Portland City Council Housing & Permitting Committee 08/04/26

Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Candace Avalos 8:03 - 8:12
8:03Good afternoon.
8:04I will call the meeting of Housing and Permitting Committee to order.
8:08It is Tuesday, August 4th at 2 PM.
8:11Diego, please call the roll.
Unidentified speaker 8:13 - 8:13
8:13Good afternoon.
Steve Novick 8:14 - 8:14
8:14Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane 8:15 - 8:15
8:15Here.
8:15Novick?
8:16Here.
8:17Green?
Mitch Green 8:18 - 8:18
8:18Here.
8:19Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney 8:20 - 8:20
8:20Here.
8:20Avalos?
8:21Present.
8:22Claire, please read the statement of conduct.
8:24Thank you, Chair.
8:25Good afternoon and welcome to the meeting of the Housing and Permitting Committee.
8:28To testify before this committee in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at portland.gov/council/agenda/housingandpermittingcommittee or by calling 311.
8:40Registration for virtual testimony closes 1 hour prior to the meeting.
8:43In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard.
8:47If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the chair states otherwise.
8:53Your microphone will be muted when your time is over.
8:56The chair preserves order.
8:57Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed.
9:05If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.
9:08Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.
9:10Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.
9:14Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
9:18Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
9:20When testifying, please state your name for the record.
9:22If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
9:25And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name.
Michael Anderson 9:29 - 9:29
9:29Thank you.
9:30Thank you, Claire.
9:31We have 4 main items on our agenda.
9:33We'll have some time for public comment.
9:35Then we will do a continuation of the foreclosure properties that we discussed on July 21st.
9:40Then we will have an ordinance on housing and a housing financing grant.
9:44And after a short break, we will talk about the single stair design and hear from Portland Neighbors Welcome about a local design competition that they organized.
9:53So, but before we get to our main items, we need to adopt committee minutes for our meetings on June 2nd and June 16th.
10:00Diego, can you please read the item?
10:02Item 1, June 2nd through June 16th, 2026, Housing and Permitting Committee minutes.
10:09The minutes are approved by unanimous consent.
10:10So are there any objections?
10:13Without objection, the minutes are approved.
10:15Diego, please read the next item.
10:17Item 2, document number 2026-271, Housing and Permitting Community Feedback.
10:24All right, we will now hear from community members on their ideas or concerns or feedback regarding housing and permitting issues.
10:30Each testifier will have 3 minutes.
10:31Diego, go ahead and call the first person.
10:35First up, we have Madeline Masters.
Kevin Foster 10:53 - 10:53
10:53Welcome.
10:53Go ahead and introduce yourself and get started.
10:55Thank you.
10:56My name is Madeline Masters.
10:57I'm in District 2.
10:59Good afternoon, councilors.
11:01I'm here to discuss unintended consequences.
11:04I'd like to give you the view from North Portland, where what you call infill smells an awful lot like urban renewal.
11:10It smells a lot like extracting value from city dwellers to enrich suburban developers.
11:15It's a Trojan horse.
11:17Soon to be demolished is a landmark of my street, an old-growth bungalow with twinkling multi-pane windows listed by the city as a significant contributing historic resource.
11:28As a habitable 5-bedroom, it could be multigenerational housing, or to increase the development value, could be expanded and adapted to multifamily or even commercial use.
11:38But these possibilities are prohibited under R-2.5.
11:42To maximize value under the new zoning, the developer must demolish it, even as nearby houses and lots sit empty.
11:49Is this sustainable?
11:51Bought privately for $450,000, it is now listed as a raised development site for $695,000.
11:58The developer's other nearby projects— project features 900-square-foot houses selling for nearly $400,000, double the cost per square foot.
12:07Is this affordable?
12:09We are losing lifelong housing in a neighborhood of multigenerational households.
12:14The buyers of these new vertical units will have to sell when they can no longer take the stairs.
12:19They'll probably have to leave Portland.
12:21Is this wealth building?
12:22Is it community building?
12:25A thoughtful answer could have created a mix of ground floor and upper floor units using the existing structure with new additions.
12:32The design would show consideration of the existing neighbors and the history and aesthetics that make a neighborhood special.
12:37That's infill.
12:39But when you massively upzone the entire city or state, you don't target the areas that need investment, but areas that are stable, and you destabilize them.
12:50You discourage investment in existing structures.
12:53You encourage land speculation and demolition and vacancy.
12:58With historic structures often on larger lots, you put a bigger target on the most special properties.
13:03You take out markers of local identity and end up with the same new developments cut and pasted in every neighborhood.
13:10Is this housing diversity?
13:13There's currently a $64 million listing by one developer for a portfolio of 170 new-build homes.
13:20This is who is building wealth under this scheme.
13:22Is this equitable?
13:24Is it democratic?
13:26I also question how the city is meant to support housing, housing, housing while we are losing commercial tax base and cutting schools and fire stations.
13:34But as to zoning, 6 major points which are a bit more fleshed out on the page that I shared.
13:40One, transparency is essential to market participation as well as to democracy.
13:462, Targeted rezoning works better than sweeping changes.
13:503, Restrict demolition but give historic preservation an upside.
13:554, Form-based zoning and use flexibility are better incentives than bulk bonuses.
14:015, Design for longevity.
14:046, Aesthetics matter to everyone.
14:07Pretty neighborhoods draw taxpayers.
14:09Stable neighborhoods retain them.
14:12Please remember this.
14:13Thank you.
14:15Thank you for your testimony.
14:17Diego, please call the next person.
14:19Next is Lacey Sutton.
14:24Hi, Lacey Sutton.
Lacey Sutton 14:31 - 17:01
14:31I'd like to talk more about the balcony railings at Cherry Blossom.
14:34It's not our most pressing concern, but it's a really good example of the sort of thing your self-proclaimed biggest customer was able to get away with.
14:41Even before moving into our new homes, parents expressed concerns about having horizontal bars immediately outside the sliding glass door on the second story with concrete below, but Habitat for Humanity refused to replace them.
14:53In the years since, I have witnessed countless times children climbing these bars and felt immense frustration with such a stupid, careless design.
15:01So imagine my surprise when I discovered that the design commission had actually made vertical railings a condition of Approval.
15:08Why?
15:09Because they shared the same concerns about horizontal bars.
15:12During the recorded hearing, a commissioner said the ladder has other problems, which is kids can actually climb and jump over them.
15:19Vertical balcony railings were a legal requirement of this build, so why do we have ladders?
15:25By the way, the condition also states unit entry stoop safety railings shall be vertical, but some of these have horizontal railings as well, and the rest of them are just big bars with no safety railings at all.
15:36Nothing for small hands to hold on to.
15:38Thank you.
15:39I've previously testified about how, following my complaint to PP&D, I was told that former Director Kuhnhausen met with CEO Steve Messinetti to discuss the things they missed.
15:50And in an exceedingly rare moment of accountability, Habitat was given directives to replace the railings.
15:56But after this made the evening news, PP&D reneged.
16:00When I asked for an explanation repeatedly for weeks, I was merely forwarded the memo the director sent to City Council, which dismissed All my concerns about Cherry Blossom.
16:10He never wrote a word to me.
16:11Why should he when he can just send out some BS he knew no one would fact-check?
16:16On the balconies, he said, well, there was a condition in the land use review for this site stating that the railing must be vertical.
16:22This condition was related to aesthetics, not safety.
16:27The railings were shown as horizontal in the 2019 land use review, which amended the previously approved design.
16:33He's referring to the Type 2 review Habitat got for minor changes.
16:38They weren't minor, but I digress.
16:41It didn't even mention railings because a single staffer could not and did not amend a condition of approval decided upon by the Design Commission during a Type 3 review.
16:51The idea that an architect's drawing could do that is absurd.
16:54To amend this condition, Habitat would have had to get another Type 3 review.
16:59Here's a PP&D supervisor telling them this via email in 20—.
Rebecca Dobert 17:01 - 17:02
17:012019.
17:0219.
17:03Any condition of approval not met would require a follow-up Type 3 DZ.
17:08Please meet all conditions of approval so another Type 3 DZ is not required.
17:13But then, like so many things that were required for Cherry Blossom Habitat, just didn't do it, and the city just signed off on it, and there were zero consequences.
17:21Unless a kid falls, I guess, or until a tree falls on a house, or there's a fire, then there will be consequences.
17:28Thank you.
17:33That concludes testimony.
17:35Thank you again for folks for testifying in front of us today.
17:40Always an opportunity to share your experience at committee.
17:43Um, Diego, go ahead and call the next item, or actually, um, please open items 3 through 16.
17:51Item 3, document number 2026-247, initiate foreclosure action on 7545 Northeast Sandy Boulevard for the collection of delinquent delinquent city liens placed against the property.
18:03Item 4, document number 2026-248, initiate foreclosure action on 7545 WI/Northeast Sandy Boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
18:16Item 5, document number 2026-249, initiate foreclosure action on 6307 North Montana Ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
18:27Item 6, document number 2026-250, initiate foreclosure action on North Columbia Boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
18:38Item 7, document number 2026-252, initiate foreclosure action on 7250 Northeast Sandy Boulevard— excuse me, Northeast Lombard Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
18:52Item 8, document number 2026-253, initiate foreclosure action on 7101—.
18:577101.
18:597103 Southeast Division Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
19:05Item 9, document number 2026-254, initiate foreclosure action on 1625 Southeast 35th Ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
19:16Item 10, document number 2026-255, initiate foreclosure action on 2706 Southeast 122nd Ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
19:29Item 11, document number 2026-256, initiate foreclosure action on 2734-2738 Northeast Alberta Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
19:42Item 12, document number 2026-257, initiate foreclosure action on 4324 Southeast 65th Ave for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
19:54Item 13, document number 2026-258, initiate foreclosure action on 6627 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
20:06Item 14, document number 2026-259, initiate foreclosure action on 10104 Southeast Herald Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
20:19Item 15, document number 2026-261, initiate foreclosure action on 5706 Southeast Lambert Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
20:30Item 16, document number 2026-261, initiate foreclosure action on 855 Northeast Church Street for the collection of delinquent city liens placed against the property.
20:45Thank you, Diego.
20:46All right, give me one quick second, folks.
20:49I am clarifying okay, so at the mayor's request, we are withdrawing 2 items from the agenda and referring these back to the mayor's office.
21:06That is item 9, document 2026-254, property located at 1635 Southeast 35th Avenue, where the owner has satisfied the balance owed on the liens.
21:16So moved.
21:16Second.
Ian Crozier 21:16 - 21:16
21:16Second.
21:17And item 10, document 2026-255, property located at 2706 Southeast 122nd Avenue where the owner has closed their open case and entered into a payment plan.
21:32Additionally, before we take on the remaining items, I'd like to note that I will not be calling for a vote today on item 14, document 2026-256.
21:46Yes.
21:48Based on information that has recently come to my attention, I believe additional time is appropriate to allow the property owner's family to determine whether they can resolve the situation without the need for foreclosure.
22:00And we can ask questions on that if you'd like.
22:05And then as a reminder, we continued this ordinance package to allow more time for committee member questions about specific properties that are eligible for foreclosure under city administrative rule.
22:15So I will ask Kevin Foster, our Foreclosure Prevention Manager, to provide us with any updates on the properties and potential resolution, and then we will open it up to committee questions and discussion.
22:28So with that, take it away.
22:30All right, good afternoon, Chair Avalos, Vice Chair Green, and the Housing Committee.
22:35For the record, I'll state my name, Kevin Foster, Foreclosure Prevention Manager for the city.
22:47Okay, as we discussed, these are the 2 properties that were removed within the last 2 weeks.
22:54So actually, we're taking off one more today, so there's actually going to be 11 properties that we're moving forward with.
23:04All right, and where would you like me to start?
23:09Yeah, Chair Avalos.
23:12Wherever.
23:12Just— okay, okay.
23:14So this is the, um, this property, 7545 Northeast Sandy Boulevard.
23:21Um, we went over it last week.
23:22There's been no engagement with the owner, um, or any of the parties of interest.
23:28Um, in the last 2 weeks, I did speak with one party of interest like I told you last time, and they told me there's nothing they can really do.
23:36Um, so of course this is why it's remaining on the list.
23:44Now this property, 6307 North Montana Avenue, we received an email within the last hour, and they've been able to— the attorney that's working with the lender they've been able to get closer to resolving the property, resolving the issues at the property and getting a certificate of occupancy and certificate of completion.
24:05So this one we won't be moving forward with.
24:11So I think what I'm going to do is, because I've already gone through the presentation with you guys before, if we could just get to some— maybe you guys have specific questions about properties.
24:23And I could just go from there.
24:28All right, sounds good.
24:29We will kick it off with Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
24:32Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being back.
24:34There were 2 properties I had asked questions about the previous time you were here.
24:38It sounds like one of them, 10104 Southeast Herald, we're not moving forward today.
24:45The other was 855 Northeast Church Street.
24:49You told us a few weeks ago that the property owner there had plans for the property but hadn't been able to provide any proof of engagement with a contractor or anything else to show you that they were moving forward with those plans.
