housing supply, and proposed policies including a renters' bill of rights and social housing. Votes occurred during the session; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned at 2:07 p.m.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Reductions, how it's impacted their staffing and service. The staff are also planning to update the committee, as councilor Ryan and others have requested on efforts to improve the permitting process and reduce barriers to development, including the sdc waiver that recently passed by council. And lastly, I just wanted to make a note for the committee. I am intending in January to create some space for people who have been having struggles with permitting to come and tell us their stories. I've taken a couple of meetings recently from constituents who are trying to build a duplex. Another one who is trying to build an adu for their mother in law, and they've just expressed some really significant barriers. I'm just going to name one, which is that I'm concerned about, which is he has been scheduling these 15 minute appointments with the with the department, and people are not showing up to his appointments. So he is unable to move this process forward. As it relates to the adu, I had a woman who was like, basically she got quoted for like $500,000 for an adu and at that point might as well buy a house. So these are some real barriers that people are. These constituents have asked me to follow along with them so that I can learn as they are reaching these barriers, what they are. But I just wanted to flag for the committee, as we're in the middle of cap two to do some more code project alignment. I want to bring the voices of these portlanders so that they can give us real examples of what they're facing. Sound good? So expect that in the new year. But with that, if our guests could introduce themselves and go ahead and kick it off.
1 Great. Thank you. Chair danny oliveira, deputy city administrator for community and economic development. And I love my colleague to introduce himself.
2 Good morning. David kun is an interim director of Portland permitting and development.
3 Great. So can we just go ahead and get the deck going, please?
4 Full screen presentation.
5 All right. Next slide, please. Gabby. Thank you. All right. So thank you, chair Avalos and councilors. So in front of you is just the agenda. And it basically outlines what Avalos just described. We are going to talk about the funding structure, how it's reserves function to support the bureau and times of lower development cycles, and ultimately to give you some updates on the financial status of the bureau, how staffing changes have impacted the bureau's service delivery, how changes to ppd. It's still relatively new bureau still is still underway, and how we're solving for that culture change around bringing multiple divisions into the bureau. We'll give you an update on the sdcs as chair Avalos requested and talk about the next steps on permitting reform. I also want to take a moment, especially in light of what chair Avalos acknowledged about challenges that we're experiencing in permitting. It is absolutely true that ppd is the front door for a lot of business activity in the city of Portland. It functions as a place where new businesses go to get permits to for tenant improvements. It's a place where people go to build homes or housing. Crisis is well known and and discussed at this council. But it's also made up of people that really care about the city, are trying to improve navigating a very complex code. And as we do our code updates and we do improve our processes, which is always ongoing and underway. I also want to just acknowledge that the team at ppd continues to think strategically and solutions oriented in a way that maybe we haven't done in a while, but it's exciting to me to see the improvements we'll be able to talk about, because despite I'm kind of spoiling some of david's talking points here, the challenges with staffing capacity, we continue to see permit timelines improve. So that's actually showing that the people that are in the bureau are functionally moving forward in a way that is speeding up that development cycle timeline. And yet, we are still at a place where we need to see larger projects come into the city. I'm not just talking about big housing projects, but our institutional investors that are looking at big commercial investments for business. Our partners at the school districts who are coming in, we have a big demand coming, and we need to make sure we have staffing capacity to deliver on those expectations. So with that, let's go to the next slide please, and I'll turn it over to david.
6 Thank you danny. Once again for the record, david, as an interim director of Portland permitting and development. It's been several months since we presented an update on the financial outlook. So I just want to appreciate the opportunity to do so today. As I've shared in the past, ppd has historically been funded almost entirely by fees for charges and services that we provide. And as you can see on this graphic, the majority of the programs in the bureau, 80% of which do not receive any alternative funding and rely solely on those review and inspection fees. The exceptions to this are on the right side of this graphic in the neighborhood inspections program, noise and liquor licensing programs, all of which receive general fund support, all sum total of which is approximately $1.9 million. On October 1st of this year, the tree permitting program moved from parks to ppd. So on the left side of this graphic, you see that move, which included the transfer of $3.6 million in PCEF monies to fund those operations. Because ppd is predominantly fee funded, the bureau is tied very closely to the construction industry, and this creates challenges for the bureau as we navigate the ups and downs in this environment, which we'll discuss in subsequent slides. Next slide please. As you can see on this graph, the overall valuation of construction projects reviewed by the bureau significantly declined at the onset of the pandemic in fiscal year 2021 and unfortunately, has never recovered due to several factors, including high inflation that led to high interest rates, low investor confidence, property values declining, which makes it cheaper to purchase a property than to build a new one, and a persisting negative perception of Portland as a place to build, which was recently highlighted by the uli survey, as well as ongoing volatility in financial markets that continued to lead to uncertainty. Because our permit fees are valuation based, meaning the higher the valuation, the higher the fee. Large projects make up a disproportionate share of ppd revenue, and this makes us very dependent on large project activity, which dca oliveira mentioned. That particular aspect of the industry is even more boom and bust than the overall industry. So we continue to see small projects come in. But those cranes are not in our skyline at this point, however we have. So as we've seen those projects drop off significantly, the sdc exemption has helped, but we're still seeing projects of large, with large number of units being delayed for other factors, and some of which are just being outright canceled. Smaller valuation and low cost recovery projects continue to come in the door. As I mentioned, while the large projects have pretty much dried up. So to summarize, the workload has not declined as much as our revenue has declined and our work has shifted to other project lower project valuations and different scopes of work. This dynamic has led to the draws to continue draws on our reserves to maintain services during the downturn. As the bureau continues to balance the workload with the staffing. So drawing your attention to the most right column here at our current rate of evaluation for fiscal year 2526, based on the first four months, is anticipated to be just short of 1 billion, which would be the lowest valuation in over a decade. However, while we do our best to anticipate future trends, we have no crystal ball. So as dca oliveira also mentioned, there are large institutional projects that could be coming in the door. We are anticipating Portland public schools moving forward with some of their high school, not renovations, rebuilds and even one of those projects would bring us up to the total valuation of previous years, if not higher. Next slide please. So with 2% of ongoing funding coming from the general fund and now 4% of funding coming from pcf, 94% of pd's ongoing funding comes from fees for charges and services. The current downturn has been different than what we what this bureau has experienced in the past. And again, it began during COVID, but both economic and social issues have led to a prolonged lull in permitting activity lasting much longer than any of us expected. Civil unrest and public perception of Portland, which recently is in the news again, have continued to impact the desirability of Portland as a place to build. In addition, macro macroeconomic factors outside of city's control have large implications for demand on construction. Even with interest rates about 54 basis points lower than they were last year. At this time, they're still high enough that financing construction projects makes the cost of delivering new buildings a concern for developers, and that the return on investment might not be worth the risk. So as development activity is bottomed out, ppe and fee revenue has also declined, while the cost of providing services continues to increase.
7 Councilor. I want to flag this moment because it's relevant to something councilor Chair Avalos started with, so that 2% general fund represents the lowest contribution of general fund to the bureau, and there's a lot of reasons for that. Just just generally speaking, just the factor is this those dollars from general fund provide services that are sort of supportive of the teams that are doing fee based services. So for example, a concierge type service that might be able to help somebody navigating a preschool for the first time would would not be fee based. That would be we provided value add support. So those dollars beyond just going to the noise program and sort of neighborhood services, they provide the bureau with the capacity that more discretionary capacity to provide the value add services that I think we've been looking for. Otherwise, the staff are largely dependent on fees and the revenues and their funds are fee based. So we're going to be a little more transactional there. I know we're in a constrained financial situation right now, so general funds are hard to come by. But I just want to flag that when we talk about some of that, that customer service approach that we'd like to see, it's largely directly related to the low general fund contributions today. All right. Sorry.
8 No no problem. Just to add to that, I just want to highlight councilor Avalos concerns, especially regarding the 15 minute appointments. Obviously a concern. However, we do offer those 15 minute consultations free of charge and the bureau offers or holds about 12,000 of those a year. So. And those again to donnie's point, come with no fee associated with that. So that's just a fee that we're providing to the to the public for free. Next slide please. Pb. And began this fiscal year with the city draw on reserves. So drawing approximately $3.2 million over the first four months of the year. And that's represented by the gap there between the revenue collections of approximately 25 million, just short of 25 million, and expenditures of about 28 million during that period of time. So we began the year with about just over 19 million in reserves, and currently we have just short of 16 million in reserves. We've been working really hard to minimize expenses wherever possible without impacting service deliverables. And we reduced expenditures 2.1% compared to the same period of time as last year. But our revenue was also decreased during that period of time. A major driver of the decline in revenue is the very low level of large construction projects. We have unfortunately not seen any large market rate multifamily development, and that's historically been an area where we've received the majority of our funds to build our reserves. The low current activity reflects the current economic climate and the overall negative perception of Portland as a place to build and invest. Next slide. So fiscal year 20 2425 marked the first year that this organization included the public infrastructure development review teams. That's because the former bureau of development services was combined with development review functions from water bts, PBOT and the parks urban forestry team to form Portland. Permitting and development. On July 1st of 2024. Those programs were moved from the public infrastructure team, so bts water PBOT and urban forestry were not accompanied by any financial reserves, and at the same time, the fees for the work that those groups do does not cover is not at full cost. Recovery. The resolution to create ppa and directed funding sources move along with the programs to the new bureau, and interagency agreements were established to address the funding gaps. But in some cases, the interagency agreements are not sufficient to cover those functions. In most cases, they are, but not across the board, as you can see on this graph here. And just to point out the graph, most notably the transportation review and urban forest review reviews continue to operate below cost recovery. Next slide. Less than two months ago on October 1st of 2025, additional tree permitting work was transferred from parks to pnd. In total, 26 positions were transferred, 19 of which are filled. Parks and ppd collaborated to ensure a smooth and successful transition for those employees. But a change of this magnitude does not happen without some challenges. So we've established a new division within the bureau to encompass this work. But there has been departures via attrition and most notably, the entire management structure in parks departed their positions before joining pnd. We have a whole new management team overseeing that work, so a lot of historical knowledge has departed the city, and that requires us to get up to speed very quickly. Looking forward, we're going to need to find ways to closely evaluate the functions of that program, as well as determine the optimal staffing level to inform future program programmatic priorities. Next slide. The unpredictable and volatile nature of both macroeconomic environment and more specifically, development activity makes our current financial model extremely challenging. So we're at subject. We are subject to the cyclical ups and downs of the industry, and with no alternative revenue source to add stability during a prolonged downturn. The graphic on this screen shows the adopted budgeted fte for this bureau. The columns are predominantly dark blue, which represent the former bts programs and associated staffing. So starting in fiscal year 23, 24, programs and staff from other bureaus started being moved to this bureau. And those are represented on this slide in the light blue, orange, goldenrod color and Green colors. In the last three fiscal years, fte peaked at 457 in fiscal year 1920, and the bureau currently has 341 fte on the books in the current fiscal year. So even after accounting for the newly transferred programs that currently total 93 fte, the bureau as a whole is still at the lowest staffing level in over a decade. We are currently seeing attrition at about twice the rate as normal, with 25 voluntary separations since the beginning of 2025, and then drawing your attention back to the former bts portion of the bureau, represented in dark blue current fte for that portion of the bureau has declined approximately 46% since fiscal year 1920. Next slide.