25:05Have there been any updates over the last few weeks?
25:07Have they been able to produce anything, or are we still in a situation where they are reporting plans but not able to give you any concrete information?
25:15To show those moving forward?
25:16Yes, right now we're still in that same state, but she is out of town right now.
25:21Um, so that's why one of the reasons when I spoke with her last, she was out of town.
25:25I believe she comes back either late this week or next week.
25:28Uh, I wanted her to have the contractor just call me just so I could speak with someone and, and get this removed from the list, but we haven't been able to do that yet.
25:37Do you think that she'll have sufficient time between when this moves out of committee and when it moves to to full council to be able to be in touch with you, given what you know about her schedule and her ability to have her contractors in touch.
25:49Yes.
25:50And the good thing about it is that once it goes to— it's not going to full council until September 9th.
25:54We still have a month until then, but you won't be voting that date either.
25:58So you won't vote on the 9th as well.
26:00You guys vote like, I think, 2 weeks or a week later.
26:03So we still have time to remove it if we're able to get some commitment from her.
26:08Chair, given that timeline, and I think there's been more clarity in what the city needs from this property owner since we first met, I am comfortable moving this one forward today.
26:21I would ask that as you have conversations with the council president, these not be put on the consent agenda.
26:27I don't know if that's something he's been planning for or not, because I would like the opportunity to ask about this property again at full council.
26:33Thank you.
26:33Council with the hopes that there are some updates within the next month.
26:37Remind me the document number for the property you're mentioning.
26:41Let me find it on the list.
26:42I apologize, I was looking at the address.
26:46It is— give me just a moment— uh, 16.
26:51Oh, okay.
26:54This is the one that we're talking about, the same property?
26:57Is that what we're—.
26:59I thought you had said that you were pulling document 14, um, 9, 10, and 5 off the list.
27:05I don't know if my numbers are correct, so tell me the document number.
27:09Oh, uh, 2026-261.
27:12Okay, 261.
27:13Yeah, that's why it's, it's numbered differently on my end.
27:16So that one you are saying you would like to move forward with, is what I'm hearing?
27:19That one I'm saying— I assume we are moving these forward today, and if so, I had raised concerns about this property.
27:26What I'm sharing is that if you are hoping to move all of these forward today, I'm comfortable moving this forward with that, but would ask that it come to council in such form that I can ask questions about whether progress has been made over the next month when we're at full council.
27:45So if you are having conversations with the council president about either a consent agenda or bulking items for a vote at council, I would ask that this not be included in any actions like that and that it come forward as a standalone item where I'll have the opportunity to check in on any progress.
28:05Great, sounds good.
28:06Thank you, Chair.
28:10Committee, any other questions?
28:16Okay.
28:18Was there anything further you wanted to share?
28:22No, that's all I had.
28:23Okay, great.
28:24Well then, in that case, I'm just trying to get the right language up here.
28:30So like I said last time, we are able to move them in bulk, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to name all of the properties as was stated.
28:39Let me just check.
28:401, 2— Okay, yeah, so 11 total properties that I will read.
28:48Are we on the same page about that?
28:50Yes?
28:51No, 10 properties.
28:52Okay, we're not on the same page.
28:55Let's figure out what the discrepancy is.
28:58I have— why don't I— so the numbers that I have that we are approving today or moving forward, I'm going to list them: 247, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253, Chair, I think, and Kevin can clarify, item 5, which is 2026-249, is the 6307 Montana.
29:30And that one you are asking be referred back to the mayor's office, meaning the committee does not need to take action, correct?
29:36Yes.
29:36So are there 3 that are getting referred back to the mayor's office?
29:38Yes.
29:39'Cause on my list I only have 2.
29:40Yeah, this just came in within the last hour.
29:42Okay, so 2— and the numbering's off, so don't tell me the number of the item, tell me the actual number of the item.
29:48So 249.
29:49Chair, point of information, I'm sorry.
29:51Um, you all are talking about 3 items being referred back to the mayor's office, but I thought you had said there were 4 not moving forward.
29:59Could you help us understand what the 4th item is?
30:01So the 3 that are not moving forward were— are from the mayor.
30:06259 Is going to just live in limbo, essentially, is what I'm understanding.
30:12It's— it'll be lit— it'll be in committee, stay open, and can be scheduled at a later date.
30:18Um, we did consult with the city attorney on this, Chair, and the advice we got is— so it's a little bit different than the other 3 that are being referred back to the mayor's office.
30:27So effectively, with unanimous consent from the committee, you can continue the item to a future to-be-determined date that you don't need to state that keeps it alive, but it would not— that item 250— sorry, 2026-259 would not be moving on with the package to Council at that September date.
30:47So should we understand as committee members that the other 3 are being removed because of actions that have taken place with the administrative office and that this one is being removed for other reasons?
31:00It's being delayed, so that's why it's not being removed.
31:03It's still going to be on the committee docket.
31:05The other 3 are getting officially removed from the list.
31:08259 will stay technically on the list and just kind of live in limbo while we give that homeowner some time.
31:14We've gotten some information that they need some more time, and then we can put it on another committee agenda in the future.
31:20And is that the recommendation of the administration, or is this an action that you're asking for separate from I think I misunderstood and thought that this was an ask from the administration as well.
31:33It is an ask from me.
31:36Am I correct that that's how we're phrasing it?
31:40Let me check with my team.
31:45Okay, the info that we received was from Mr. Foster, but this is my request.
31:53Correct.
31:55Okay, questions on that or thoughts on that?
32:01Like I said, it is simply being delayed to be put on another agenda once we get more information because we've— they've been in touch and they need more time is what we were told.
32:11Yeah, okay, so to confirm, 249 is what I need to cross off my list?
32:19249, 254, And 255 are the ones that are pulled back by the mayor's office, correct?
32:25That's correct.
32:26Okay, so let me cross this out so I don't get confused.
32:30Um, and so then therefore there will be 10, as we said, because we took that off.
32:36Yes.
32:37Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and move forward with, uh, entertaining a motion unless there are other questions or discussion.
Kari Mosden 32:44 - 32:44
32:44On this.
32:46Okay, so I am going to entertain a motion to move the following ordinances.
32:51Um, document number 2026-247, document number 2026-248, 2026-250, 2026-252, 2026-253, 2026-256, 2026-257, 2026-258, 2026-260, and 2026-261 to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
33:27So I entertained a motion, so I need somebody to move it.
33:30So moved.
33:31Okay, moved by Vice Chair Green.
33:33Do I have a second?
33:34Second.
33:34Seconded by Councilor Novick.
33:36Okay, any further discussion?
33:39Okay, please call the roll.
33:49Aye.
33:51Aye.
33:53Aye.
33:54Aye.
33:56Aye.
33:57With 5 ayes, the motion carries, and the ordinances, document number 2026-247, 2026-248, 2026-250, 2026-252, 2026-253, 2026-256, 2026-257, 2026-258, 2026-260, 2026-261 will move to the full council with the recommendation they be passed.
34:32Thank you.
34:32Thank you, Mr. Pastor.
34:34Diego, please read the next item.
34:39Item 17, document number 2026-272, appropriate grant award of $35 million for Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program.
34:53All right, so this ordinance appropriates award funds from HUD Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program for the city's use in supporting regulated affordable housing.
35:02The funds must serve households earning 0 to 80% AMI and can be used for property acquisition, conversion, or rehabilitation of existing affordable housing properties.
35:12So I will go ahead and hand it off to our colleagues in the Grants Office and the Housing Bureau.
35:17Go ahead.
35:18Good afternoon.
35:19Can you hear me okay?
35:21Great.
35:22My name is Kari Mosden.
35:23I'm with the Grants Management Division.
35:24I'm stepping in for Sheila Craig, who was taken away today.
35:28Not taken away.
35:29That's the wrong language.
35:31Pulled aside for other things today.
35:33So budget appropriation ordinance for the item that you just mentioned, appropriating the award for Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program for $35 million.
35:45Let me get— there we go.
35:48So this, as you have just outlined, I will just say again what you've just said.
35:52The ordinance amendment amends the budget to appropriate funds awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development into the grants fund.
36:00This grant application with SAP ID HC204 was submitted on July 1st, 2025.
36:10HUD notified the city of the Section 108 Affordable Housing Loan Fund award to the city in the amount of $35 million.
36:18Typically with awards, there is a period of performance, but there is not one with this award agreement that has been specified.
36:24Thank you.
36:25And the Housing Bureau expects to fund a pipeline of projects over a 5-year period.
36:29First loan may close as early as the end of 2027, meaning the repayment period would then run from 12/2027 to 12/2052, which is 20 years from the date of the final loan closing.
36:42The award does not require any matching funds, and it is intended to supplement, not replace existing city revenues.
36:52I'll just do a high-level overview of what the award will fund.
36:57It's seeking to support the creation of an affordable housing loan fund targeted to projects that create or preserve housing affordability to low- and moderate-income households.
37:06The proposed affordable housing loan fund seeks to address Portland's need to add 38,000 units of affordable housing to households earning 0 to 80% AMI by 2045, as described in the city's 2023 Housing Needs Analysis.
37:22The Portland Housing Bureau is in the process of developing a recommended spending plan as well as investment requirements and preferences for an upcoming solicitation for funding requests to use these Section 108 funds.
37:35And generally, Section 108 funds can fund the following types of projects: rehabilitation of existing regulated affordable rental housing and units owned by low and moderate income homeowners, acquisition and rehabilitation of existing office or residential buildings for conversion to affordable housing, and activities to facilitate new affordable housing development, including land acquisition, clearance, site preparation, infrastructure remediation, relocation, or other eligible uses.
38:06That is the end of my presentation, and I welcome questions about the award.
38:11Thank you.
38:12Process itself.
38:14We have some folks from the Housing Bureau if there are, uh, PHB-specific questions as well.
38:20Great.
38:20Before we do that, um, do we have folks to sign up to testify?
38:26We have one individual signed up.
38:29Would you like me to—.
38:30Without objection, are we okay to take that person and then come back to questions, committee?
38:35Okay, let's go ahead.
38:38Um, home-forward-cages-people-for-profit.
38:44End-the-suffering-now.
38:57That concludes testimony.
39:00All right, well then we'll go ahead with questions in the queue, starting with Councilor Koyama Lane.
39:05Thank you for being here.
39:07First, I wanted to say thank you and congratulations to the staff at PHB for working on this, for the work in securing the funding.
39:16I understand that these are long processes and appreciate the hard work and public engagement and dedication to this.
39:23Thank you.
39:25Wondering if we can hear a little bit more about the types of eligible projects.
39:30Looking to support through the Affordable Housing Loan Fund and also the outreach plan to— and how— what the intention is to let partners know more about this.
39:41Absolutely.
39:41I'll rely on my colleague Amanda Saul from the Housing Bureau.
39:46Good afternoon, everyone.
39:48I'm Amanda Saul with Portland Housing Bureau.
39:50Thanks for your question.
39:51I think we're still working on figuring out our implementation process.
39:56I think initially we will focus our— focus the funding on preservation of existing affordable housing projects because that's where we're seeing the most need in the community right now.
40:10So those are ones that are already in the process of—.
40:14Those are ones that are already— that already have affordable housing restrictions and may have had, you know, renters living in them for 20 or 40 years, and it's time to do a big rehab.
40:26Replace the roof, replace the HVAC system, sort of do a whole rehab plus financial restructure.
40:34And that's what these funds are often used for.
40:38And will PH be going out to do outreach to figure out those, or partners can come and say, hey, what about us?
40:46Yeah, we, we often, when we allocate our funding, do a solicitation process.
40:52And so We will create a solicitation that says these are our goals and priorities for this funding, and then people will, will bring us their projects and apply.
41:03Great, thank you.
41:04Yeah.
41:06All right, I am next in the queue.
41:08Thanks again.
41:10We all know that Portland is continuing to face a significant shortage of affordable housing, and one of the biggest barriers to getting projects built or preserved is access to So I see today's ordinance as adding another financial tool to our toolbox.
41:25And this action, while it appropriates the $35 million federal award, it's important that we remember that the Section 8— Section 108 program is not a traditional grant.
41:35So it's only allowing the city to borrow federally guaranteed funds and then relend them to affordable housing projects over time.
41:41So I do think that used responsibly, this can help stretch our local resources and make more affordable housing projects financially feasible.
41:48But at the same time, because the city is ultimately responsible for repayment, I think it's important that we understand how PHB plans to manage both the opportunities and the risks with the program.
41:58So you mentioned that PHB previously operated a Section 108 loan fund.
42:03Can you just talk me through what lessons from that experience are informing how this new program is going to be structured?
42:09Yeah, thank you for your question.
42:11I appreciate that you made it also very clear that this is a loan.
42:14This is not a grant to the city.
42:17This is a loan to the city.
42:19And so one of the things we're thinking about structuring this time is that we loan these funds to the project at the same interest rate and with the same term that matches the loan from HUD to the city so that repayment is more assured.
42:39In addition to that, we will—.
42:40Thank you.
42:41We plan to set aside part of our annual CDBG entitlement that comes to the city to help fund any gaps that might happen or lags in payment from the borrowers.
42:55And how do you envision this financing tool complementing PHP's existing affordable housing programs rather than duplicating them?
43:02Yeah, so, um, I think it could I think, you know, I could imagine this complementing PSEF funds to do preservation projects.
43:17So it's providing a low-interest loan, less than what the market provides.
43:21And in addition to that, some PSEF funds that support specific energy upgrades.
43:31I might have forgotten the second part of your question.
43:33I'm sorry.
43:33I was just curious if you could talk about yeah, I was just asking in general how we felt that we were complementing our existing programs.
43:41Yeah, thanks.
43:42Traditionally, PHB provides cash flow contingent subordinate loans to its— to our affordable housing projects, and those funds recycle over time.
43:57And this will be just like a little bit different because It will be a loan instead of a cash flow contingent loan.
44:03It'll be a hard debt, likely in first position.
44:07And so traditionally, PHB's funding is sort of behind your first mortgage position.
44:15So it's layered with that.
44:18And in this case, the Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program will take the first position.
44:24So it doesn't allow for quite as many layering opportunities other than funds like PSF.
44:31And what gap in the current affordable housing financing market do you believe this loan fund is intended to fill?
44:39I think we've come through a period of having Portland and Metro bond funds for many years, which helped to create thousands of new affordable units in our community.
44:53And now we've allocated all of those and so this $35 million from HUD will help fill that gap to preserve our existing projects from sort of this period of new construction that we've been in to until we have our next housing resource.
45:13Thank you so much.
45:14Yeah, again, I think it's just important that the city, because we're ultimately responsible for repayment, that we're just seeing how we're managing yes.
45:25And of course ongoing oversight.
45:27So I'll be interested to track how this program is performing over time, both in terms of the affordable homes that it helps create and preserve, or how effectively it's leveraging the federal financing while protecting the city's financial interests.
45:39But appreciate the work that's gone into securing this opportunity, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it helps our affordable housing goals.
45:48Next up, we've got Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
45:51Thank you, Chair, and thank you for moving us into that line of questioning about how this— we are calling it a grant in this posting, but it's really a loan— will actually work for the city.
46:07I want to dig into a few things that you all said in response to questions asked by the Chair.
46:14And, and a few things in the presentation itself.
46:17So in the presentation, you say that you expect to fund a pipeline of projects over a 5-year period.
46:24Mm-hmm.
46:25So with the repayment that we will have to make of this loan, is the goal to only cycle through these funds one time before we have to repay them, or is the hope that we will fund projects be repaid on the loans for those projects and then be able to fund additional projects and get a few cycles through before we need to repay the federal government?
46:50Yeah, I, I think that we will only be able to get through one cycle, but I would have to like dig into the loan agreement with HUD to be able to understand that a little bit better.
47:02Okay, and you said that the The loans will be given from the city to local either developers or owners at whatever the terms are that we receive.
47:17So what is that term and at what interest rate will we be lending this money?
47:23Yeah, it's floating and it's based on indices that HUD sets.
47:30And so I can't tell you.
47:33Can you tell us the range just so that we know what to expect here?
47:38Yeah, sorry, my subject matter expert is coming up to help me.
47:43Fantastic.
47:45Hi, um, uh, Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, my name is Kara Hamilton with the Portland Housing Bureau.
47:50Um, so the, uh, the floating rate is the 3-month Treasury auction bill rate plus 35 basis points.
47:58So right now that's about 4.17%, so significantly lower than a for-profit lender would be lending at.
48:06Okay, so the benefit here for the community really is in receiving a lower interest rate.
48:14They're not forgivable loans.
48:16We are not able to extend the loan period over a longer period of time.
48:20It is really just access to that federal interest rate that we're able to provide through this process.
48:26Is that—.
48:27That's correct.
48:27We, we could choose to do a longer term than what the city has with HUD, but our recommendations are that we stay consistent with what the term is between the— in, in the agreement between city and HUD.
48:41And that's a 20-year term.
48:43And can you speak a little bit to the CBDG repayment?
48:47It makes me a little bit nervous to hear that.
48:50So I'd like to hear both what within the CBDG-funded projects we would be doing less of and how much you think we will need to pull from that source.
49:04And then I guess a secondary question to those, do we expect then as payments presumably catch up to be able to, recapitalize the CDBG fund with those excess payments, or would those additional dollars go somewhere else?
49:24Or do we expect that there won't be excess payments because we're assuming some amount of loan not being repaid?
49:34Yeah, I think our goal, the way I think of this, is that we are forward allocating our CDBG, right?
49:42We are sort of We, the city, will be borrowing against our future CDBG allocation.
49:51And so I think of being able to do more preservation projects or acquisition projects in a shorter amount of time rather than waiting for our CDBG annual entitlement to sort of grow to a place where we can do a number of projects.
50:08Thank you.
50:10But we will— we, we have talked to our finance department, who's also here, just in case we need some more support or you have more finance-related questions.
50:20We have planned to set aside some of our annual CDBG entitlement as a reserve in case we need those funds to help pay back HUD.
50:35And what won't we be doing with CDBG because of that?
50:41Yeah, so typically we use CDBG for preservation projects.
50:46So we will be doing preservation, more preservation projects sooner than if we wait and did 'em just through our annual entitlement.
50:57We also use some of our CDBG for some of our single-family homeownership programs, and those won't be impacted by this.
51:08So in terms of the risk to other programs at the city, the plan within the bureau is to absorb that risk within the portion of our CBDG funds that are funding similar work.
51:23Correct.
51:24So we are betting on having— we are risking having a little less in the future, in order to front-load for a need that is in crisis right now, but the bureau's plan is to make sure to protect other programs both within CBDG and outside of CBDG.
51:46We shouldn't see an impact in any other part of our funding portfolio other than the potential for a small impact in the future yes, I would say that that is our goal and our intention, and that's accurate.
52:06Okay, I'm comfortable with that intent moving forward.
52:10Thank you.
52:11Yeah, Vice Chair Green.
52:16Thank you, Chair Avalos.
52:17Uh, thank you so much for securing the grant.
52:19Um, couldn't come at a better possible time.
52:23And so I just want to uplift the work that folks in the Bureau are always doing to look for ways to secure external resources, even if they are loans.
52:30They are liquidity tools that come from the federal government that are important parts of the mix.
52:38I guess, I mean, this is a slam dunk for me, but I will take the opportunity to ask, do you see this as maybe an opportunity to braid with some of the other Debt buydown funds that council's already secured?
52:53Because this seems like if we're targeting the act, the sort of whole portfolio of properties out there that are months away, a year away from basically going into receivership if we don't take action, do you see this really targeting that and then maybe using an opportunity to take this grant and braid together some of the stuff Council secured as a way to kind of really leverage something?
53:18Yeah, thanks for the question.
53:21We actually considered that.
53:23We considered putting some of this funding out with the rent— with the mortgage and rent buydown that Council passed back in April and decided that we need more time to figure out the implementation, and we really want to connect this more to the unified housing strategy that will also be coming before the council soon.
53:48And so we— and because there is such a need in the affordable housing community right now, we decided to get that $8.8 million out as quickly as possible and do this as like a second step later this year or early next year.
54:05I think that's the right call.
54:08These are not all going to come at once too, and you want to do some due diligence when you evaluate how to rank order these things and do triage.
54:20Yes.
54:20I appreciated the discussion up here about kind of the, in some sense, the counterparty risk that is present where we borrow from the government, then lend on behalf of the city.
54:33Well, yeah.
54:34Anyway, there's that chain of kind of lending and underwriting essentially that's happening here.
54:38Any questions I would've had have been answered in that.
54:41Appreciated Councilor Pirtle-Guiney's question about sort of making sure we were mindful of the previously standing mission and goal there.
54:52So I feel comfortable with this.
54:53I want to thank you for your work in securing this.
54:57This is a sizable and meaningful—.
54:58Thank you.
55:00Line of liquidity that we can use to support, um, what is an increasingly urgent problem.
55:05So thank you, I'm going to support it.
55:11Thank you, Vice Chair Green.
55:14All right, I don't see anyone else in the queue, so if we're ready, we can go ahead and move forward.
55:22Um, I would like to apologize here we go.
55:27I'd like to entertain a motion to move the ordinance document number 2026-272 to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
55:35So moved.
55:36Second.
55:37Moved by Councilor Novick, seconded by Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
55:41Diego, please go ahead and call the roll.
Koyama Lane 55:47 - 55:48
55:47Koyama Lane.
55:49Aye.
55:50Novick.
55:52Aye.
55:54Aye.
55:55Aye.
55:56Aye.
55:57Avalos?
55:58Aye.
55:59With 5 ayes, the motion carries and the ordinance document number 2026-272 will move to the full council with a recommendation it be passed.
56:08Thank you for your time.
56:09Thank you.
56:11So colleagues, we are a bit ahead of schedule and so I'm concerned that maybe our I think one of our guests might not be here, so could I get a check on that?
56:21Claire, do you have an update on that?
Ian Crozier 56:25 - 56:31
56:25For the single-cert design competition?
56:26Mm-hmm.
56:28We are not quite all assembled.
56:30We're maybe 10 minutes.
Candace Avalos 56:31 - 1:15:46
56:31Okay, well then why don't we go ahead and take our break now?
56:35Um, let's just, uh, how about we give it until 3:05 just to give ourselves a little more time?
56:40See you at 3:05.
56:41Thank you.
1:15:38All right, we are returning to the Housing and Permitting Committee.
1:15:44Diego, go ahead and read item 18.
Unidentified speaker 1:15:47 - 1:15:54
1:15:47Item 18, document number 2026-273, PNW Single Stair Design Competition.
Candace Avalos 1:15:55 - 1:16:26
1:15:55All right, so Vice Chair Green and I have invited Portland Neighbors Welcome and their partners to tell us about a single stair design competition that they recently organized.
1:16:04The competition is part of a broader initiative focused on mid-rise housing development and single-stair building code changes.
1:16:11And our intent here is to just talk openly about these kinds of innovative ideas and see how they fit into our broader housing discussion and vision as a committee.
1:16:22So with that, presenters, please introduce yourselves and take it away.
Ian Crozier 1:16:29 - 1:16:45
1:16:29Well, thank you.
1:16:31We're here representing Portland Neighbors Welcome.
1:16:33And Strongtowns PDX.
1:16:35We'll be talking a little bit about single stair reform and highlighting the recent design competition.
1:16:41And it's a real pleasure to be here.
1:16:42My name is Ian Crozier.
1:16:44I'm a volunteer with Portland Neighbors Welcome.
Michael Anderson 1:16:46 - 1:16:49
1:16:46Michael Anderson.
1:16:47I'm with Sightline Institute.
Wes Ayers 1:16:50 - 1:16:52
1:16:50And I'm Wes Harris.
1:16:51I'm with Harris Design Build.
Ian Crozier 1:16:54 - 1:16:55
1:16:54And Michael's going to kick it off.
1:16:55Yeah, thanks.
1:16:57So I'm here to talk about the sort of Context of how we got here, and then I'll hand off to Ian, who's going to talk about why this is all a good idea to think about, talk about, and then Wes is going to talk about some of the practicalities.
1:17:11I think in general is the idea.
1:17:14The national context of this is changing every month, but the states highlighted here have all passed some version of legalizing single stair codes, that is to say small multifamily buildings.
1:17:32We'll get into that in a bit.
1:17:34Above 3 stories, including as local options.
1:17:37And then various cities have also directly passed these.
1:17:40And some, in some cases, there's a local option passed by the state, and in some cases, the state has simply said, no, we're gonna legalize these throughout the state.
1:17:48This is a change to the building codes that allow this type of building.
1:17:53The sort of model for how people started talking about this concept was something that we've been doing in Seattle, that has been happening in Seattle for decades.
1:18:04Since 1977, the city added a sort of code option that lets buildings up to 6 stories be built around a single staircase.
1:18:17With various safety measures above and beyond what you would see in a standard building.
1:18:23And it's happening all over town on these small lots where you can fit not a large building like you might see along Powell Boulevard today, but just a pretty small-scale, neighborhood-scale building that, unlike a lot of large apartment buildings, actually has windows facing on multiple sides.
1:18:44We'll get into the benefits of that in a bit.
1:18:46But the model really here is Seattle.
1:18:48Another city that's even closer to home, Vancouver, Washington, allowed to create a special building code path for these just a few months ago.
1:18:57Portland's story starts sort of on this in 2023 when the Oregon Legislature ordered the state to encourage sunlight suites through building code reforms.
1:19:08And they left that somewhat open-ended.
1:19:09And so it was up to the Uh, thank you.
1:19:12So in 2014, the state issued an ordinance asking the state to settle on the code for that.
1:19:13It did.
1:19:14In 2025, the state added a 4-story sunlight suite option in Appendix Q of the state's building code.