9 I have a question for the natural attrition that's going on. Are are they part of the hiring freeze? I'm not really clear on the whole hiring freeze thing. So does that apply? Are you not planning on replacing those 25. Tell me about.
10 We yeah. Great question. Councilor. We are evaluating all of those positions. At some point we would have to hire if there was extremely limited capacity to take on that workload. However, we are, we did anticipate in our financial projections and attrition of approximately that rate. It's just happened much faster than we originally anticipated. So we have to evaluate every departure and the potential of a rehire in that position. Overall, though, we have to look at more ways to be efficient with the staff that we currently have and or less staff moving forward.
11 And councilor, for example, the bureau just requested through the hiring freeze process to hire an engineer in the transportation group, and we approved that. Given the demand for that work. While we acknowledge that it's almost invested in our future because that team's cost recovery is not 100%, but we think with the likelihood of these projects coming in next year, calendar year, that it justified the the Green light to hire that position.
12 Next slide please.
13 Well, the graphic on the previous slide shows the budgeted fte changes. Actual filled positions have shrunk in similar fashion because our funding structure is tied to the construction industry layoffs, and some are sometimes unavoidable, and pd takes decisive action when that's necessary. For example, in fiscal year 2324, 72 staff were laid off on August 1st of 2025, an additional five people were laid off where we focused those layoffs on administrative positions rather than employees with direct customer interaction. In addition, the bureau has relied on natural attrition, as I mentioned, to reduce its workforce and reduce draws on reserves. And just in the last week, we've seen one employee leave and another submit their resignation. As we continue to draw on reserves, staffing is at a minimum level to meet the service demand, so reduced staffing via attrition again does play into our financial plan, but in areas it also impacts our service delivery. Next slide. So it's important to remember that the development review process is a public private partnership. And the total time it takes to get a project from intake to issuance, meaning the contractor can break ground, depends on numerous factors, including timely feedback from city staff to the design team and vice versa. We have updated our permitting dashboards to include metrics showing the amount of time city are taking to review these projects. This slide provides that detail for commercial new construction projects that include housing. So essentially apartments and condos in the last 90 business days. And you can see there it's a little bit difficult to see on the screen there, but there's a black dotted line near the bottom of the graph that shows the number 20. That is the goal date for this scope of work for reviewers to complete that first review. I'm very proud of the fact that, especially considering the reduction in staff levels, as I previously mentioned, that across all the reviews for this scope of work were meeting, if not exceeding that goal date. Next slide.
14 Question can you talk to me about why I see so much variance in the applicant side? Are there is there anything you can tell me about what these numbers mean and why they're like this? Especially because, you know that's great that the city side is low on you know, you're doing better about processing times, but do you have data to inform why these are so variable?
15 Yeah, that's a great question. Part of it depends on the complexity of the review. So you can see there were source control. Many times the reviewer will ask for manufacturer specs for a grease interceptor for instance the the the due diligence on behalf of or for the applicant is to research that and provide information. Generally speaking, an architect is not going to have the knowledge to get, you know, to get the manufacturer specs and get into that level of detail so it can take a little bit longer with a review of that nature. Then there are things like assigned address, which actually don't have any complexity, but is kind of deprioritized in terms of where we get responses because they're more focused on the structural review or the life safety review or the fire review. We just don't get the responses back in a timely manner. That doesn't hold up our process. They can still respond to corrections for those more complicated aspects of the design review or I'm sorry, not design review of the development review process, but it's just something that it just varies depending on the complexity of the review and where they prioritize that.
16 Do you see the bureau having a specific role or interest in trying to get those numbers out? I guess I'm just like, obviously the city's numbers are a priority, but what is our vision for helping to get all of those numbers down?
17 Yeah, absolutely. So I'll just use assigned address as an example. We've been working with our online vendor for project docs, which is our online tool to find a way to put the information in the plans and have them essentially be able to mark that up and keep that information permanent. So right now, it requires city staff to enter that information. And as a highlight, and then the customer to transfer that to the the final drawings, we want to be able to do that on our own. Like it's not necessarily in just you know, I'm highlighting one aspect of it. So it's a little bit more complicated than this, but it really requires some technology fixes for some of these lower hanging fruit issues. And then there's the more complex issues related to, you know, seismic concerns. And we'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation. Life safety concerns, things that we can address via cap or cap two or cap three as we continue to move along. And other just process improvements and code changes that we can look at.
18 And one example, councilor of an improvement that we just made was it's a back of house system project docs where staff review staff can actually see information and actually provide feedback to to builders that are more consistent. In the past, some review teams would provide information back in pdf form, some would be like a fillable form, and we're trying to smooth that out, which will in turn reduce that that, you know, applicant timeline because we're just more efficient on how we communicate back to them. So there's that piece and yes, how we go about providing those check sheets, as they're called for, for applicants to respond to. That's an improvement area that we're looking at that's more process centered, that's back of house. But in inherently in that is do we have the staff capacity and the technology. Actually a lot of this will be technology, technological solutions to invest in, to implement, to reduce those times. But you're poking at the thing that's appropriate to say is, what are we doing to help the applicants streamline their process?
19 Yeah.
20 We have one more question from councilor Dunphy.
21 Yeah. Just to clarify on this graph. To say it in very plain terms for me, who doesn't understand a lot of this? Look at commercial plumbing, for example, the city for, you know, the city inspector gives a checklist within 15 days of work being completed. But is it assumed that the 152 days is because they were given a checklist before and said, go do these things, and it took them 152 days to come back and say, we finished the things you said. Or is that like from the construction start date, like the first date, the commercial plumber is hired, it takes 152 days. Is it the back and forth or is it the the inherent challenge of the front end of it before a permit issuer is.
22 This is. Yeah. Great question. This is all front end. So this is during the review process. So you're exactly right a commercial. The plumbing inspector or reviewer took a look at that within 15 days, provided a check sheet saying we need additional information. It then took 152 days for that on on the median to get responses to those check sheets for that particular scope of work.
23 Would that include, I mean, if I've heard horror stories before, right, where somebody spent months, they get a checklist. They spend months to fixing the checklist. A different inspector comes out and says, oh, no, that last guy was totally wrong. Here's your real checklist. And now we're 152 days. Is that is this a back and forth 152 days, or is it really like just like a, you know, from their initial check in or early advising and then coming back and then saying, we are done now and then it's another two weeks to to issue. Is that what it is?
24 That's what it is. And just on your point, on on the consistency for the review process, unless a reviewer leaves or is on some sort of prolonged leave, there would be consistency with their review. So Steve, for instance, would conduct that first review. Steve would then do the rechecks to. So there should not be any sort of new items coming up. And even if a new reviewer were assigned to this, that's a practice that I definitely want to get away from. That's not fair for the applicant, and we're aware of that. Those situations do come up. You're absolutely right. We've heard the horror stories as well, not a practice that I endorse at all.
25 Thank you.
26 Councilor Zimmerman.
27 Okay. I think that you've provided this slide to show where the city is meeting its goal. Overall, though, what is our. Statutory day's requirement for getting a permit?
28 So for a building permit, there is none. There is not one.
29 What am I thinking about when I'm thinking about 9120 that comes up in these types of conversations?
30 Land use process.
31 Land use process okay. So I find the fact that there are so many sections to be the problem. I actually don't think this story tells a good. This slide tells a good story because. I'm wondering if I were to go to other cities around the metro area, if this looks similar for them, or if they have combined multiple things in here. It it is this idea that. Within 15 days we addressed the assign the address, then it goes out for 156. Then we come back, we spend another 15 days doing commercial and it goes back out, comes back in. We do energy code back out, erosion control back out. So what is this really telling me here? Because I don't think that's what is happening. So talk through this a little bit more please.
32 So a couple of things. So these are all happening concurrently okay. So there's so you come in and then and then each review team is reviewing their particular element of the code. So that's what that looks like. The the question of how many review teams again this project type I mean it actually applies to anybody I'll just use. We're talking about you know, multi use condos for example. These are complex projects. We have a complex code with a lot of of our city's values included in here. So people are looking for bike parking issues. They're looking for life safety. All the things that we value as a city that are included in our code. Now staff are beholden to, you know, implement and make sure that our our applicants are meeting our standards. As a city, we could probably look across many different cities across the us, compare our size of the city of Portland to other cities, and see codes that are as complex, more complex, less complex. That's really.
33 I'm actually less interested in other cities that are our size, because right now I feel like I'm competing with the metro area. So there are no cities our size when it comes. When my conversations with developers are do I or do I not do this project in Portland or not in Portland? So the size comparison part doesn't work as well as it. Maybe it used to, because right now I'm competing with hillsboro, Beaverton, tigard that that's I guess where my concern is a little bit more.