1:19:23The building code, as usual, was adopted by the City of Portland.
1:19:26This is last November, and the City of Portland issued a news release that said, hooray, we've got this new option, uh, this is great.
1:19:33And a week later, the Fire Bureau said in the Daily Journal of Commerce that actually these buildings wouldn't get what is a standard option for roof access that other multifamily buildings have typically gotten.
1:19:46Obviously, roof access is very important in a fire, no disputing that, but the ways to do that are unusually limited for this type of building under the current codes in Portland.
1:19:59Since then, there's been no further action, and no buildings have been built or proposed, to my knowledge.
1:20:04Thank you.
1:20:05Using the new code, and it's not entirely clear they could be because of that special restriction that applies only to this building type that the city has been, you know, seemingly trying to legalize.
1:20:15So we are here to call attention to that somewhat.
1:20:18Meanwhile, the future is that in 2027, the next national model building code is expected to allow 4-story sunlight suites.
1:20:29So it's actually slightly more liberal.
1:20:31Thank you.
1:20:31Than our state code has allowed the city to be, there's possibility that not only will Portland not be ahead of that curve, it'll end up behind that curve if no further action is taken.
1:20:49Thank you, Michael.
Ian Crozier 1:20:52 - 1:29:45
1:20:52So why single-story buildings?
1:20:54It's a funny, nerdy yeah.
1:20:58It's a very little change that can unlock a lot.
1:21:01The way I like to think about it is that there's a way that they build apartment buildings in pretty much the whole rest of the world, and there's a way that we do it here.
1:21:08And the way that we do it here can reduce the amount of ventilation available, reduces the amount of daylight that can be accessed from most units because you're only getting windows usually on one side of a unit.
1:21:18If you visited someone's or live in a recently built apartment building, you're probably familiar that it's It can be a very long, narrow, dark corridor.
1:21:28And, but a single stair building, by nature of having more surface area relative to the floor area, can have windows on many sides.
1:21:36Like I said, this is the way they build apartment buildings in almost everywhere else in the world.
1:21:41The beautiful streets of Paris where you walk down and there's a perimeter, or many European cities, a perimeter line of buildings with many different openings, those are single stair buildings.
1:21:53The way they build in Japan and Australia and all over South America is based around this single stair idea as well, which also includes elevators, we should add.
1:22:04It's not just the stair, it's a single stair with an elevator.
1:22:08United States and Canada are outliers in this regard.
1:22:11United States generally just allowing up to 3 stories, and Canada even worse, unusually allowing just 2 stories.
1:22:19With a single stair.
1:22:22Like Michael said, and like Wes will say, will help dig into, the typical apartment building that we're all familiar with is a large building.
1:22:36You see them on commercial corridors very often because they need large sites.
1:22:39They have, it's a double-loaded corridor.
1:22:41It's like a, sort of like a sardine.
1:22:44You've got a central spine and you've got, Rooms that are like narrow ribs coming off on either side.
1:22:51It's a long walk to the elevator.
1:22:54Those corridors are eerie and have no windows and can feel antisocial.
1:23:04And while there are 2 stairwells, they are shared by a very large number of units, and it may be a long walk down the hallway to get one in the case of a fire.
1:23:15A single-stair building, or point access block is another term, allows it to be much easier, like we said, to have rooms with cross ventilation.
1:23:24It's a short distance to get to the stairs and elevators.
1:23:27And then these buildings are much more flexible.
1:23:29They can be skinnier buildings.
1:23:32A double-loaded corridor, often 70, 80, 90 feet wide.
1:23:36A single-stair building might just be 30 or 40 feet wide.
1:23:39And therefore, they can fit on a much greater variety of lots.
1:23:46Michael Eliason, who founded Larch Lab, created these graphics and has led much of the movement to raise awareness around this building typology.
1:23:58One of the important things also to note is that single stair can work much better for family-sized apartment buildings.
1:24:04Works fine for studios, but it also can work well for live-work units, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, and even larger.
1:24:11And also creative combinations of those where it's not all just the same product, one size fits all.
1:24:21With all that, it's been quite inspiring, and we at Portland Neighbors Welcome wanted to explore these ideas, these really exciting benefits of this building typology, and see what it would look like in Portland.
1:24:37And so for that reason, we, working with Strong Towns PDX, organized a design competition around single-stair residential buildings for here in Portland, Oregon.
1:24:51The competition is open to architecture students in Oregon and Washington and tasked them with building a 6-floor single-stair residential building, so much— so taller than what would be allowed in Oregon today under the under the Oregon Building Code with up to 4 units per floor.
1:25:09They would meet the criteria of having a district-scaled approach, be resilient in a world of a changing climate and with predictable natural disasters, would be sustainable, it would help affordability, and be compatible with modular construction technology that can be made offsite.
1:25:30We received 6 submissions from student teams, all of whom are architecture students at the University of Oregon, and they were tasked with choosing one of 4 5,000-square-foot lots in the Inner East Side for their design.
1:25:48Something we want to highlight, that these were lots— these lots for their designs were located in the Inner East Side, Yes.
1:25:56Portland Neighbors Welcome and Strong Towns.
1:25:59You may recall we are very excited about Inner Eastside for All.
1:26:03We think it's an incredibly important policy for the city of Portland in terms of sustainability, affordability, and equity.
1:26:10And if zoning were to get out of the way, allowing housing in a part of the city that's transit and amenity rich.
1:26:17At the same time, the zoning change is not going to achieve its potential if we are not able to also address other barriers to infill housing in dense, in built-up parts of the city with small lots.
1:26:30So we see single stair reform and Inner Eastside for All as two sides of the same coin.
1:26:37And that's a big motivation for the competition.
1:26:40The competition with the committee organizers, including myself, RJ Shepherd, Colleen Dixon, Victoria Villa, and Lee Shelton and Sam Stuckey, we helped organize tours of different buildings around town to help inspire the students.
1:26:59Several of the student teams were also in a concurrent class at University of Oregon, so they got to work with their professor on their designs as well and produced these beautiful physical models to accompany their designs.
1:27:12Some of us from the committee, as well as some of the professional mentors, that were recruited to help guide the students throughout the process were able to attend the review.
1:27:23And so it was quite wonderful to hear the students, the reasoning behind their designs, and see the models.
1:27:31And even they created videos to accompany the posters.
1:27:36The competition kicked off with a kickoff event featuring Michael Eliason, the architect who's based in Seattle, who drew from his experience working in Germany and the United States to start raising awareness about single stair or point access blocks a few years ago, and has been really leading the charge to get people around the country to care about this extremely nerdy building code detail, but in its huge potential for changing and improving how we build housing in the US.
1:28:04And then we concluded the design competition with awards ceremony on May 28th, Yes.
1:28:12Which was a really fun event.
1:28:15It brought together a broad cross-section of people who care about housing and affordability and design, from professional architects and planners, the students and their friends, members of the organizations, and then just folks who heard about it online.
1:28:28And they were all there together having conversations.
1:28:33We got to announce the awards at the ceremony based on the scoring of our interdisciplinary jury, which included Councilor Green.
1:28:44Along with Planning Commission Chair Steph Ruth and Michael Liasson and a lot of the leading lights in the architecture and housing scene in Portland.
1:28:57Really, we were just really grateful for the contributions and of the time and thoughtfulness that from everyone in the jury went into it.
1:29:09And we are— we also want to just celebrate and appreciate the beautiful designs the student teams produced.
1:29:18I mean, we're just gonna go through 3 of them now.
1:29:21You should have, hopefully, all of the submissions in your agenda packet, and they're also available online.
1:29:32I see some hands up.
1:29:34Should I pause for these?
1:29:35Yeah.
1:29:35Okay.
1:29:36Don't know about normal Zoom protocol here in council chambers.
1:29:41Thank you.
1:29:41I'll continue.
1:29:41So the first place design was called Well on First.
1:29:45Apologies.
1:29:46Apparently, yes, we do have one quick question.
Ian Crozier 1:29:48 - 1:29:49
1:29:48Oh, great.
1:29:48Okay, cool.
Mitch Green 1:29:49 - 1:30:04
1:29:49Just as you get into these, could you say a little bit about the parameters that you wanted?
1:29:55'Cause there's certain lot size parameters that are really important to this.
1:29:58So if you could just sort of level set so everyone understands, like, Why those parameters were chosen, I think that can be helpful.
Ian Crozier 1:30:05 - 1:33:35
1:30:05Yes.
1:30:06And Wes will speak to that as well a little bit.
1:30:09But, and so yeah, so these, and you see, as you can see from this design, it's a compact building.
1:30:15And so that was part of the submission criteria was to design for one of these 5,000-square-foot lots.
1:30:23And 5,000 square foot being the key, that's by far the most common lot size in the inner east side of Portland.
1:30:31And it is much smaller than can be typically developed for multifamily development using conventional approaches.
1:30:42So, yes.
1:30:48They also were trying to meet the criteria of resilience, sustainability, the district scale, or where the— And then each one received a score based on those criteria.
1:31:01And yeah, and Wes will dig into the sort of the important economics around that lot size, I think, a little bit more.
1:31:07So thank you for the question.
1:31:10See, so this team, Richard, Juan, Colin, Jorge, created this really beautiful design.
1:31:15It emphasizes access to light and air.
1:31:19It's designed for cross-laminated timber construction.
1:31:22It has a variety of different unit layouts on different floors, but they have a sort of a vertical structure, these vertical structures system that is sort of same throughout, but works with the different layouts.
1:31:34And it's got a— their submission had just really lovely, clean visual style that did a great job highlighting the benefits of single stair design.
1:31:52Moving on to the— one of the second-place winners, Reframing.
1:31:57Their tagline was, Reframing proposes housing as a framework for care, and their design emphasized accessibility, universal design, aging in place, and accommodating multigenerational families that may include caregivers.
1:32:11They've got these cool adaptable layouts with connected studios, it's sort of like a house and a mother-in-law unit, except that's all on the same floor as an apartment building.
1:32:22They've got really these lovely, bright, warm graphics.
1:32:25I think I teared up a little bit.
1:32:26This is one of them that was quite moving when I was first going through and looking at them.
1:32:32And that is just really impressive work.
1:32:35You can see the blue images there on the top are yeah.
1:32:39Are different accessible designs to allow people with different levels of ability to do what they need to do in their home.
1:32:50Just one example of the really thoughtful work that went into it.
1:32:52Finally, the one I want— the last one I want to highlight is called Portland Access Block.
1:32:57That's a pun on the Point Access Block.
1:32:59This design by Anna, Danny, and Griff features reconfigurable layouts with a cross-laminated timber panel system.
1:33:06It emphasizes interactions.
1:33:08Social interaction with some shared porches and a mix of different unit sizes on the same floor.
1:33:14And the idea of getting people to talk to each other with different sort of household sizes.
1:33:20And an adaptability for shade, privacy, openness, and airflow.
1:33:26Like I said, there's 3 other designs that are also beautiful and excellent.
1:33:30I encourage you to check those out.
1:33:32We think these images are really important.
1:33:35Thank you.
Steve Novick 1:33:36 - 1:33:36
1:33:36Thank you.
Ian Crozier 1:33:36 - 1:34:12
1:33:36I think that we've all seen that these designs are an important and powerful tool for communicating about housing, a positive vision for housing in our city.
1:33:41It's human-centered, beautiful, abundant, and contributes positively to our neighborhoods.
1:33:47But these designs are intentionally very aspirational and hopefully inspirational.
1:33:53But in order to keep the thread today with the actual development conditions in the actual city of Portland and why single stair reform is so important for building housing in those actual conditions, we wanted to have Wes Ayers, a developer of small-scale housing here in Portland, share his knowledge about that.
1:34:12So thank you.
Wes Ayers 1:34:15 - 1:34:51
1:34:15Thank you, Ian.
1:34:16My name is Wes Ayers.
1:34:17I'm a principal at Ayers Design Build, and we help developers design and investors design and build medium and small-scale infill housing here in Portland.
1:34:26I'm familiar with small-scale development and single stair.
1:34:30So I'm here to give you some background on the economics of single stair buildings and how allowing taller street-scale apartment buildings on small infill lots can bring a lot more housing to the vibrant fabric of our historic mixed-use and urban neighborhoods.
1:34:45And I apologize in advance, the slides aren't totally aligned with what I'm going to say, but I think we got this.
Steve Novick 1:34:52 - 1:34:55
1:34:52So Portland's inner urban neighborhoods were platted about a century ago.
Wes Ayers 1:34:55 - 1:35:01
1:34:55They're small blocks, dense blocks, and a typical lot size, as Ian pointed out, is about 50 by 100 feet.
Kevin Foster 1:35:01 - 1:35:01
1:35:01Wow.
Steve Novick 1:35:02 - 1:35:07
1:35:02I think we're all familiar with the Northwest Alphabet District, Buckman, Hawthorne, Mississippi.
Wes Ayers 1:35:08 - 1:35:28
1:35:08Each has frequent transit, sidewalks, street trees, corner stores, vibrant restaurants, and errands can all be accomplished on foot or bike.