34 That's fair. Councilor the our code is complex, but it is relatively consistent to a large metropolitan city that is competing as a lot of competing interests. Are we slower than our regional partners? Unequivocally. But there's also elements of building in Portland that there's value add to. So I guess there's a tension there if we're purely looking at a time to turn around. Yes, Portland is going to not compete as as much as the other cities in terms of turning around permits fast. But that's not taking aside the reality that we're acknowledging here that, yes, continued improvement is a priority for us, even with staff constraints to bring that time down. Those that orange, those orange bars to councilor Avalos, you know, original question. We can do better from staff side to reduce the turnaround time, acknowledging that all those those bars represent a code that represented, at some point, a city council's values about what they wanted to see. And oh, by the way, there's state code in here to acknowledge that.
35 So when I look at the this is helpful, I'm starting to understand what the story is you're telling here on this slide. So if I look at the orange bar graphs. You used in your explanation, the, you know, bike infrastructure. So for an apartment it's like how many how many bike locking you know racks do we have. Et cetera. Et cetera. Right. That's what we're talking about in that sense where they're located on the property, what the requirement is for that size of property. Here's my question. If I were to go ask people who have that, maybe a question comes up somewhere in this and we go to their orangish part of the bar graph. And I say, when you got feedback from the permitting department, was it, hey, what do you think about putting the bikes over here on this site? Or was it you didn't meet the standard with enough bikes on the site? And and I'm going to before I have you answer, I am less interested in different planner's opinions about what might be their preference, and more interested in ensuring that we just meet the letter of the law and move on. Because this idea that planners are helping, I mean, I've had them, I've had them work for me, right where planners are out there redrawing people's plans to put their stamp on how they want something to show up versus meeting the requirement. So. Are these check ins and comebacks because somebody isn't meeting the requirement, or they're now having to go out and prove to that planner that they are meeting the requirement, and they just have to get it past Steve, in this case, because Steve seems to have a certain opinion about how bike racks should go in. What's happening here?
36 Well, there's certainly it's a great question and a great point, and it definitely depends on the planner and the review. And there's a lot of discretion.
37 Or how do we attack that. Because I don't think that's I don't think that's the optimal answer.
38 Yeah. So we're getting a little bit.
39 Okay.
40 I'll just I'll.
41 Just if there's more to do I'm happy to delay the question for a while.
42 No, no, absolutely. I'll actually cover it now because I don't think it's this is an appropriate time. So that back and forth and that conversation about how to achieve both something that makes sense from a construction standpoint and something that meets the letter of the law, something that the both the, you know, the planner in this case and the contractor are comfortable with and can stand can make a legal argument for is something that we're really focused on improving. And that comes down to communication between private and and the developer or the designer and the city. That needs to happen face, face to face, whether on teams or literally face to face, rather than back and forth. In that check sheet process. There needs to be a collaborative approach to meeting those requirements and making sure that we've addressed what's realistic, what actually makes sense, and what can we sign off on and move forward with. And over the last couple of years, I'll just I'll be honest, we've gone away from that. There is no ability for us to communicate face to face and have those conversations. And that's something definitely with our technology team in place, we're going to call it collaborative plan review at this point, but something where we and the designer are in the room together to talk through those type of issues so that we stop this back and forth. We want to get through these in as few cycles and as few times as possible and move forward.
43 Is it unreasonable for me to think that planners shouldn't have opinions?
44 No. I mean, yeah.
45 Councilor this is where I'm struggling with is like the opinion about where the 15 bike racks go is less concerning to me than whomever has the ownership of the building says, I want all 15 here or I want to spread them out. I'm not really interested in the planner's opinion. In that case. I'm trying to I'm trying to square this a little bit.
46 Yeah. Councilor and this is a tension that we face with a lot of our code in general. And this is 30,000 foot foot perspective. There's this desire to have clear and objective standards. So you know exactly what you want going in. But the more absolute you get on our code, the less room for exemptions. And what about this case that are truly unique because of a legitimate reason. So then you want that discretion. You want the planners to be able to look with reason and say, okay, I see what you're solving for in the spirit or the intent of the code. And that's a tension. Do you leave the code flexible so your planners can provide solutions for very unique projects in the city, or do you make it really stringent and clear so that there's not that sort of opinion that that you're referencing? That's a tension that we face both as council setting policy and leadership, providing instruction on how to meet the intent of our code. It's a real you're touching on a point that I think dave and I have spoken about a lot. It's really cliche, but it's cultural. Are we are we solutions oriented? Are we putting up barriers? Are we weaponizing the code or trying to be partners? And I think that's something that we continue to work through with our teams.
47 Okay. Thanks, chair. I'll wait till we get to the end for more.
48 All right. Please continue. Thank you.
49 Next slide please. So please focus remains on overarching goals established back in 2021 by the permit improvement task force, which included representation from all the council offices, permitting offices and planning bureaus. This slide represents that median business days from submittal to approved to issue, which permits now in the construction phase again for residential new single family construction. So that includes accessory dwelling units, duplexes obviously new single family and townhomes as well. So 2025 year to date metrics include the data pulled through Friday, November 7th. So starting the 10th. And currently we're totaling 644 permits and 700, I'm sorry, 678 new units associated with those. For comparison, we're down a little bit from last year. End of year totals for 2024 were 871 new single family adu permits and 906 units. So we're going to if we're at the current rate, we're going to fall just short of what we saw in 2024. Next slide please. So similar to the previous slide but you'll see there is a little bit less number of reviews associated with this. This is residential new construction which I just touched on. Again our data analytics team has worked really hard to provide more detail on these timelines and across numerous scopes of work. So this is information that we didn't have even a year ago to this level of detail. This graphic represents residential new construction, like I said. And again, the goal date for these reviews is 15 business days. City staff are considered. Consider consistently exceeding that goal. Excuse me next slide. So one scope of work that we're all aware is vital to the economic vitality and overall recovery in the city of Portland is commercial alterations, which are more commonly referred to as tenant improvement permits. And I know prosper Portland has worked hard and in collaboration with ppd staff to assist small business owners. With this process, I wanted to highlight review times associated with this scope of work as well, which has a goal date of ten business days to show that with the exception of one review, we are successfully meeting that goal as well. Next slide please. So donnie mentioned the stc exemptions at the beginning of the presentation. The temporary stc exemption went into effect for new housing on August 15th of 2025. It's been very popular with single family builders, and while smaller projects three. So commercial code starts at three, so triplex and then up to about 19 units have also utilized it. We fortunately have not yet seen it utilized on larger projects. As much as we had hoped. But this waiver is still new. This is new. The the investment stack to develop large scale construction projects as complex. The city has received a lot of appreciation from the development community to create an additional incentive like this to develop here, to develop internally and to bring outside funds or outside investments to the city of Portland. But like I said, there's a lot of other factors that they're evaluating at this time. There are a few projects on the horizon that have utilized and a desire to utilize the exemption, one of which is a new seven story, 155 unit apartment complex. We have a four story, 40 unit complex that's currently in the process of of going through a funding process and a seven story, 144 unit apartment building as well, all of which are are have expressed interest in utilizing this in the near future.
50 I'll just note I got some. My staff have been meeting with some developers who have signaled to us that, you know, it takes them five six months, right, to do the financing for sdc waiver to pencil. So it sounds like there's potential for a boom in the new year, as some of those developers are finishing their financing. So I think that is a good sign.
51 Yes. Great. Next slide please. So permitting reform work underway. Much of this will be a repeat of what has already been discussed. But Portland permitting and development and bureau of technology services has been working really hard to improve the usability of our website. That's something that is utilized by customers and staff. It needed significant work to make it usable resource for both. We've made regulatory improvements, specifically the code alignment project. And as you all know, we're currently evaluating the next round of improvements for cap two, the small business hub, which I mentioned. This led by prosper. They rely heavily on paid staff to assist those customers. I want to thank executive director wesley for his continued commitment to that work and that program. I mentioned and shared screenshots of our dashboard, and we're now focused on sharing information related to public works, which recently came over as part of the implementation of ppe. And to make sure that customers have insight into that process. And then we continue to evaluate and implement technology changes. I mentioned our collaborative plan review to bring consistency and additional correspondence between city and private sector to encourage development. We've also implemented the use of project docs consistently across all commercial, commercial construction, commercial permitting, and now use that same tool for our public works process. Next slide please.
52 Councilor Dunphy has a question.
53 Okay, okay. So permitting reform work underway, we have some upcoming work to do on our seismic requirements. That obviously is a impediment for any sort of adaptive reuse projects. And we've been working with bts, prosper others to figure out how to evaluate that, those requirements, making sure that there's safety top of mind, but also understanding that we need to make changes to incentivize development in that nature. Third party reviews and self-certification has been discussed. Finding ways, especially, as mentioned, tenant improvement permits, finding ways for customers who have signed a lease to get their permit issued and open their doors to business in a more timely manner. Design review process resolutions councilor Zimmerman is well aware of this one that will be moving forward forward with I mentioned cap two and then long term, a reevaluation of our short term rental policy in the city of Portland as well. And that concludes the presentation. So happy to take additional questions.
54 Sounds good. We've got councilor Dunphy first.
55 Yeah, great. First of all, I, I brought this up at the joint work session between the city and the county, for whatever reason, in the homelessness response action plan, self-certification of units is listed as a goal. That alone, compared to some of the other things that are already underway and some of the things that are being discussed broadly. Do you have any idea how that got in there?
56 Yes. Councilor, thank you so much for asking that question to give me the opportunity to respond to it. I couldn't join you all that after I was like, I watched it later and I was like, no, there's a reason. So when we established the the next work plan for hep 2.0, we were essentially doing short term, medium term, long term plans. Right. And it was it was supposed to signal it should have said is permit improvement, such as it was really supposed to be indicative of the fact that we don't just see housing production as a financing element, you know, super important, or a service element equally important. It's also our ability to unlock development through permit improvement, process improvement. It really should have been captured in another way. It was not in its by itself a be all solution, but really just indicative. It could have said seismic reform. It could have said it would have been more wonky to say. But cap two, I'd love to go back and we'll work with the county on this to just unpack that a little bit more to say, such as, but that's really all that was trying to convey. We don't consider this to be the only tool in the toolkit.
57 I assumed that was what it was, and it was being interpreted by people who didn't have the firmest grasp of the permitting process. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the county to fix that.
58 Yeah. And councilor and really, the intent of it is truly to show that we we see this multi, multi phase multi-sector in terms of like the different types of workflow and it takes multi bureaus. Right. It's it's a lot of bureaus doing good work to to focus on housing and houselessness.
59 Absolutely to that exact. That's a great cue for my next question. You know a lot of work has been done in in ppd, a lot of consolidation. But you mentioned specifically that cost recovery for some of the types of permitting does not cover the cost of the staff. When the consolidation was done. Why was that not why did the funding not follow those employees? Is that our fault, this council? Is it last councils? I think it's probably both, but shouldn't the funding that was going to parks for the urban forestry team have also followed? Shouldn't the transportation dollars followed to pa? Is there a ratepayer versus general fund dollar question there? Is that what help me understand what happened there and how we can fix it.
60 Thank you for the question, councilor. The decision to create pnd and the machinations that were necessary to do it happened in a way that probably, in hindsight, would have done a little bit differently in terms of what are we solving for, what is the actual service that we're providing, what is the cost to do it? And thus, where do those those resources come from? Because it happened really fast. And pd year one happened in the change of the form of government. We didn't really have an opportunity to to true up the true cost of operating the new bureau, with the revenues and funding doubling down on that, with the fact that our revenues were just low across the board. And so we have a scarcity, you know, ecosystem. We built a new bureau with not complete resources to start. And so we have this cost recovery gap that you that you saw that david shared. I don't could we have done it differently? Of course. That's hindsight speaking. Now I think something that actually david and I were able to share with councilor Zimmerman the other day is we'd love to be able to sort of not go back to square one, but unpack what peeping dysfunction is, how do we fund it? And this is a conversation that we've been having with jonas berry or cfo, not just about ppd, but just how we fund the bureaus across the whole enterprise, because I think we need to start chewing up what service for providing, not just based on where people sit in a bureau, if that makes sense.
61 Absolutely. And to that same question, because that's, you know, we moved public works review to ppd. But as we all know, the the public works bureaus are still doing the permitting. And so you all get yelled at for slow responses from bureaus that you don't have any managerial control over. How do we understand those sort of concerns that we hear from the community as it relates to the chart that you showed us of all the different time responses, is that reflected in there, or was that really just your ppd team and what's in control there?
62 That's a great question. It's it's a little bit nuanced. But for instance there's a transportation review on there. And we do rely on the home bureau. So transport transportation to provide input to that particular review. So there will be a review to the larger transportation so that transportation review encompasses work that ppd does, as well as work that's back at that home bureau. And in order for us to, quote unquote, sign off, all of those need to be approved.
63 I will just tell my colleagues this. Now, this is the deeply unsexy work that I really want to work on. I look forward in the upcoming budget to help try and rightsize this and help work with you all on policy solutions to make sure that the good intentions that were put in place towards consolidation and rightsizing all of these things are actually followed through with the details that matter. And so would look would look to you for some help in trying to figure out exactly how we can make this work and what what I and this committee can help make that a reality. So thank you for all the hard work on this.
64 Councilor Zimmerman.
65 Thank you. I am curious. What our city would look like if we. Stripped things down to fire life, seismic safety only, and what kind of particularly if we're thinking about a housing development, if we can get to bare bones in order to give. I think the other things that go along with the sdc waiver, I hope eventually with the design review reform. I, I don't love that sometimes these ideas come from the top down. But in your early and opening comments, david. You kind of you talked about the work that that folks are doing and but one of the areas that I continue to have concern is I don't hear or at least the impression, whether real or perceived, is that the changes that are needed to the system don't really come from the ground up in our system, or from pnd or what makes up pnd now. And so. Those nominations of ideas haven't found their way, at least, as best as I can tell, haven't found their way. And so we're having to do this top down stuff. And so there are things that are on the top of my list, like reducing everything to fire life, seismic, getting to a point where we have permit upon review that seem radical. But I'm not sure I have faith much is going to happen except incrementalism on the sides. And I'm not really looking for incrementalism, so I just kind of want to pose that. Are we culturally set up to have this conversation inside of ppd, or is it going to require not just community based, but council and dca and pushing to make this happen?
66 That's a great question. So first of all, just with the I'm just going to use cap as an example. We do engage staff in who deal with these issues day in day out. We want to get feedback from them because as donny mentioned, they want to see this process improve as well, but they're beholden to a process and a. The way things were set up that, you know, they had no control over and they still don't, quite frankly, but they understand where those holdups are. What you're talking about is probably more radical than anything that's been proposed at a staff level. And I won't get into the whys, but I think you can probably understand why that might create some anxiety. But certainly we understand staff under understand what the intent is and that what we're the way that things have been set up isn't working. So they want to see improvements there. If we're looking at something as as drastic as stripping everything out, that's not just a ppd city of Portland, that's a state of Oregon issue. So there is state code that we are beholden to. And so that would require legislation from even outside of the city.
67 I find it to be a totally fair question to that point. Maybe I say fire life safety slash state minimums. Maybe that's a better way to say that. But I think it is a reasonable question in a world where we're waiving sdcs, we're we're now going to dive into design review. I, I do have a, an urgency to understand what we have placed above and beyond state requirements that are gumming up the slides that have been presented today. And if they are gumming them up, this is my invitation to whichever employee at whatever level feels like they've gotten a nomination. I hope they bring it to your level, because I think that that the solution probably exists in the person's hands who's dealing with it every day. But what I'm trying to do is signal an invitation and a desire for those things to actually come up, and that we do get radical. In an effort to, frankly, save the system, because I think we're on a path of throwing it all out if we don't get radical. So that's that's kind of where I'm like, all right, so here's the state stuff. What's extra to that? We have adopted some things here that were like state code changes. Great. Understand it. If it's above and beyond, I think articulating why and why we aren't waiving it like we are sdcs for a certain amount of time to spur interest and development is something that I think is worthwhile discussing right now.
68 Yeah, I just want to respond to that real quick. And I think he has something to add to, but just it is incremental. But as we created ppe and there was a review, a particular, particularly in water where they had gone above and beyond what was required of them. And once ppe was created and once we had a business process analysis of their work, we cut down a to do list that was six months past due dates to in real time, and that was because they had the authority. They had someone to speak to within the organization who was willing to make those changes, who previously, you know, no, no fault of anyone previous, you know, in the, you know, leading water previously. But I just don't think that was prioritized work. And once that function moved over, we were able to quickly address that. And to your point, I absolutely open door policy on any changes that staff see even outside of a formal process, like a cap, if they can identify a process change that we can easily make and will be meaningful to the development community, I strongly encourage them to bring that forward.
69 Okay, thanks for it's good to hear. I will also create that invitation for our future conversations on what it might take to get to a version of permit upon review. For those who have a history of delivering code compliant, successful projects, I could certainly never be a permit upon review guide, but there are many who do this job well and can do it that I think we. I'm looking to see how we can put them in an express Lane. I've expressed this before, a dislike of a system that is purely based on cost recovery, and I've said that kind of broadly in terms of I'd rather see. Ppe and structured with the size of workforce based on on the work load that comes in. And knowing that that would require general fund dollars and then the fees that come in are are used differently in our reserves. But I want to hone in on in your seventh slide, you had urban forestry as part of the cost recovery. And I'm trying to understand that since that is paid for through PCEF dollars. Am I missing something here?
70 Just to answer your question, that was the urban forestry team that came over as the creation of ppe and before.
71 Got it. Okay, thanks. We have two elements of that. Good to remember. All right. With with the I will say I, I know that that there are some teams that are facing some staffing changes and. I want to I want to welcome with the staffing changes, cultural changes, I think certain things would not have happened if the organization was working the way it was supposed to, and good riddance. So I'm excited for the opportunity that exists. And I see just frankly, some some people who are going to step in and I think probably save some stuff that becomes more customer friendly and probably portland's value centric in a way, particularly in urban forestry, that I think was really at risk a year or two ago. So I, I note your your challenge and I think it is a christmas gift. So I hear it and I'll be supportive where we can make that work for portlanders. So thanks for this presentation today.
72 Thank you. We've got I'm going to give it about five more minutes. Go ahead, councilor Duffy.
73 Thank you. Just a quick follow up. Based on what councilor Zimmerman was saying, because I don't inherently hold anything precious outside of health, life and safety things and the bare minimum we have to do. But also, I'm not convinced that bird safe glazing is the reason we're not getting tall buildings right now. Cap one took eight months and some dedicated staff resources, and it was a relatively low lift or light lift, right? It was like some of the lowest hanging fruit. If we were to take a truly radical review of the code, do you have even like the the I know you have? It's not fair to ask, but like a basic idea of what that would be, what kind of a lift? Both from a financial investment side, because your staff are not going to be able to also redo this. We have to hire new people. But like what? What will we be looking at in order to radically reform everything?