1:35:15Most of these neighborhoods already have old brick apartment buildings in them, and anyone who walks through Northwest Portland, Kerns or Buckman, has seen them mixed right in with all the foursquares and all the bungalows, right?
1:35:26And nobody feels that they're out of place.
Steve Novick 1:35:28 - 1:35:43
1:35:28So these buildings were legal when they were built and we stopped building them.
1:35:33And the apartment buildings we build today don't fit on a typical Portland lot.
1:35:38So why don't they fit?
1:35:40The standard American apartment building is an archetype familiar here in Portland.
Wes Ayers 1:35:44 - 1:35:59
1:35:44It's a hallway down the middle, apartments on both sides, and a stair at each end.
1:35:48And we call that the double-loaded corridor.
1:35:51And it's an efficient layout that maximizes the number of units per floor while meeting all the fire and life safety requirements for that building type.
Steve Novick 1:35:59 - 1:36:13
1:35:59So each apartment has just enough natural light and it connects along a long hallway with 2 exit stairs and an elevator, as Ian described earlier.
1:36:08So these apartment buildings are economically efficient and generally developed by large institutional investors.
Wes Ayers 1:36:13 - 1:36:53
1:36:13And if you've played the apartment game enough, which I have, there's a prototype, we stick to it.
1:36:20We try to play with this facade to keep things interesting, but for the most part, These buildings are spreadsheet-driven, right?
1:36:27And we're maximizing the number of units on each site.
1:36:32So they require about 55 or 60 feet in width to really maximize that double-loaded corridor.
1:36:40And so that's— and we're familiar with these buildings, right?
1:36:43We see 'em in Slabtown, we see 'em in the Pearl District, we see them along Division, we see them kind of at all these places yes.
1:36:51That, you know, we see these large apartment buildings.
Steve Novick 1:36:55 - 1:37:06
1:36:55And so the reality is that Portland's typical lot is relatively small, and we have already developed much of our inner city sort of large lot capacity.
Wes Ayers 1:37:06 - 1:37:08
1:37:06So those apartment buildings, they require large lots.
Steve Novick 1:37:09 - 1:37:11
1:37:09Most new large sites would be—.
Wes Ayers 1:37:11 - 1:37:20
1:37:11Need to be assembled from lots that already have people living on them, and the buildings that would need to come down to consolidate those lots will likely be older and less expensive.
1:37:20That's our naturally affordable housing.
Steve Novick 1:37:22 - 1:37:26
1:37:22So land value in Portland runs the way I think anybody here would expect.
Wes Ayers 1:37:27 - 1:37:37
1:37:27Our inner urban areas carry the highest land values, which means that consolidating lots in our transit-rich and commercially viable neighborhoods where everybody wants to live is an expensive endeavor.
Steve Novick 1:37:37 - 1:37:45
1:37:37So currently it's both so expensive and restrictive that very little, if almost no, new development's happening right now.
Wes Ayers 1:37:46 - 1:38:18
1:37:46So Portland's own housing needs analysis, which I think some of us are familiar with, calls for about 120,000 new homes.
1:37:53By 2045, and that's less than 20 years from now.
1:37:57And we're not building anywhere near at the rate in order to achieve that.
1:38:02So we'll have little chance of actually meeting that goal if we wait to assemble these lots, right, for these big apartments.
1:38:09And so we need a different strategy.
1:38:11And I think we need the ability to build residential density on the existing lots we have, but those lots are small.
Steve Novick 1:38:19 - 1:38:32
1:38:19So what fits?
1:38:21Well, double-loaded quarters don't fit on small lots and are typically too wide to retain the economic efficiency.
1:38:28The second stair and the connecting corridors erode the net available housing area for each floor.
Wes Ayers 1:38:33 - 1:38:41
1:38:33And then the fire code further restricts the distance between the 2 stairs.
1:38:36There's actually a minimum distance or a maximum or a minimum distance they're allowed to be to each other.
Steve Novick 1:38:42 - 1:38:45
1:38:42And the result is a building that's constricted by egress requirements.
Wes Ayers 1:38:45 - 1:39:02
1:38:45And the ability to— and they can only basically provide either smaller units, right?
1:38:52Or a limited number of units per floor.
1:38:57So this is kind of why we don't really see a lot of double-stair buildings on small sites.
1:39:02You just don't see them.
Steve Novick 1:39:03 - 1:39:12
1:39:03Single-stair layouts help a lot.
1:39:06With only one stair, circulation space is reduced up to a third of—.
1:39:112/3.
1:39:11What it would be here.
Wes Ayers 1:39:12 - 1:39:18
1:39:12And you see with this slide how much circulation space is required per floor versus, you know, having a single stair.
Steve Novick 1:39:21 - 1:39:32
1:39:21So with only one stair, the circulation space is reduced up to a third of the space required for a double-loaded corridor and allowing one more unit, more area room for larger 2 and 3-bedroom units.
Wes Ayers 1:39:33 - 1:40:06
1:39:33And again, as Ian pointed out, with larger windows on each floor.
1:39:36So not only are these units more economical, they feel more like home.
1:39:41So this is why single-story buildings are common on single lot types for up to 3 stories in residential multifamily zoned areas.
1:39:50So what's the problem?
1:39:52Well, in order to build more housing for more people in well-connected and desirable neighborhoods, we need land.
1:39:57And because there is very little vacant land left in these neighborhoods, we likely need to remove existing housing, which comes at both an economic and a displacement cost.
Steve Novick 1:40:07 - 1:40:23
1:40:07So on a typical single lot in Portland's inner neighborhoods, a single stair, 3-story building nets up to about 4 units per floor times 3 floors, right?
1:40:16And then we lose a floor to the first floor for, you know, circulation, bike rooms, all that kind of stuff.
Wes Ayers 1:40:23 - 1:40:26
1:40:23And so we end up with 11 units.
Steve Novick 1:40:27 - 1:40:31
1:40:27And that's with sort of even sort of the best zoning we could get.
Wes Ayers 1:40:31 - 1:40:44
1:40:31And most of our lots don't even have that.
1:40:33So we end up with really small buildings.
1:40:35Yeah.
1:40:35So the economic viability of any development is dependent on the number of variables, including land costs, demolition costs, and all these costs that go into making buildings, right?
Steve Novick 1:40:44 - 1:40:49
1:40:44Well, right now, and all of that has to be paid for by either rent or a sales price, right?
Wes Ayers 1:40:50 - 1:41:10
1:40:50And right now, the rent and the sales don't cover the cost to develop on most of those sites with 3-story buildings.
1:40:57So each development obviously must clear the cost to develop before it can actually become more housing.
1:41:02Right.
1:41:02And as land becomes more valuable and fixed costs continue to increase, we're limited in our options.
1:41:07And the ready remedy to us right now is capacity.
Steve Novick 1:41:12 - 1:41:15
1:41:12So increasing development capacity reduces cost per unit.
Wes Ayers 1:41:15 - 1:41:25
1:41:15This may seem obvious, right?
1:41:16But I think it's worth saying out loud.
1:41:19Roughly 2/3 of a development at the scale that we're talking about right now scales per unit, right?
Steve Novick 1:41:26 - 1:41:34
1:41:26So every unit needs its own framing, siding, windows, drywall, wall cabinets, appliances, and wiring.
1:41:32But the other third remains relatively fixed per development.
Wes Ayers 1:41:34 - 1:41:58
1:41:34That's land, design and engineering, excavation, the foundation, the bike room, the roof.
1:41:41All of those things are fixed regardless of how many floors you have.
1:41:45So when each additional floor adds 4 more homes, because that's a limit for single-stair buildings, right, to those fixed costs, right, the cost per unit drops substantially every floor we add.
Steve Novick 1:41:58 - 1:42:01
1:41:58So the result of each floor of building capacity is substantial.
Wes Ayers 1:42:02 - 1:42:22
1:42:02Take the same lot, the same foundation, same roof, and roughly the same set of drawings, and the only thing changing is the number of floors.
1:42:093 Floors nets 11 homes, and each of one of those costs, on some of our more recent models, about $278,000 a unit to deliver.
1:42:19And then if we add a 4th floor, we get down to $236,000.
1:42:22Wow.
Steve Novick 1:42:23 - 1:42:28
1:42:23If we had a 5th floor, we can get down to $226,000, right?
Wes Ayers 1:42:28 - 1:42:40
1:42:28And that— so each additional floor only costs an additional $179,000 per floor, right?
1:42:34So you can see how quickly adding a floor really reduces the amount— the cost of each additional unit.
Steve Novick 1:42:41 - 1:42:44
1:42:41Small infill lot does something that large projects cannot.
Wes Ayers 1:42:44 - 1:43:27
1:42:44A 15-home building on one lot is a project that a local investor or developer can finance finance or manage.
1:42:51Granted, it's still a lot of money, right?
1:42:53But you don't need large institutional loans to kind of build this kind of housing.
1:42:58A 200-unit building on an assembled lot requires, you know, many millions of dollars and years of lot consolidation and pre-development.
1:43:06Only a handful of firms in Portland can do that, and Portland already has plenty of builders doing houses, ADUs, and small multifamily.
1:43:13Making a 4th or more floors possible on standard lot puts apartment construction within the reach of a lot more investors, right?
1:43:22So basically there's a few things that I just kind of want to kind of put out there, right?
Steve Novick 1:43:27 - 1:43:35
1:43:27One is that what's limiting us, right?
1:43:30Well, right now, as was mentioned, we have some fire apparatus issues.
Wes Ayers 1:43:35 - 1:43:44
1:43:35Portland's code guide allows 4 stories on a single stair, but it requires the street-facing side with 26 feet clear for a ladder truck and no power lines overhead.
1:43:44Right.
Wes Ayers 1:43:45 - 1:43:56
1:43:45That's not— basically, there's almost no lots that comply with that.
1:43:50And the second is zoning reform, which Portland Neighbors Welcome is ringing the bell on for the inner city east side for all.
Steve Novick 1:43:56 - 1:44:05
1:43:56So even if we were out, the building code would allow a 4th floor, the zoning in most of our multi-dwelling neighborhoods still limits us to 3 floors regardless.
Wes Ayers 1:44:07 - 1:44:24
1:44:07And then the third thing is that 4 stories is the current maximum for single stair in Oregon.
1:44:11Yeah.
1:44:12But Seattle has allowed 6 since 1977, as Michael pointed out.
1:44:17New York allows 6, British Columbia allows 6.
1:44:19And as land costs keep rising, we need the capacity to expand up, not out.
Steve Novick 1:44:24 - 1:44:26
1:44:24So none of this is experimental.
Wes Ayers 1:44:26 - 1:44:47
1:44:26New York has had about 4,400 single-stair buildings for over 3 stories, and their fire death rate is no different, and this is from Pew, than any other apartment building in the city.
1:44:39Seattle's been building them for 50 years.
1:44:41So, so that's it.
1:44:43That's what I've got.
1:44:44And, and I guess we're all happy to answer any questions.
1:44:50Thank you so much for the thorough presentation and really just excited to see the innovation that's been shown in the competition.
1:44:58And hopefully we're about to enter into some unified housing strategy discussions, and I'm really looking forward to this being part of it.
Tiffany Koyama Lane 1:45:07 - 1:45:29
1:45:07Thank you for being here.
1:45:10Thanks for the presentation.
1:45:12Always love hearing about a student design competition.
1:45:16It's awesome.
1:45:17Can one of you share a bit more about if and how single stair design could help us plan for more accessible housing, especially for people who use wheelchairs?
1:45:29Yeah, so I think that's a great question.
1:45:31I can take a crack.
1:45:36The key thresholds for accessible housing, I would say, are first, does it have at least 20 homes in the building?
1:45:44The 20th home triggers a Type A accessibility mandate for at least one of those homes.
1:45:50And so once you are able to put 20 homes in the building, One of them absolutely has to be pretty wheelchair ready.
1:45:58Type A is quite a high standard and effective at it.
1:46:03If you're only building to 3 stories at a single stair layout, that's only going to be 12 homes.
1:46:114 stories gets you to 16.
1:46:135 stories gets you to 20.
1:46:15So we're not— with this layout on the vast majority of lots, even if we were to allow small apartment buildings on the vast majority of lots in close-in neighborhoods.
1:46:24They likely wouldn't be built, they wouldn't trigger the Type A threshold, they wouldn't trigger inclusionary zoning until you can get to at least 20 homes in the building.
1:46:35So that's one part.
1:46:36Another threshold is, is there an elevator?
1:46:38If there's an elevator, not only do you have an elevator, you also have a Type B standard that applies to all the buildings, which is a lower standard of accessibility, but works for people who don't need a mobility device.
1:46:48Right.
1:46:49But still, you know, benefit from some accessibility features.
1:46:53So both getting to 5 stories and for the sake of making the elevator feasible, you know, the floors 2, 3, and 4 benefit from the existence of that 5th story that makes the elevator feasible and from getting to the higher unit count.