74 Yeah. Councilor, thanks for the question. And also, I just wanna acknowledge this conversation using your parlance, I think is sexy. So I want to just appreciate that a couple of things when we talk about radical reform, I just I want to just also acknowledge that it wasn't that long ago that Portland was in a boom cycle where. So there hasn't been a lot of code updates that have all of a sudden made our city impossible to build in. There's other constraints that, you know, a magnifying glass onto us about things we can improve. Let's use this moment to improve. Right? But to your question, you touched on it. It's really hard to ask the staff that are doing on a day to day basis, the reviews and the management of the systems to pull out of that, where their minds at to focus on reform and radical reform, even if we're looking at that. So to answer your question, yes, like we did with the permit improvement task force that led to terry tyson's team, we would I would love to have a team that's purely designed to not just work at peep and mind you, but also in public safety and public works to contemplate those bigger changes, because it truly is a citywide approach that needs to be reformed. And as far as what is our timeline, a lot of things slow down when we're in the transition from the old form of government to this one, including getting our sea legs around, how we were going to bring policy to council that was created in the old form of government. It was also in the new structure with service areas, how dcas got involved and we're supporting it. I think knowing what we know now and working with, in partnership with you all, we could absolutely speed that up. But david's point was really salient. A lot of the things we implement are based on state code, so we always want to be mindful of what we're, you know, what gets down to state standards and above, and also what we're doing to actually improve, because we might be making generating more work for ourselves than necessary. We'd love to see the resources committed not just for, but also public works and public safety to to do that analysis. And we've contemplated, by the way, like what would it look like to, you know, to have a team that's just a straight team, if you will, that just looking at, you know, process improvement again in this form of government. Thank you.
75 Thank you so much for the presentation to my colleagues for the discussion. As you clearly see, there is a lot more work to do. And councilors Dunphy and I are leading on the cap two projects, and I know that there will be cap three, probably cap four. So I'll just flag again that hopefully in the new year we can open up some more discussion. And I'd love to bring in some of our community members so that they could give that back directly to you all, as much as to us sound good. Thank you, thank you. Have a great day. Thank you guys. All right, diego, can you read the next item?
76 Item two inclusionary housing program update.
77 All right. I've invited the Portland housing bureau here to share an update on the city's inclusionary housing program, and especially their recent efforts to improve how the program works for housing developers. So I will hand it off to php. Please introduce yourself and get going.
78 Good afternoon. Councilors. My name is dori hellyer and I am the development incentives manager with the Portland housing bureau.
79 Jessie connor, is she her pronouns? I'm the senior policy analyst at the housing bureau.
80 Next slide. Jessie. So, as was said, we were asked at the housing bureau to come and present on the background of portland's inclusionary housing program and provide an overview of the changes after the study that was last performed starting in 2023, and what the current program results of the program are now. In 2016, the city of Portland identified in the 2035 comprehensive plan that linking the production of market rate housing to the production of affordable housing through inclusionary housing, inclusionary zoning type programs was a priority. And with that, there was action at the state that enabled that type of a program to exist in Portland. Prior to that, there had been a similar approach to linking market rate and affordable housing production together through various versions of what is now the multiple unit limited tax exemption program, and that has had various. Ways of implementing it over the years. But one thing that was mostly held stable was that it was a ten year tax exemption with a ten year affordability agreement, with some exceptions to that. So once the state enabled local implementation of inclusionary programs, the city of Portland started a stakeholder process to. Assess what would be the best ideal program in Portland. And that was we then had those recommendations. This happened rather quickly, as you've just been talking about code changes and different things in the in the way that government moves forward. It was a pretty quick process that led to adoption of a program at the end of 2016 that went into effect February of 2017. Next slide. So there were certain parameters that were set in statute to frame the program. And, you know, it's a it's a voluntary program that cities adopt. Currently, Oregon or Portland is the only city within the state who has a program operating. And the state parameters were that. Buildings that it would apply to had to have 20 or more units, and it would it's indiscriminate as to whether those are rental or for sale units or buildings. And because it's a zoning implementation which is neutral as to whether something is a rental or for sale building, it does apply to both. And the state also limited that we a city adopting a program could not require units to be affordable below 80% of median income. We also could not require any more than 20% of the units to be affordable, and that the city must offer some form of financial relief to help balance the the cost of reducing rents through inclusionary housing. The last thing was basically that jurisdictions need to provide a fee in lieu option for someone to buy out of the inclusionary program. Next slide.
81 There it goes.
82 As part of the stakeholder engagement that happened back in 2016 was not to unlike what we did more recently, but it was an extensive process involving many stakeholders through what was referred to as a panel of experts, many hours of public meetings over several months. And we also had. Outside experts. We had a contract where they led the financial modeling to look at different prototypes, along with the market and affordable developers input as to what those numbers would look like to get some sort of general, at least understanding of the outcomes of that analysis, and looking at the final rate of return and residual land value. That and how the affordability levels and various incentives such as tax exemptions, etc. Would offset any inclusionary requirements. And as such, we looked at, you know, several different. Aspects, you know, starting again with that residential land value, both, you know, combining both the hard and soft costs, the cost for development, financing, etc. All of the different requirements like we just talked about or you just talked about with ppe and folks and looked at low, medium and high cost scenarios based on construction type, unit types and different areas of the city and what those different construction types would demand as far as rent and cost to develop. And so all of those things went into that final analysis. Next slide. Within the city of Portland, in adopting the inclusionary program, there were some additional council adopted goals and parameters set. So we we stayed at the, you know, requiring buildings of 20 units or more. We made options to make providing units at 60% of median income more attractive than the mandatory state limit at 80% of median income, because there was a greater need as far as housing at that level. And we also looked in developing the program at different offsets based on geography, based on those different market dynamics and conditions. And within the city of Portland, we chose to prioritize units on site within the building so that having the affordable and market rate units within the same building as mixed income projects over having fee in lieu revenue collected, or by having units off site so that there were just 100% or majority affordable unit buildings, rather than the mixed income buildings. A couple of the other sort of more fine details about the programing in an effort to ensure that affordable units were comparable to any market rate units in the same building, there's some additional requirements about the affordable inclusionary units around the quality, size, bedroom type and distribution within the building so that, for instance, inclusionary units are not all on one floor or all studio units. Et cetera. And the city also decided to implement a 99 year affordability agreement with the program. So with those program options kind of talked about it. But here it is all together as to the different ways to fulfill the inclusionary program requirement. So of for those buildings with 20 or more units, the option one is the state mandate of 20% of units affordable at 80% of median income. There's option two with the to instead do 10% of the units at 60% of median income, and then two different ways of providing units off site. There's a difference between, you know, designating and units in an existing building compared to in an active building, because, you know, one that's already built, because the amount of incentives we're able to provide changes. And so it's 20% of 60% for both of those. And then there's also the fee in lieu option. And then for options one and two. So providing units on site there are some ways to reconfigure to provide family sized units or also combined units all into one building if on the same site called consolidation. Next. So of the incentives and offsets that the city is providing for include units providing inclusionary housing is and some of these. The development bonuses are also available to inclusionary projects that pay the fee in lieu. So essentially any 20 unit or more building should be able to access these development bonuses. So it's additional f.a.r and height in depending on the zoning area across the city. We also offset for the restricted units under inclusionary housing, the construction excise tax exemption. So that's the affordable housing portion of the construction excise tax that gets exempted. And until there was the temporary program for exemption of system development charges, we've had and continue to have an affordable housing exemption program where any units that are restricted at at least that 60% of median income level have received a tax exemption, and then we use the multi, the multiple unit limited tax exemption program, to provide a ten year exemption on at least the affordable units in the building. But in some areas of the city, based on the cost and rents, the whole building may have availability of a tax exemption. Yes. Councilor Dunphy.
83 Go ahead and keep going. I'll ask when you're done with your presentation. Sorry.
84 Go ahead. Jessie.
85 So the 20 2324 periodic review of the program included internal and external analysis. The bureau of planning and sustainability assessed projects permitted under the 20 unit threshold to understand if the city had a significant policy avoidance issue. The housing bureau research programs across the country providing a comparative analysis of program thresholds, requirements, financial offsets, and development incentives, as well as facilitating an external stakeholder work group. Similar to the 2016 process of development and housing professionals representing private, public and community development sectors, they were tasked with reviewing the analysis, components and findings, providing input, feedback, and recommending program and policy changes. The external analysis included an end user survey of the experiences of residents and units by PSU, a development cost study based on the top responses from the pnd, then bts survey of development professionals on housing production barriers and the development of prototype. The development prototype analysis to update the financial model assumptions to reflect changing market conditions. Assess financial feasibility of development projects and any needed revising. Any need for revising the city's financial offsets. The study's findings highlighted market challenges and the need for program modifications. We found that the cost of construction had risen more than 50% since 2016, and other cities were experiencing similar increases. Fewer large projects were being permitted, and projects in all areas of the city were facing financial feasibility gaps. The city's incentives for is in place in 2024. We found that they were adequate to offset costs in some parts of Portland, primarily the core central city and some areas with lower rents, such as east Portland. The city's incentives were not adequate in other areas due to the more limited property tax exemption, and these are sort of higher rent areas just outside of the central city. Think slabtown inner east side hollywood. Key changes that were adopted following the study and findings in 2024 really expanded some of our incentives to help balance the program. There was a deeper property tax exemption expanded to more areas. You'll see that in the map on the right, in the areas in purple bluish, it would exempt all housing units. So the units on the market rate units in buildings for ten years, as long as the project voluntarily opts to include units in the building regulated at the 60% ami mfi level. So that's the 10% at 60 option. To facilitate this, we needed to raise the limit on the amount of total property taxes that can be exempted in the foregone revenue until 2028. In other areas, the property tax exemption remains available only to the affordable units, and those would be the areas in gray. We also dug deep into some of the details of the program requirements with the work group. They were particularly interested in creating some more flexibility and streamlining some of our options. So we increased the proportion of units that are allowed per floor, giving them added flexibility to to move the units around and decrease the average unit size. We simplified the market rate unit parity requirement in reconfiguration and clarified the unit size calculation. We dramatically simplified it there, and then we reorganized the off site option to align the inclusion rates. So it would be the same rate whether it was in an existing building or you created a new building. And then we created some added flexibility in the distance that the off site units could be from the original building. We.
86 So with those changes, I mean, certainly council approved and the county approved changes to increase and expand the tax exemption available. And we have found that the majority of buildings that were able to move forward that hadn't already, which was somewhere around, if I remember correctly, about 30 that were able to move forward with that full tax exemption. So that was definitely a positive change that we were able to make to the program by having that deeper financial incentive. I mean, the tax exemption, of course, is something that helps the operation budget happen. And so it certainly, like many things that have already been talked about, it isn't necessarily alone. Something that was going to. Incent development to happen that didn't other otherwise have challenges within the market. So as was discussed earlier at the meeting. So a lot of those development feasibility challenges still continue within the private market. So we can see results of the program over the now almost seven years that it's been or eight years that it's been in place, we have just a little over 1200 new market units, new private market rate units within the city of Portland, all over the city, which is great to see. And the majority of the units provided through inclusionary housing are at that 60% of median income level, as designed by the program goals. And that, you know, remember, does produce fewer inclusionary units, but it is producing units that are more affordable and meeting a greater need. And we have to date collected around $5 million of in-lieu fees. The majority of those have been from smaller than 20 unit buildings, which have opted into inclusionary housing so that they could avail themselves of the various bonus f.a.r bonuses. So we've got another currently 600 plus units in the permitting pipeline that are under review or have had permit issuance and are under construction. And that is it for our presentation.
87 If you don't mind asking a quick question on that last slide, the 5 million in lieu fees, where do those go?
88 So we have used that for funding for an affordable housing building. And some of that also goes towards covering staffing expenses. And so that but it is open for the housing bureaus control as far as utilization of those funds.
89 Thank you. And councilors will give this until 135. So we have time to hear your testimony. Councilor.
90 Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for. Your your obvious willingness to pivot and be flexible and try to figure out what the market is responding to with the tools that you have. I was here in city hall when it was originally passed. I don't get the impression, not the original one that was like, but like in late 20 tens when we tried to expand this. I worry that we are now at a point where we need to have another serious look at this, because you all are doing your absolute best to keep the ship afloat. But we know that right now, 60% ami units are not particularly attractive to lower income individuals in a lot of regards. And we have I don't know the exact number. I know the mayor is actively working on this, but at one point it was 1700 empty, 60% ami permanently affordable units across the city 80% ami units are actually above market rate in district one. By increasing the property taxes in other parts of property tax exemptions in other parts of the district, it looks like we are disincentivizing development in district one because it is no longer as attractive to build in district one, even though that was where it was penciling and making sense. It is where the greatest need for for for housing. It's the place where we have empty land, and it is where we have 40% of all the families. Additionally, the number of of 19 unit developments that are being permitted has skyrocketed. In order to try and avoid this. And I'm noting that a lot of these units that are getting built in these 19 unit projects are not bigger family sized units. People aren't maximizing the development density on their property. They are simply leaving far and density and capacity on the table in order to make their projects pencil. And I worry that we just made it worse by waiving the sdcs broadly. For the next couple of years, we have taken away a tool that was incentivizing folks into this program. And then lastly, I. 1200 units over eight years seems great. Do we if do we happen to know how many of those units are tenanted? I probably we don't track it since they're private, but I don't know if.
91 Those are those.
92 Are the affordable units. I do not know offhand. They are required to report annually to our. Our compliance department with the housing bureau. So we can certainly get back to you on what we have with compliance. It's generally kind of about a year behind of actual levels, so it's not as up to date as it might be truly reflective though.
93 Okay. And I so I suspect there's probably some of those units are co-mingled in that 1700 vacant unit number that I got earlier this year. So yeah, that makes some sense. But additionally, you know, $5 million over eight years is not enough to money to break ground on any kind of affordable housing. I. It doesn't seem as though the fee in lieu is as strategic of a tool as we need it to be in order to actually incentivize those units, and we're not able to get units on the backside. So instead we just made it slightly more expensive and gave the housing bureau a small amount of dollars over eight years, less than $1 million a year, which is a drop in the bucket for for our need. So I have some real concerns about this, because I worry that right now in the market, this is just going to lead to more 19 unit developments, less cranes in the sky and less people taking advantage of this, even because we we took away one of the the sweetest incentives in there. This is this is kind of concerning. And I will leave it there. Now just to be clear, you two are doing phenomenal. This is not a criticism of the staff. This is a criticism of policy. And this is a criticism of the the totality of effects and the responsibility on this committee to try and respond. So please don't don't think I'm doing that. So thank you.
94 Councilor Zimmerman.
95 Thank you chair, and I'm sorry. Can you both introduce yourself? I'm trying to understand your roles and the role of housing bureau here, relative to what is a lot of construction, permitting. Can you reintroduce yourselves?
96 Go ahead.
97 Sure. My name is dori, and I manage what is called our development incentives team at the Portland housing bureau. And our team. Not only does the administration for the inclusionary housing, which is we do the permit review process, we are not part of pnd because we only have two people that part of their jobs does that review. And then we do all of the incentives that go along with it. So the tax exemptions, anything else, and we implement the covenants and legal agreements and everything that that happens on the affordable housing side with the private development community. We also work with all the affordable housing providers to likewise provide incentives. We also work with single family builders or for residential infill development, to also likewise provide incentives for for affordable or affordable housing through homeownership primarily.
98 Thank you.
99 You're welcome.
100 Thank you, councilor Jesse connor. I'm the senior policy analyst. I'm part of the policy team at. I represent the bureau in tif district exploration and action plan development for the set aside, I lead the variety of research and analysis that needs to come across the desk, the calibration, the periodic review for our team takes the residential vacancy fee study. We are leading with planning and sustainability, the unified housing strategy. We are sort of the first stop for policy research and implementation.
101 Okay. Thank you. That is helpful. I just want to clarify a few things, because some of the slides I was having a little bit of trouble following what you were trying to convey. Dori, in terms of are all units or all buildings above 20 units required to comply?
102 Yes. That's true.
103 Okay. So when you say that you're part of the development incentives, do we consider inclusionary zoning and incentive?
104 Well, that's a.
105 Generalized name for the team okay. So obviously that is a regulatory program that is related to it. So when inclusionary housing was implemented this team was created to combine the different incentives with inclusionary housing, since they layered together so that the team could review and implement all of that work in 1 in 1 team.
106 Okay. And so as I understand the map on page 12, as the city and county increased the tax exemptions that exists on that map, that. Made. It less appealing to a developer. Am I understanding the point you're trying to make on slide 12 here, meaning you had to you had to up something. And this is where I was starting to get lost with your narrative here in terms of what is slide 12 trying to tell us.
107 So what slide 12 is telling us is you will see the. We take imagine the color purple is not there right now. And you just have the central city. And then everything else is gray before the 2324 periodic review, the only place that you could get the full ten year property tax exemption. And that means you get an exemption on all of the residential units, was only in the Green area, in central city and everywhere else in the city. You could only get an exemption on the units. So just a small portion, 10% of your residential units, you'd get that tax exemption. When we did the analysis with our consultants, we realized that because of the higher rents, the higher costs associated with some of the, you know, slabtown or hollywood, that we were not providing enough financial offset to make it balance so that we were not being a barrier that was not a barrier to their process for developing their project. So we expanded. So the purple is now all the areas where you could get a tax exemption on all residential units.
108 So if I build an apartment complex of 21 units, I'm going to get a tax exemption automatically.
109 I mean, you need to go through dori's program, but simplified. Yes.
110 Okay. So from 2007 to 2016, vice 2017 to now, I'm curious what the percentage of multifamily buildings I'm going to say above, let's say ten fell in the 19 and below category. And what percentage of them are of all of the multifamily that we're doing in this second year? Those two groups of years, this 19, because I look at slabtown as a great failure, right? All I see is a bunch of floors that didn't get built. And I don't know that is is related there. But the more I hear about 19 building units, all I hear is the word failure because I represent the centralized city. I want a bunch of wells fargo towers. I don't want a bunch of slob towns. And so I'm trying to understand if this program is contributing to my dis like of short buildings in the central city.
111 I'm not quite sure.
112 I can take a stab.
113 At that one. Jesse, as far as like the slabtown, it was part of a master plan development of the conway site, and so that was a land use project that was vested in its land use application prior to the implementation of inclusionary housing. So inclusionary housing does not apply in that area of slabtown.
114 I actually I do know that. And what I'm saying is if if it is a picture to me of a, of a part of our community, who they all built, what was going to get past design review, they all built a shorter stature building, if you will, because for whatever reason, that was the thing that passed. I, I want to prevent that from happening again. And so I'm, I've been taking a look across the board, not just eyes, but other areas of what are the things that prevent the maximum density. And I continue to hear this 19 unit thing said to me, and I'm trying. This is why I'm asking of multifamily was developed prior to 2016 and that developed after 2017. What the difference in percentages are for 19 and below versus 19 and 20 and above in in these two systems. And I can't tell if the market has responded by building less large unit capacity buildings. That's what I can't tell right.
115 Now so I won't be able to speak to I can't really speak to the pre 2016 numbers, but as part of our analysis, this question was out in the community. And so we did do an assessment of permits and projects between the 12 and 19 unit threshold from I think it was about 2017 through our, you know, 2023 date. And they did find that there was an increase of the roughly maybe 70% of the residential permits. It did go from 5% to 10%. I will say, you know, so you can argue that's a double, but it's also a pretty small portion of the residential permitting at the time. However, what hasn't and I feel like maybe is filtered into some of their more recent analysis, is at the same time, the city was taking some pretty concerted efforts to build the attractiveness of the middle missing middle housing. So better housing by design and the residential infill project were intentionally trying to get those types of projects going. So I feel like there's a couple of things there, and I likely couldn't speak more and would want planning to speak to their analysis on that piece.
116 I hope that we can get to the point where we have some idea before 2016, since this is when we implemented it.
117 We we saw that there were there was one very clear we are building. I don't I think it was maybe 3 or 4. Dori maybe you remember 19 unit buildings on one lot. Okay. Outside of that.
118 Thanks for being here. Yeah. Go ahead.
119 Yeah. Part of the.
120 Analysis that bureau planning sustainability did about the 12 to 19 unit buildings was to look at the individual zoning on some of those buildings and what was actually built. And so at the time, you know, it's been a couple years now since then, but the majority of the projects that they looked at, they were utilizing the f.a.r. They had available for those smaller buildings. There's obviously anytime a new zoning code project goes into effect, it changes what people. What they might build to, you know, as to. But if they already owned the property and already had the project underway, for instance, you know, that was what they were looking at developing on those sites. There was obviously a huge influx of permits that came in prior to inclusionary housing going into effect. That was part of the kind of spike in applications that we saw in permitting ahead of that.