Ian Crozier 1:47:14 - 1:47:46
1:47:14And then jumping onto that, again, this single stair aligning with Inner Eastside for All, allowing apartment buildings in more locations off of arterials, if we have a building typology that is feasible to build in those areas, all of a sudden that opens up much vaster areas of the city that people who need a wheelchair are able to live in, right?
1:47:38Whereas currently, if you need to live in a building with an elevator, You have quite limited options.
1:47:44They're mostly on large arterials.
1:47:48And also, can someone expand on how single stair plans could be adapted to support residents over time, support people who are community members who are aging in place?
Ian Crozier 1:48:03 - 1:50:14
1:48:03Sure.
1:48:04I think the— honestly, the designs that came out of the competition do Do that quite beautifully.
1:48:14One of the— and we can't say what any particular building design or building owner is going to do with their building, but in general, the layout, the single stair layout creates options because it takes up so little space, because it allows the flexibility in unit layout.
1:48:36Yeah.
1:48:37And in light and air, it's there.
1:48:41That means that it is— there are many more possibilities to design a building that is going to work for a multigenerational family, that is going to have maybe a variety of different layouts in parts of the building that would be appropriate for a person at different life stages.
1:49:01Of course, the accessibility.
1:49:03Yes.
1:49:04Benefits that Michael just mentioned.
1:49:07And there's also, in terms of the social component, there is some nice studies out there that focus on the kinds of small public-private spaces that we occupy.
1:49:23I mentioned those long eerie hallways that are associated with double-loaded corridor buildings.
1:49:29Yeah.
1:49:30That is a— when you are sharing that space with potentially hundreds of other strangers, that creates a different social dynamic that, and I think generally speaking, does not promote socializing because it's just too many strange people.
1:49:48Whereas when you have 4 or 6 or 8 folks who are on just a single floor of the building or even up to, you know, a little more than a dozen units, that is a small enough group of people that it becomes much easier.
1:50:04And there is literature that has looked into this that makes it much easier to build social connections, which we also know is incredibly important as people go through different life stages.
1:50:16Thank you.
1:50:17And I'm looking at slide 5.
1:50:21You can see it's It's like November 4th, and then a week later, hear from the Fire Bureau.
1:50:28I'm wondering if you all have been able to have conversations with leaders in our Fire Bureau or even the fire chief.
1:50:36Do you know some of their perspectives?
1:50:39And then secondary, looking at cities like Vancouver, Washington, Seattle that are moving forward with this, do you know how that Has worked with their fire bureaus?
1:50:50Have they been able to find some compromising, some working together, or can you share a little bit about that?
1:50:57I don't think any of us can speak for fire bureaus here or elsewhere in particular, but the— I spoke with a member of the fire bureau team a couple years ago when I was gathering I was able to participate in the conversation.
1:51:14I was able to participate in the conversation.
1:51:14Information for the conversation at the state level and was part of a subsequent conversation with some building code and fire code people here in the city soon after that.
1:51:26It seemed to me like at the time it was a very forthright conversation about trade-offs and ladder angles and so on.
1:51:33And I was pretty optimistic that everybody was headed to a useful outcome.
1:51:43I haven't spoken with any folks since that November decision, and I know we've been in conversation with a couple council offices about it, but I don't know what may have come of that.
1:51:56I would love to.
1:51:58I just got sent an official statement.
1:52:02Okay, so it sounds like there are some pretty strong feelings.
1:52:06Do you— can you share at all about studies around fire safety?
1:52:10Around single stair design and what those studies show?
1:52:15I can, but do you want to?
1:52:17Please.
1:52:17Okay, so there was a close analysis that Wes mentioned of the safety record in New York City that concluded that it had the exact, over the course of 10 years, The last 25 years or so, the number of homes in those buildings compared to every other existing building in New York City had the exact same rate of fire deaths for the single stair and the other housing types.
1:52:49There is a different analysis of national data comparing multifamily buildings, old multifamily buildings, old single-family buildings, new multifamily buildings, And new single-family buildings.
1:53:05Of all of those, by far the safest housing type is the new multifamily building.
1:53:11And old multifamily buildings and old single-family buildings, significantly less safe.
1:53:16So in the aggregate of what we should be doing, moving to buildings with sprinklers is a huge, huge safety improvement.
1:53:26Now, that can be a big building with sprinklers or a small building with sprinklers.
1:53:29Yeah.
1:53:29Small buildings with sprinklers, I think it's likely reflected in that New York fire safety data.
1:53:35The smaller a building is, the fewer people are affected by any single fire event, right?
1:53:39And so that's also just the mere small size of a building is a huge safety benefit to the calculation that I think has sometimes been lost in the conversation about number of staircases.
1:53:54We're talking about increasing the number of staircases per home.
1:53:57Right.
1:53:58In these buildings, right?
1:53:59Because one small building with a staircase and 4 units per floor is way, way, way more stair capacity than one giant building with 2 staircases, if that makes sense.
1:54:10So that is one way to think about it.
1:54:13And on that slide 5 where it says 2027, it sounds like it's saying it's very possible that nationally this might change.
1:54:23Is that what yeah, and so there's been a conversation, life, a conversation in the National Building Code world about this, and a very similar set of conditions to Appendix Q is headed for the International Building Code, International Building Code in 2027, and would be expected generally to be integrated into the 2028 OSSC in Oregon.
1:54:46Is there a certain date that that's adopted, or just sometime in 2027, and then It's 2028 when it goes into effect.
1:54:52Yeah, the IBC is on its own schedule and then typically Oregon follows a year later and integrates things.
1:54:57But Oregon has the option to deviate from the national model as it sees fit.
1:55:04Thanks for answering all my questions.
1:55:07Thank you, Councilor.
1:55:08I am next in the queue and I, well, first of all, thank you for being here.
1:55:16You know, obviously housing affordability is one of our most pressing challenges, and we need to get serious about increasing housing production.
1:55:24And so I think that the single-story buildings have become an important topic in housing policy because they raise the question of, are there opportunities to safely build more housing on more sites by modernizing regulations that were developed decades ago?
1:55:37So I'm grateful that we're having this discussion.
1:55:40We're engaging students.
1:55:42And to envision what the future looks like.
1:55:46I wanted to pick up on the dialogue around accessible housing.
1:55:52You know, I think that as more people— if you look broadly at housing and kind of what's going on with where— what kinds of housing people need, obviously we know we need more family-sized housing.
1:56:04That's been an ongoing need.
1:56:06But this conversation around I just— I guess I'm just concerned that I don't hear a broader conversation about more universal design in our housing, because at the end of the day, we are all only temporarily able-bodied, right?
1:56:27And mobility challenges only increase with age, and that's on top of people who, you know, have disabilities.
1:56:33Thank you.
1:56:33These different challenges.
1:56:35And so I just, I, I guess I'm just thinking out loud that it concerns me that I don't know that as a whole I'm seeing a lot of discussion on how we, like, making something accessible for someone in a wheelchair makes it accessible for everybody.
1:56:48That's the whole point of universal design.
1:56:50It's not about making things just for people with wheelchairs.
1:56:53It's about making it so that if it's, you know, you're, you know, maybe you have a mobility challenge or you develop one, or if we're looking at trying to increase our housing stock, knowing that a lot of elderly seniors are going to have to size down, and knowing that a lot of our homeless population is increasingly people over age 65, and our homeless population is overrepresented in folks with disabilities.
1:57:19And so just again, you know, as I was hearing you explain kind of the different trigger levels of when you should have an accessible home in a building, that just feels very, um, paltry and doesn't feel like we're— I would just want to elevate that as an important part of how we talk about, um, universal design and housing.
1:57:41So just wanted to state that because I think that's a key, um, to how we're going to help a lot of the folks that are currently unhoused get into housing, and they're going to need So this was a lot of wonky land conversation.
1:57:57So for those that are listening in, and LOL at the people who I said, the 5 of you listening in, I got those 5 people message me and said, I was one of them.
1:58:06So for all of those folks that are listening, can you tell me what is the core problem that the single stair reform is trying to solve?
1:58:14So the single stair reform is trying to solve can you summarize that for us?
Ian Crozier 1:58:23 - 1:58:40
1:58:23The way we build multifamily housing is inefficient, backwards, expensive, inflexible, and does not produce the results that we deserve.
1:58:44Okay, you want to take a crack at it?
1:58:45Anyone else?
Wes Ayers 1:58:47 - 2:00:07
1:58:47Yeah, I'll take it.
1:58:48I'll take a crack.
1:58:49I've sort of enjoyed kind of putting this together.
1:58:53So what's become—.
1:58:54I mean, what we already kind of know being in the industry is that, you know, every unit that we add, you know, per floor plate obviously decreases the cost per unit.
1:59:04But what's so amazing about single stair is that we can actually start to develop these small lots.
1:59:10And we can get a lot more housing like in the neighborhoods that we already have all this infrastructure for.
1:59:16And Sameer came to our— sorry, Councilor Kanal came to a meeting at the library in Hollywood just, I think it was last week, and really kind of put forth like how critical our infrastructure is right now that we need more people.
1:59:31We need more people, you know, paying into the system.
1:59:34You know, it's older and then, and if we just—.
1:59:36Yeah.
1:59:36Continue this sort of suburban kind of Inner East Side vibe, like we may not be able to support it.
1:59:43And building apartments, you know, these big ones requires a lot of resources.
1:59:49And the accessibility, right?
1:59:52The ability to build these small buildings that are more neighborhood scaled and that still provide, you know, like house-like living conditions homes, right?
2:00:03You can actually get 2 and 3-bedroom units rather than these shotgun, you know.
Steve Novick 2:00:07 - 2:00:13
2:00:07So I think just the quality of what we're going to build is going to be better.
2:00:10The accessibility to the people who can actually finance it is easier.
Wes Ayers 2:00:15 - 2:00:28
2:00:15And just to comment a little bit on your accessibility comment there, elevator reform, you know, at the state level would take us a really long way to providing more elevators because the market wants elevators, right?
2:00:28We just—.
Ian Crozier 2:00:28 - 2:00:29
2:00:28There's—.
2:00:29Yeah.
Steve Novick 2:00:29 - 2:00:32
2:00:29There's just a big elevator wants to keep them expensive, right?
Wes Ayers 2:00:32 - 2:00:41
2:00:32And there's other reasons why, and I won't get into that.
2:00:34But I think if we had more accessible elevators, we could actually do a lot more for the people who need that.
2:00:43Thank you.
2:00:45Did you want to—.
2:00:47I think a key to our strategy going forward should be trying to create homes that older Oregonians want to downsize into.
2:00:55There are a lot of homes in Portland that are, you know, 1 or 2 people in a 3 to 4 bedroom home.
2:01:03In many cases, that's fantastic.
2:01:04I don't want anybody to have to move out of that, but lots of people want to move out of that.
2:01:08They just need a place to want to move into.
2:01:11And this opportunity arises even in a context where we don't have a growing population.
2:01:16We have a growing senior population, and we have a huge population of people who would love to move into those larger homes.
2:01:21If they were available because somebody decided they wanted to move into a smaller place.
2:01:25This makes those smaller places possible on every lot in every neighborhood.
2:01:29That's helpful.
2:01:31So as you said, Oregon has already adopted portions of this building code, but many— you suggest that very few projects have moved forward.
2:01:40So can you just again summarize, like, what do you see is preventing some of these getting built?
2:01:46And how much of these challenges are building code itself versus the zoning and permitting and fire bureau?
2:01:51Just give us— paint us a picture of like, what are the main barriers that you're seeing to getting this, getting more of these kinds of homes built?
2:02:02I mean, not very many homes are being built in Portland right now at the moment because population has been flat.
2:02:07And I think we are all— a ton of your work is preparing for the possibility the population starts to grow again and making the most of that when it happens, making sure that catastrophe doesn't follow, right?
2:02:22The things that are standing in the way of this being part of that future, of single-story buildings being part of that graceful growth in the future, are coming up with some reasonable fire-safe rules that could allow 4, 5, Potentially 6 stories to exist.
2:02:43Some of that needs to happen at the state level.
2:02:44Some of that code work needs to happen at the state level too, and some of it needs to happen at the local level.
2:02:48And I'm not a fire safety expert.
2:02:50I'm just trying to have a conversation about the benefit side of the ledger so that people who know more about the trade-offs can think about those.
Ian Crozier 2:03:01 - 2:03:36
2:03:01I'll weigh in just to say that there are a few single-stair buildings being built in Portland, and there are 3 stories or less.
2:03:11And now we went and toured one with the students down on Division.
2:03:16Actually, there's a pair of buildings called E and Hutch designed by a firm called Quad Architects.
2:03:21They're very nice.
2:03:22They're this lovely compact.
2:03:24It makes great use of the lot, a small lot that would be, like we've said, it would be difficult to develop with a different kind of building.
2:03:34But it's because it's only 3 stories.
2:03:36Yeah.
Ian Crozier 2:03:39 - 2:04:08
2:03:39And partly because of some zoning, some other zoning things that we'd like to change, it had to be 3 stories.