121 Okay, so I know that the chair is trying to wrap up, I guess what I was hoping to see in this presentation was clear and convincing. Evidence that is, has not actually stunted capacity in, I say, capacity of the number of units that were built inside the city of Portland. I didn't get that today, and I would like to be able to talk about that more specifically because that example that dori just gave of a rush on the permit office before things went into place, is concerning. And given this amount of time that's gone by, I don't I don't assess that. We have as robust of data on the success of the program as, I guess I would expect. And so that becomes hard to rebut in the community when I hear the complaints. It's hard to rebut that, because I'm not really seeing a story here that calls success yet. And I worry that we've hurt the overall market capacity, which has a trickle down effect, particularly in my district, where what is naturally affordable has become market rate just because of the lack of units. And I'm afraid that this presentation hasn't let me know that, in fact, I didn't contribute to that. So I'm leaving today with larger question marks, actually, than when I came in. Thank you.
122 Thank you colleagues. Thank you to you all for your presentation. As you can hear, there are some further questions. I think what would help me answer some of those questions is, you know, when you talk about the different things that impact production or whatever, how are we can you outline what are the other things? I think that's what it is. It's like this is we're seeing it in a vacuum in a way, which is what we asked. So that is what I told you to do. But as you can see, that doesn't tell the full picture. And that's what is going to help us make these kind of future decisions. And so maybe we could talk about bringing you guys back to elaborate a little bit more on the bigger picture. So it'll help put into context where is falls in that. You know what I mean? So we can talk about bringing that back to a future meeting. Okay. And with that, thank you very much for your presentation. And diego, can you read the last item.
123 Item three renters feedback forum.
124 Okay. This is our time to hear from Portland renters on their concerns and suggestions. And so, diego, how many people do we have signed up?
125 We have six individuals signed up.
126 All right. Go ahead and call the first three.
127 Natalie seals, chris olson, connor lennon natalie and chris are online. Natalie, feel free to unmute and begin when you're ready.
128 Hello! For the record, my name is natalie seals. Thank you, chair Avalos and councilors for this listening session. I have lived in district four for five years since I moved to Portland. According to the 2024 state of housing in Portland report, d4 has almost 50,000 registered rental units. D3, the next highest, has about 35,000. However, I often feel like two of the three councilors in my district and the mayor are more interested in listening to the billionaires and corporations who own the buildings, and not to the citizens of Portland who make those buildings our home. My dream is not to ever buy a house in Portland. I've been a homeowner before. I don't want to do it again. My dream is calling maintenance when something breaks and they show up very quickly to fix it. My dream is floor to ceiling windows with a view of mount hood. My dream is living with PSU foreign students, retired Oregon natives, disabled veterans, and recently homeless people who now live here because of the home forward program. My dream is walking a couple blocks to get on a streetcar, a bus or light rail, or to ride my bike out of the building right onto a new protected bike Lane to go to alberta or Hawthorne or mississippi neighborhoods to shop and eat. My dream is walking to a broadway show, an urban park, or one of the best farmer's markets in the country. But my dream is not sustainable, with a 10% rent increase every year. According to that state of the housing report, the median income for renters in Portland is less than half of the income of homeowners. During the recent park levies vote, homeowners said that increasing their property taxes would make it difficult to afford them. A homeowner in Portland with a $300,000 house is paying $35 more per month because of the levy. A renter of an average one bedroom apartment in Portland with a 10% rent increase has to pay $150 more per month. My dream is not sustainable. When greystar, the owner of my building, uses price fixing software and colludes with other corporations to keep rents high while offering no transparency for cost or expenses or even profit, or when they double the electric bill of everyone in the building, including those on fixed incomes, by suddenly starting to charge us for the shared electricity in the building. This is legal in Portland. How would anyone here feel if next month your electric bill doubled and the only recourse you had was to move out of your dream home? That is not a dream. It is a nightmare. Portland continues to have about equal numbers of renters versus homeowners in the city. According to that report, renters deserve equal consideration by policymakers. Thank you very much.
129 Chris. You can begin when you're ready.
130 Thank you. Yeah. For the record, my name is chris olson and I live in district two, and I'm a member of the Portland chapter of the democratic socialists of America and a leader of our housing working group. As a member of the housing working group, I've been canvasing renters across the city this past year, mostly tabling at major events in support of our renters bill of rights campaign. And this year alone, we've talked to thousands of people and knocked over 2000 doors and collected over 1000 signatures from everyday folks endorsing the renters bill of rights. Portlanders are speaking clearly that they want stability and they want fairness, and they want to live in a city where regular people, not corporations, can afford to live. We've also held three renters town halls, where I've heard story after story about the crushing cost of simply trying to keep a roof over your head. At one town hall, I met an elder in our community who pays just about over $1,500 in rent, paid entirely out of her social security check after rent. She has just over about $60 left to cover food, medicine, transportation, and every other basic need that she has. If her rent goes up this year by the 9.5% allowed by state law, she will be unable to afford her home at all. But she's not alone. I've spoken to families forced to move every year or two because of rent increases, and for new corporate for because of a new corporate landlord who suddenly makes their home unaffordable. I've met service workers and teachers and caregivers who tell me they are one rent hike away from displacement, and I've talked to young people who grew up here and can't imagine a future in Portland, because the starter apartments are, you know, now $1,800, $2,000 for even some basic units. We also hear from disabled tenants who face steep rent increases but cannot afford to safely relocate because of accessibility and affordable units that just simply don't exist. We hear from entire buildings, like ones that have just been bought up by predatory investment firms who are just hit with rent. Hike over and over and over again, arbitrary fees to try to squeeze every single dollar out of these tenants who really have no other option. Rents have also just gone up far faster than wages in the city. Food costs, more utilities costs, more transportation costs, more portlanders are doing everything they can, everything right they can, and working full time and sometimes multiple jobs. But the math still isn't mathing. And when tenants are squeezed like this, it takes that the consequences ripple out to our entire community. We see increased homelessness, overcrowding of our shelters, family families uprooted from their schools and support networks. Entire communities are destabilized. We are living with those consequences every single day. And I see them all the time. This is why I urge this committee and the full council to support our renters bill of rights to look into our policies, and it offers real, practical protections for people who make the city function. And that's our renters every single day. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
131 Hi. For the record, my name is conor lennon. I'm a resident of district four. I want to thank you, chair Avalos and councilors for having us here today and allowing us to speak about our lived experiences. When I first moved to district four a few years ago, I moved into an apartment with an undisclosed cockroach infestation. My property management company tried to tell me multiple times that this did not exist, and there were no cockroaches in the building. They only called exterminators and started regularly maintaining building treatments. After I sent them a cockroach in the mail. Pretty gross. The prolonged exposure to cockroaches and their feces caused me to have some pretty severe respiratory issues. Now other tenants in myself and my building are facing flies coming out of every drain in the building, from our apartments to the laundry room. I called property management and explained our situation and they told me to submit a maintenance request. What did I just call you for? Though? My property management company continuously refuses to address building wide issues because they're legally not required to fix things that are not in individual units. This is a response I received when the doorknob came off of our basement door. The same response I received when I mentioned water damage in the halls. The building I live in is over 100 years old, and every single unit has water damage in it. Though I guess I'm lucky property management was kind enough to paint over the water damage in my living room, at least when the radiator and the unit above mine falls through the ceiling, I can pretend it's snowing. I joke, but in the reality of the situation, I cannot afford to move and many people in my situation cannot afford to move. My rent is currently 74% of my income. That is a pretty absurd number, and I work four jobs in well over 40 hours a week. I spend more time out of my home than in it. Frankly, on average, I have less than $400 a month for utilities and groceries. I'm also paying about 7.50 a week to do my laundry because as an early morning baker, I wear two, sometimes three sets of clothes a day. So in reality, I have about $350 a month for all utilities, groceries, and other necessities. I have not been to the doctor in years and I will not be going any time soon. This is an unfortunate reality for a lot of tenants living in Portland, and it should be illegal to leave tenants in the situations that I found myself facing day after day. You councilors have the power to help us out of these situations and to move the goalpost closer to something that's attainable for us. We don't have to live this way. I'm in huge support of finding solutions to problems that most renters are facing in Portland. We deserve a renters bill of rights, and we deserve a social safety net that can be built upon so that renters like me don't face the problems that I have. Thank you.
132 Thanks.
133 Next up we have talia giardini, councilor Canal brian kotlov. Talia is joining online as well as brian.
134 Talia, are you available to begin? Am I not there? Okay. And then you said someone else was online.
135 Yes. We had brian kotlov when last call for talia. If you can hear us, feel free to unmute. Otherwise we can circle back to your name later.
136 Hold on. Sorry. First time doing virtual. Can you hear me?
137 We can hear you. Go ahead and begin.
138 Okay.
139 Sweet. Sorry. Just one second. I need to pull up my testimony. Sorry. Okay. Hi. My name is talia giardini. I was born and raised in Portland, and I want to thank you for allowing us to share our experiences. Renters. I'm a renter, and I feel really lucky to live in an older building with smaller property management company that tries to not raise our rent more than they have to. But I understand that when we vote to increase property taxes, I should expect my rent to go up to adjust for that. Many renters are not aware they pay property taxes and they should be educated as such by the city when being asked to vote in higher taxes. I'm a student, so I'm grateful for the situation I live in and even saw rent stabilized the last two years. Some of my friends are not so lucky. They lived in newer, mixed use buildings that are required to have a certain amount of units for low income residents. I support that, but unfortunately these are usually run by out of state property management companies and they don't treat their tenants very well. But it seems that those few tenants are be are being disruptive, and it doesn't make it worth a higher rent to live there. There are certain types of landlords that you refer to when talking about renter protections, who raise the rent as much as possible every single year. But as I mentioned, I do not have this issue with my landlord. So I want to remind you that not all two rental situations are alike and no two landlords are alike. I would hate to see it made harder for landlords like mine who want to continue renting to me as if the city starts making it too restrictive for in state and local and mom and pop landlords. We have a history of ordinances and taxes that have unintended consequences. I think we need to look at the root cause of the issue here. As we see, the numbers are actually quite a large number of available units, and market rate isn't really that bad compared to other cities. Our issue here is actually the job market. I'm lucky that I'm a nurse, but for people outside of healthcare and tech, we have traditionally shunned larger corporations and provided an anti-business environment instead of creating jobs. Therefore, we don't actually have a lot of tax the rich type jobs available to our residents. If we had living wage jobs, we wouldn't be as worried about rent, especially when rent prices seem to be stabilizing. In this regard, I want to thank councilor Smith and Ryan for the work they're doing in regards to workforce and economic development. Also, my grandmother is on a fixed income and can't afford to continue raising of property taxes. Unaffordable property taxes is one of the big reasons why our homeless population is becoming largely comprised of our elderly residents getting priced out of housing affordability, saying people only have to pay 40 more a month in taxes minimizes the impact taxes are having on our cost of living. I would also like to be a homeowner one day, but with the high property taxes, it feels even more out of reach as taxes would add hundreds of dollars a month to my monthly payment. Let's see, am I done? We also have heard multiple. Wrap up. Okay, okay.
140 Finish your thought. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Go ahead. Brian.
141 Hey, thanks so much. Good afternoon. My name is brian. I'm here to speak from my lived experience as a renter in Portland, where I was renter until just a few months ago. I do want to acknowledge my own privilege. I have a stable job, decent credit, supportive networks, and even with all of that, finding a rental that met my family's needs was far more difficult than I expected. When we searched for our last rental, I was pretty shocked how few places were available, especially anything with enough space for a family with young children like mine. It made me think a lot about renters who don't have the advantages that I did, and it especially made me worry about future renters, future portlanders, people who want to move here, build lives here, raise kids here, launch businesses here. If the system is this strained right now, like what will look like for those people? Many on the council seem to be proposing policies that would exacerbate this housing scarcity crisis. And it definitely is a housing scarcity crisis. Instead, I ask that you guys would do things that increase supply to support current and future renters, because no amount of regulation will help if there simply aren't enough places to live. And scarcity is the one force that renters cannot protect themselves from. Scarcity gives more power to the exact same corporate landlords that previous testifiers, natalie and chris, talked about. Scarcity. It shows up as unfilled jobs, stalled business expansions, fewer startups, shrinking school enrollment, and it weakens our tax base, the very foundation that we rely on to fund all the services that you all want to deliver for your constituents. You can't build a strong, inclusive, middle class economy on top of a housing shortage. Now, I know one of the proposals being talked about on council to address this scarcity crisis is social housing. Now, while I respect the intent of increasing supply, I don't believe that this model will serve future renters very well. Social housing is asking systems that already struggle with core operational functions. We saw permitting inspections, administrative follow through to suddenly scale into high performing, responsive landlords. For thousands of people, that is not the path towards housing justice. That is a path towards frustration, delayed maintenance and the recreation of unresponsive structures that fail the very people that we aim to uplift. So the city council really should be focusing on policies that expand supply. I promise you, the corporate landlords, they'll hate it more competition, lower rents will be more choices for renters that will give power to renters. So my ask is that you center not only today's renters, but the experiences of tomorrow's future renters, future people that want to move to Portland. If we want Portland to be a magnet for new residents, for new jobs, for new businesses, and a way stronger tax base and policies that encourage people to invest in this city and not walk away from it. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
142 Thank you councilor Kanal.
143 Thank you, madam chair. Members of the committee. For the record, my name is Sameer canal. I'm a city councilor Representing district two, north and northeast Portland. However, I'm here testifying as a renter also in district two. Of course, I've rented in north Portland for several years now. I've had a wide variety of experiences with property owners and property management companies, and some of that has similarity to the experiences I've had in seattle and new york, where I've been a renter. I've been a renter my entire adult life. Based on that experience, I am broadly supportive of the relocation rules that the city has to protect renters and many of the other protections as well. But there needs to be more specific protections for the 47% of us who rent. And from that personal experience, I do have a few suggestions of additional policy. First, I would like to see investment at the city level into social housing so that there are at least some units where the government, rather than the private sector, sets the price, and where people can live for a set portion of their income, usually 30%. We need more places which are affordable without creating a rent burden, and social housing investment helps achieve that. Relatedly, we need to ensure that minimum wage can pay for a one bedroom apartment, which will require some state action on the minimum wage. Second, I'd like to see greater protection for tenant unions to expand economic democracy beyond the workplace and into our housing market. Like renters are a group that can be exploited absent protection. And one potential protection is the ability to speak to building, management or ownership collectively. Third, I'd like to strengthen that by ensuring that the exemptions claimed by property owners are verified. The property owner wants a tenant to leave so that they can move in their immediate family. We should verify that that relative does in fact move in so the system isn't abused. Fourth, we need a long term vacancy fee to ensure that existing supply is available. Supply and provide downward pressure on rents. Fourth, I'd like to see the 10% rule where rent increases above 10% trigger mandatory relocation assistance come down to 5% to better reflect inflation. I'd also like to lengthen the notice period before rent goes up to six months, and I'd like to see a right to an attorney in eviction court. These are all things that would have assisted me or my roommates as a renter somewhere in the last 17 years or so that I've been renting. And I'll also note that the last three of them are part of the renters bill of rights, which is at pdx renter power.com. I do believe that expanding supply is very helpful, and that we need to ensure that those supply increases meet our needs. We have enough new and expensive studios, but we do not have enough new and affordable units for families. When we focus exclusively on the number of units that are created as the metric, that leads to not enough focusing on larger units for the families that could be housed. And this has been a challenge specifically in north and northeast Portland as well, addressing the needs of renters will reduce the number of homeless people as well, by making eviction and displacement less likely and therefore reduce expenses on houselessness. Freeing up disposable income for renters will increase consumption and promote economic growth, in particular for some of the industries hurting most like our restaurant industry. But most of all, it's just the right thing to do to make Portland a city that anyone can afford to live in. And with my last five seconds, I'd love to encourage you to take the show on the road and hear from renters around the city. Thank you so much.
144 Challenge accepted. Thank you councilor Colleagues, I know we are at two, but if you would give me three more minutes, I would like to invite edith up, who has been asking to come testify. So come on up.
145 Good afternoon. My name is edith gillis. And the reason why I'm here is because I've been a homeowner and taxpayer, business owner and a tenant. And I've also been homeless twice in Portland. I want you to know that it's not just a matter of building new housing units, because we have a lot of empty housing units, and we have housing units that are built inappropriately or destroying some of the best topsoil in the best growing climate in the entire world, and wasting it by paving it. That doesn't provide housing and the housing is not close to jobs. The jobs are not livable. We also need to make sure that we know what our facts are. The percentages of of jobs that are in the city of Portland at certain rates, is the same percentage of housing we should have at those rental rates. So if we're going to only pay people a tiny amount of money, we should have that many number of housing units at that teeny rent. We also need to hold landlords accountable, not only for everything that commissioner Canal said, which is excellent and I totally agree with. But also we need to make sure that they're held accountable and that we change. We advocate here at the city level for changing the state level. We can have rent cap here and we can go about it in a better way. We have to get rid of the so-called resident benefits package, which is really just a fraud of raising the rent, but having the excuse that you could evict someone because they didn't comply with the the lease requirements, one can increase the so-called resident benefits package, which is no benefit to me because I'm already paying my renters insurance, and my renters insurance will not pay if I have renters benefit package. Supposedly better insurance, so neither company pays, but I pay them. I want to make sure that we are preventing people becoming homeless by holding corporations accountable to have livable jobs that are safe and workable, and that we have housing that's livable, and that we hold corporations accountable for having livable prices. And what we can do is not necessarily build higher buildings when we don't have the building code of chile and japan for the earthquakes that we're going to have here, multiple earthquakes, multiple exploding gas lines, but that we we build smartly and we use the land that we do have holding landlords accountable and bankers and creditors accountable.
146 Thank you, edith. And one more exception. We've got one more person who signed up at the last second. Let's get you in here. I'm not sure who that is. All right, come on up.
147 Thank you for making that exception. My name is.
148 Your name.
149 Andrew harrison. Courtney. I've been in Portland since 1997. The systematic destruction of the land since I've been here. And and also since my family has been here, has been absolutely oppressive to everybody in the city. Let me take a step back and just say it's been oppressive, but it's been divinely timed. And everything that happened happened for a reason. So it's all it's all made the story of Portland, what it is today. But what we have to be able to do is we have to be able to change that story, change the page of that story so that we can have a better tomorrow. We sweep our homeless around us from one place to another, and it's just devastating to them because they don't have a chance to actually get out of the situation that they're in, you know, and they are not as well equipped to deal with their mental health issues, the traumas, the generational traumas that everybody goes through, that everybody's generations go through. And. I think we can in Portland be that change. We have a beautiful city here that that wants to take the steps into the next age of this whole planetary race, the evolution, I would say, of humanity. We need to be that example as others are going around making the same statement in places that it needs to be made. It is it is for your guys's future. It's for your kids future. It's for humanity's future. And we just need to really accept that the truth is the truth. And when we hear truth, there's something afflicted in us to be able to make the change. I've been oppressed in this town since 1997 by everything it. The way the oppression worked was so systematic that when people hear this story, they're going to absolutely feel that suffering from that story. I do not want to put my pain onto anybody, and I don't want to share that story right now. But I was called here today to make this statement and the statements made. I appreciate you guys for listening to me.
150 Thank you so much. And thank you to everybody who came to share your story. We're really grateful, and we are going to continue to provide opportunities to hear more from you. Our next meeting is Tuesday, November 9th. At that meeting, we're going to have progress reports on the unified housing strategy and the social housing study. With that, I will adjourn. Adjourn the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee at 2:07 p.m.
151 December 9th. Yes, December.