2:03:48It—.
2:03:48There's only so many of— well, anyhow, I should say because it's only 3 stories, the cost per unit is quite high.
2:03:54You aren't able to divide that cost over more units.
2:03:56So you do in fact see some of these, you see some 6-plexes and 12-plexes in different parts of the city.
2:04:03But we would certainly see more if you could have more units per building.
2:04:10Thank you.
2:04:10My last question is, you all are arguing that single-stair buildings can unlock housing on smaller infill lots.
2:04:16That seems to be a big part of this.
2:04:18So do you have a sense of how many sites across Portland could become more developable if those remaining barriers were addressed?
2:04:26Like, I'm just trying to get a sense for what can we I did some math.
2:04:34I'm happy to send it to you.
2:04:34It's in the order of tens of thousands.
2:04:36Yeah, tens of thousands.
2:04:39Okay, well, that feels urgent to me.
2:04:42Um, thank you again for the conversation, and, um, also just want to thank the student design competition.
2:04:48It's really encouraging to see emerging designers thinking creatively about how Portland can grow while maintaining our So thank you again for leading on that.
2:04:59And with that, I'll pass it to our next person in queue, which is Vice Chair Green.
Mitch Green 2:05:04 - 2:08:37
2:05:04Thank you so much, Chair Avalos, and thanks for scheduling this.
2:05:08You know, I, I was really honored to receive the invitation to help be a judge on this panel, and I was really grateful that you wanted to kind of help bring this, because I think that a lot of what we talk about up here It's sometimes unpleasant where we're initiating a foreclosure action or we're doing something that's extremely wonky and frankly boring.
2:05:29Important, but frankly boring.
2:05:31And so envisioning what our city could look like and it'd be a beautiful transformation of our housing stock, I think is really important for connecting kind of that future vision state with Portlanders.
2:05:45So then they can see it and they can see it in a way that's They can say, yeah, I'm going to stay here.
2:05:48I'm looking forward to the opportunity to move in one of these buildings later on down the road.
2:05:53And I want to talk through just briefly off the top of my head some of the designs I looked at that frankly kind of brought me to tears as I was evaluating them.
2:06:03There was one in particular, Councilor Koyama Lane, because I know this is an issue you care a lot about, is like the ability to age in place, the ability to kind of like, are we building houses and spaces and neighborhoods for the entire spectrum of generations?
2:06:17And there was one design that a student put forward that was like really all about modularity.
2:06:24And it was like building out a space where you can move walls, like, and create sub little rooms inside larger rooms.
2:06:31So like, for instance, you've got a new child and you want a little special nursery for that kid.
2:06:37And then once they've grown, then you move a wall and it's all on this track system and now you've got a larger bedroom.
2:06:42And then there was this other envision where like, you know, with these plans you might envision a sort of like, it's almost like an accessory dwelling unit for like a mother-in-law suite as someone is retiring and wants to be in the house.
2:06:55So they really leaned into this idea of multi-generation housing inside of a multifamily lot.
2:07:01And that got me a little Yeah.
2:07:03It's a little closer to what I saw in Europe when I did my trip to Vienna.
2:07:06There was a lot of housing stock just like that that was built as workforce housing or sort of all ages, stages, and wages housing.
2:07:12And so just kind of seeing that that's what the students were dreaming up, given the design parameters, was really inspiring.
2:07:19And it kind of keeps you connected to the work.
2:07:21And it makes it really urgent to ask the boring questions.
2:07:23Like, so I'll get there, and that's where I'm going with this.
2:07:26But so accessibility is kind of at the Yeah.
2:07:29'Cause there's a lot of different ways, like you might have imagined, even going beyond Class A accessibility, which is what I saw in some of these designs.
2:07:38But Wes, you had said something about single stair could provide maybe more solution space.
2:07:46So more developers who maybe can't play at the level of the multi-hundred million dollar project player, but can do something at a much smaller scale.
2:07:57Like, that opens up a sort of broader portfolio of capabilities and talent.
2:08:03When I heard that, I was thinking that there are sort of cost hurdle barriers to the firms who can be involved, which also implies that the kind of money that comes into the capital stack depends upon your access to international capital markets that are quite frozen, frankly, right now.
2:08:20And so do you see this as an opportunity for us to say, if we can make some policy changes at the local level and in partnership with the state, then we are basically sort of lowering that hurdle rate so it's less expensive to invest and kind of get the job done?
Wes Ayers 2:08:37 - 2:09:35
2:08:37Yeah, I have 3 projects right now that were put on hold recently in the past 8 months, all which are really close to Financial feasibility, right?
2:08:47The STC waivers help a lot, but we reworked the numbers and we're still just a couple units shy of something that they're interested in actually putting their money towards.
2:08:57And these are, you know, they're, you know, $2 to $3 million, $4 million buildings.
2:09:01That's a lot of money to a lot of people, right?
2:09:03But, you know, to certain investors, that's something that they're, you know, somebody, you know, these are employed people, lawyers, doctors, You know, people in tech who, you know, have gotten together with friends of theirs and they want to invest in real estate right here in Portland because they believe in Portland, right?
2:09:20So this isn't, you know, this isn't large institutional money.
2:09:24And we're really close to being able to pull the trigger on some of these buildings, but right now we can't.
2:09:28If we were able to add another floor or add some FAR to these buildings, you know, I'd like to say that we could build more.
Mitch Green 2:09:36 - 2:10:09
2:09:36Now that probably also implies that, If we're imagining other types of homeownership models, like limited equity co-ops, for instance, your ability to pool capital from like maybe a group of 19, 20 prospector buyers into a building from the start where you sort of get together and choose an architecture from the start, like then your hurdle rate's also lower for that group of pooled kind of, for lack of a better term, Yeah, absolutely.
Wes Ayers 2:10:09 - 2:10:30
2:10:09I think there's some sort of some hurdles at the state level, you know, and that maybe Michael could speak to better than I can about some liability around sort of the 10-year, you know, condo stuff, right?
2:10:22That kind of restricts some of these sort of flat-type condo housings currently.
2:10:27But if it weren't for some of those barriers, I think we'd see a lot more of this in Portland.
Kevin Foster 2:10:30 - 2:10:30
2:10:30Yeah, I think that's a more great point.
Wes Ayers 2:10:30 - 2:10:44
2:10:30Flat-type condos come around again.
2:10:33And this is a kind of product where, you know, if you could have a 3-bedroom flat, you know, in a close-in neighborhood for a reasonable price, like, that would be pretty awesome.
Ian Crozier 2:10:46 - 2:10:46
2:10:46That's great.
Mitch Green 2:10:47 - 2:11:20
2:10:47I think that it's gonna be a while before we've— the interest rate environment's still not great, and I think it's gonna be a while before there's a big pile of magic money that we can just throw subsidy cash at.
2:11:01And so being able to take whatever measures that we can to provide more solution space, I think there was a metric there that said something like going from sub-90% efficiency to 92% efficiency, that like in dollars and cents, like give me a sense of scale.
2:11:18Like what does that do to the price of a unit?
Wes Ayers 2:11:20 - 2:12:02
2:11:20Like how does that pencil out?
2:11:21So in the most the most recent study I did over the past few days in preparation for this, right?
2:11:25Looking at a 50 by 100 lot and assuming, you know, some make-believe zoning, right?
2:11:31So RM-3, RM-4 or something, a hybrid of that.
2:11:34I was basically calculating on the low end an 11% increase per floor plate and then all the way up to 16% depending on different finishes.
2:11:43So, you know, really at 11%, that's still 1 in 10 free units essentially, right?
2:11:49Or the ability to reduce the price by that much.
2:11:51At 16%, that's really meaningful.
2:11:54So I don't know.
2:11:56I mean, I got— the more I dove into this over the past week or so in preparation for this, the more excited I got.
2:12:01I think it's a really good idea.
Mitch Green 2:12:03 - 2:12:42
2:12:03And finally, I think just to kind of go back to this question, I think the comment was made, I can't remember who made the comment, but Michael, I think you made the comment that our slow housing production is largely a function of our slow population growth.
2:12:17And that's like a supply and demand argument.
2:12:20And I think that's right, but I think if we wait for the population to come back to then adopt this, then we're gonna be in scarcity conditions where you're gonna drive that displacement risk much higher than if we were to sort of move forward now to create extra capacity in terms of like the buildable lots, so to speak.
2:12:41Is that the right way to think about it?
2:12:43Yeah, the lower Wes's costs get, the less we have to wait for prices to rise before his investors can invest, right?
2:12:50So like, we can wait for the population to rise and for the prices to rise and for more homes to be built.
2:12:55That's how we've always done it in the past, but that's not the best way to do it.
2:12:58The best way to do it is to cut the costs so the prices don't have to rise before the homes can be built.
Mitch Green 2:13:03 - 2:13:12
2:13:03That's what I hope— hoping— I was hoping you would say that in your own words, so thank you.
2:13:07Yeah, I think this is great work, and, um, yeah, obviously I'm a fan.
2:13:12Thanks so much.
2:13:15Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney 2:13:15 - 2:14:07
2:13:15Thank you, Chair Avalos.
2:13:17Thank you all for being here.
2:13:19Um, you know, there's some really inspirational pieces to some of these designs that you brought forward, and I wish that we were in a space— and I know it will require a lot of different things to move us in that I mean, imagine having some of the units that are being built in Portland today have those modular walls or those accessibility features.
2:13:48And there really isn't anything right now that prevents that, right?
2:13:52Those came forward in a design competition focused on single stairway because design competition are where students are able to highlight really cool cutting-edge pieces, but this change doesn't lead to those things, does it?
Ian Crozier 2:14:13 - 2:15:31
2:14:13Not necessarily.
2:14:14Um, you're, you're right on in pointing out that there is a— there is— the design competition has a role, and the role is not to show us exactly what will be built under the most realistic scenarios.
2:14:31But the role is to, because it's so valuable to dream big, like you said, and it's valuable for the students, of course, as well to explore and to try out new things.
2:14:44I think all 3 of us would say that all the same, we, by opening doors, speaking of accessibility, Accessibility in elevators and everything, you make these outcomes more likely and more likely in certain situations.
2:15:05There's a vast range of different buildings being built in the city, and no one can see them all or know what they are like.
2:15:14But by increasing the options about what people are allowed to build and by increasing the flexibility and reducing the costs, those are exactly what you would want to do to create a greater wealth of options and creativity.
2:15:32Absolutely.
2:15:32And I think finding ways to decrease costs is certainly important.
2:15:39The presentation today, you didn't talk about a specific number of stories you would want to see single stairway allowed in.
2:15:50I don't know if that means you're hoping for any number of floors or if there's another level that you think would be an appropriate cap.
2:16:00You don't need to answer that.
2:16:01That's okay.
2:16:03But I say that to say it seemed to me that a lot of what you were talking about focused on a 5 or a 6-story level.
2:16:11Yeah.
2:16:12Under state building code, because we are beholden to state building code, right?
2:16:16We have that single code in our state.
2:16:20What level are single stairways allowed until?
2:16:24Is it the 4?
2:16:26I think that's what you said at the beginning, or is it allowed until 5 or 6?
2:16:31So the current building code in the state, the base building code, allows 3 stories.
2:16:38The Appendix Q that was adopted in response to the recent legislation—.
2:16:42Yes.
2:16:43Allows a 4th story under certain conditions, and then it also requires sign-off by the local fire service.
2:16:50So even if we were to make the changes at the city level, that would allow up to 4 stories.
2:16:56It would be 1 additional story.
2:16:58State code has a limitation, a hard cap at 4 stories.
2:17:04Is that correct?
2:17:06It does today.
2:17:07Okay.
2:17:07Many of the states that I mentioned have gone further, and the state may go further in the future.
2:17:12Um, and you had some numbers about cost savings.
2:17:17I think they were $10,000 per unit.
2:17:22Is that accurate?
2:17:23Do I remember that correctly in the presentation?
Wes Ayers 2:17:27 - 2:18:13
2:17:27Um, I could tell you, and, and this is based So it was based on just one model, right?
2:17:33And that model assumes 2,500 square foot floor plates and a certain fit and finish, right?
2:17:41I mean, I have to create some sort of baseline, right?
2:17:43So it was based on a building that we built on North Killingsworth at $278,000 per unit.
2:17:52With an additional floor, we ended up at $251,000 at 5 floors, 236, and then at 6 at 226.
2:18:00That 6th floor I'm gonna put an asterisk on because with 6 floors based on the current building codes, we wouldn't be able to build 5 stories of wood frame construction.
2:18:10We'd have to add concrete.
2:18:11So that's probably not a realistic number.
2:18:13So about 15,000, 10,000 to 15,000.
Wes Ayers 2:18:16 - 2:18:18
2:18:1610,000 To 15,000.
Ian Crozier 2:18:18 - 2:18:20
2:18:18More.
2:18:19Oh no, it's quite a bit more.
Wes Ayers 2:18:20 - 2:18:27
2:18:20It's a lot more than that.
2:18:20So we're talking up to 40,000.
2:18:23$10,000 Or more per, like once you add, get up to the 5th floor?
2:18:27Per floor.
2:18:28Per floor, it sounded like it was $10,000 to $15,000 per unit.
2:18:31Per unit.
2:18:32Okay.
2:18:33And that's not the sales price reduction, that's the reduction in the cost of building that unit.
2:18:40Is that accurate?
Wes Ayers 2:18:42 - 2:18:50
2:18:42Right.
2:18:42And we can just always assume that our sales price is going to be highly correlated to our construction costs because that's—.
2:18:50It's $10,000 to $15,000 less per unit for construction, maybe it's, I don't know, $7,000 to $12,000 less in sales price.
Ian Crozier 2:18:56 - 2:19:02
2:18:56But we, sorry, to be clear, it was $40,000 per unit less was the number.
2:19:02I'm not hearing $40,000.
2:19:04I'm sorry, I want to—.
2:19:06Yeah.
2:19:06We heard a lot in the presentation about all of the many benefits we're trying to get to.
2:19:12And this one panacea, a single stairway, And I didn't hear the connection between those 2 things.
2:19:20And I have some questions about that later, but I'm trying to understand the basic facts here.
2:19:25'Cause there was like, like I said, it sounded like this presentation is saying this is a panacea to get everything we need fixed in our housing structure.
2:19:35And I just don't think any one thing is gonna do that.
2:19:38No.
2:19:38So I'd like to make sure these numbers are accurate because you're saying 40,000, What I saw on the numbers you put up and heard you just say was $10,000 to $15,000 per unit per floor.
Wes Ayers 2:19:48 - 2:20:19
2:19:48Right, so let me clarify.
2:19:49So our baseline at 2,500 square feet per floor plate at 3 stories, which is 7,500 square feet, is $278,000.
2:20:01And that's based on real-world construction on a building we recently completed, right?
2:20:06If I took those same costs, right, and I took essentially the fixed costs like the roof, the foundation, you know, the utilities and all of the things that I could identify in the budget that are more or less, you know, gonna basically not be a part of this.
2:20:19You need those no matter what.
Wes Ayers 2:20:21 - 2:20:59
2:20:21Right, right.
2:20:22And then I divide the rest by each floor plate.
2:20:25I can sort of extrapolate, right, what each additional unit savings there would be.
2:20:30So at 4 floors, 15 homes, right?
2:20:36At about $251,000.
2:20:38So the additional floor is saving $17,000, sorry, $27,000 per unit, right?
2:20:47By adding one additional floor.
2:20:50Then at 5 floors, that nets 19 total units, right?
2:20:54And we get down to $236,000, which is a difference in $20,000.
2:20:59$20,000.
Ian Crozier 2:21:00 - 2:21:01
2:21:00Sorry.
Steve Novick 2:21:01 - 2:21:01
2:21:01$42,000.
Wes Ayers 2:21:01 - 2:21:05
2:21:01Yeah, $42,000.
2:21:03And where I added the asterisk—.
2:21:05I'm sorry, $251,000 to $236,000 is not $42,000.
Ian Crozier 2:21:09 - 2:21:23
2:21:09Just going the baseline currently allowed today, right?
2:21:133 floors.
2:21:14So it's going from the baseline, what's allowed today, to what we would, to allowing 5 floors.
2:21:21That's the, you get $42,000 in benefit.
Wes Ayers 2:21:23 - 2:21:26
2:21:23Total.
2:21:24Right, from $278,000 at the 3 floors.
2:21:27So for 2 floors—.
2:21:28For 2 floors additional.
2:21:30Okay, and I was trying to get the number per floor.
Wes Ayers 2:21:32 - 2:21:38
2:21:32Okay, apologies.
2:21:33Right, okay, it's not per floor, it's per unit, and that's why it continues to scale.
2:21:39Understood.
2:21:40Okay.
2:21:40I'm sorry, per unit per floor was the number I was trying to get to there.
2:21:44Oh, okay, right.
2:21:44So per unit for 2 floors, you're saying $42,000.
2:21:48Okay.
2:21:52I'm just trying— so per unit for a single floor addition, it scales, but we're talking about for the first floor, $20,000 to $30,000.
2:22:05Then it sounded like it was about $15,000, then $10,000 per floor that we add per unit, that the construction cost goes down, the sales cost goes down some amount of that.
2:22:16Yeah.
2:22:17That.
2:22:17We don't really know how much cost savings, but some portion of that.
Wes Ayers 2:22:21 - 2:22:30
2:22:21I think it's safe to assume that it would be directly proportional because we're always having to make some profit even on the baseline.
2:22:28So if we say our profit's always, you know—.
2:22:30So it's a portion of it.
2:22:32Right.
2:22:33Okay.
2:22:36And you had said something about tens of thousands of lots that could be affected by this.
2:22:41Is that the total Is that the total number of 5,000-square-foot lots in the city that you were referring to, or is that based on some sort of criteria around how likely something would be to be redeveloped?
2:22:54What is— what should we expect that number to actually mean?
2:22:58It's been a little while since I put that memo together, but that actually speaks to your earlier question.
2:23:02I appreciate the questions about cost reduction.
2:23:05The other calculation here for the sort of calculating the possible benefit of the policy is it greatly increases the size of the denominator, right?
2:23:13The number of possible lots where you can add housing increases the taller you can go, right?
2:23:20So are you looking at total number of 5,000-square-foot lots?
2:23:24Right, no, there's vastly more 5,000-square-foot lots in the city.
2:23:28What I did for that calculation was I assumed a certain low development value on the existing lot, and then I took a low percentage percentage of that share to estimate the number that would turn over in a given year and the number that would develop in a given year and so on.
2:23:45Okay, that's really helpful.
2:23:47Thank you.
2:23:47It would be great to see those numbers.
2:23:49It sounds like you have a report that includes them somewhere that's separate from this.
2:23:52Okay, um, I want to go back to the question I asked about state building code.
2:24:00At one point, I don't remember who, but somebody talked about sprinklers as a and maybe the safety information that's out there, at least on the life safety side, isn't as great as some have portrayed.
2:24:17When do sprinklers become required under our state building code?
2:24:21I'm sorry, I should know this, and it's been a few years since I worked on state building code issues.
Wes Ayers 2:24:25 - 2:25:03
2:24:25Yeah, so the 3-story building that we're using as the baseline is required, like it's already, sprinklers are already required.
2:24:32And then any building that would be 4 or 5 or 6, they all require sprinklers.
2:24:37And so then there are other thresholds depending on which type of 3-story building you build and which type of essentially addressable system, right, is in effect.
2:24:49And this is your fire alarm system.
2:24:51Yeah.
2:24:52But I believe recently that was also upgraded.
2:24:55So any 4-story building, any sort of taller building That's helpful.
2:25:03Thank you.
2:25:04I have like 10 more questions that came up during the presentation.
2:25:08I'll hold those, but I do want to make a few comments.
2:25:14There was a lot in that presentation where I am worried that we are confusing cause and effect, or maybe seeing a single solution as a panacea.
2:25:23Yeah.
2:25:25To fix all of the problems we have in our housing market right now.
2:25:31And that concerns me because there are Portlanders who are listening, maybe only 5, as the chair has said.
2:25:37I assume that more people listen and that we're far more popular than that though, Chair Avalos.
2:25:42Maybe 6.
2:25:43And I don't want people to think that this one change is going to fix everything.
2:25:49Because I don't think it will.
2:25:51There was a great picture that you all had on slide 21 about a common lobby with 3 units around it.
2:26:01But I could draw a line between units 1 and 2 and draw a stairwell on the side, and we would still have a common lobby and have a secondary stairwell and only slightly diminish the total number of units.
2:26:14Total square footage of those units and have that, that safety escape there.
2:26:20And so I'm struggling to understand why all of the many problems you named are solvable only if we move to a single stairwell and not if we design differently with 2 stairwells.
2:26:36I understand that there is some mixed data around life safety.
2:26:39I think that's a fair point.
2:26:41Safety.
2:26:41And when we talk about life safety, if we mean strictly people dying, newer buildings mean fewer people die.
2:26:50So yes, if there is a single stairwell in a newer building compared to an older building, absolutely people are safer.
2:26:59But we still have impact.
2:27:02We still have firefighters who can't move smoke to one stairwell while evacuating people down another.
2:27:11We still have firefighters trying to evacuate people with mobility challenges down the same stairwell that hose lines are coming up, right?
2:27:20There are still— it still takes longer to evacuate a building, especially if it's a larger building, which means there's more smoke inhalation and long-term health impacts.
2:27:32So when we narrow our concern to life safety, meaning people who die, we're missing the extra work, the extra firefighters who are needed who can't respond to other calls, the longer-term health impacts.
2:27:46And it may be that we ultimately need to move in this direction, but I am struggling with thinking that what I'm hearing here is that we need to take on a risk, because it is a risk, in order to get any of these benefits, in order to get units that have 2 sides of light or that can have smaller buildings, right?
2:28:15I heard a lot of conversation about long, dark stairwells in big buildings compared to common common areas, but what we were shown were pictures of long, huge buildings compared to a few small buildings on the same lot.
2:28:32Well, we can do that again, back to slide 21, with a single stairwell still.
2:28:40And if we need to talk about distance between stairwells so that we can have smaller buildings, let's talk about that, but still have that benefit.
2:28:49Thank you.
2:28:53I would love to see us, or maybe even be part of a broader conversation about what Portlanders want to see on what we've historically considered single-family lots that now actually have a lot of flexibility to build in many different ways on them, those 5,000-square-foot lots.
2:29:12But I'm hearing a whole lot of concerns brought up, and I'm I'm not seeing the line between this one change, which does bring those safety risks, and all of the many solutions or all of the many problems that it seems to be solving.
2:29:32I just, I don't see that in the pictures we're showing.
2:29:34So, Chair, I assume that we're getting this presentation because I think you and your Vice Chair are really interested in this policy change.
2:29:41And I want to say all of that because I am very concerned that we are conflating what could be an important policy change but brings with it real risk that I think is being downplayed with building types that are so different from what we're being shown this would be So I hope that if we're going to talk about policy here, we do it in a way that is much more— that is tighter and that is clear about what the actual benefits from a single change would be and honest about what the risks would be.
2:30:26Thank you.
2:30:28Okay, thank you.
2:30:29Councilor Novick.
2:30:30Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mitch Green 2:30:32 - 2:31:46
2:30:32And Councilor Herbold, I think you're right.
2:30:34Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, as a baseball fan, you should know that there's no such thing as a panacea for anything, because if Shohei Ohtani can play for the California Angels and the Angels can still suck, that just shows that no one thing solves anything in the world.
2:30:47Thanks for asking the question about sprinkler requirements.
2:30:49I was going to ask that too.
2:30:50I'm looking at this Pew study from, I think, early last year that said that construction— that the requirement of a double stairway adds about 6 to 13% to construction costs in a 4 to 6 story building on a small lot.
2:31:05One of the things it said, which I've now lost and can't find, but it said that you could have, in addition, if you're going to allow single stairway buildings, you could add additional safety requirements such as reducing floor area or requiring smoke control measures or insisting on short distance to exits.
2:31:27And I was just wondering if those are options that you've seen play out in Seattle or New York.
2:31:35Have those kind of requirements been adopted?
2:31:37And if they were adopted, what do you think the cost would be and how much would that limit the positive cost impact of allowing single stairway buildings?
2:31:47I think that all those are part of the Seattle code as I understand it.
2:31:54Most of those are part of Appendix Q as well.
2:31:58So we're certainly talking about a multivariable situation where some things trigger at different heights.
2:32:06So you get full sprinkler coverage with the 4th story when it would've previously been the 5th story, things like that.
2:32:13Yeah.
Mitch Green 2:32:14 - 2:32:16
2:32:14What smoke control measures can you adopt?
2:32:17I think that might be a reference to the pressurization of the stairwell That Seattle requires.
2:32:22So they require essentially you put a fan, as I understand it, not my expertise, at the top of the stairwell.
2:32:27Does that seem right?
2:32:28And I've heard different reports, including from people in the fire service, about how effective that actually is as an active system.
2:32:34But that's something that Seattle decided to put in as a way to ensure that smoke is not flowing into the stairwell during an event when there's smoke in one unit.
Mitch Green 2:32:44 - 2:32:53
2:32:44And do you have, like, the names of actual people in Seattle or New York that we could call to sort of You know, ask them, you know, their perspective on what they've done.
2:32:53I promise you that the Seattle Fire and Building Code folks are sick of getting this call from every city in the country.
2:33:02But yeah, there's— so I do not know the names myself.
2:33:10Maybe somebody else does.
Mitch Green 2:33:14 - 2:33:28
2:33:14I don't need to have it today.
2:33:15I was just wondering if you, you know, If you could find the least sick Seattle Building Code person to call, that would be great, 'cause I really would like to do that.
2:33:26You think one of you might be able to find a name?
Kevin Foster 2:33:30 - 2:33:30
2:33:30Okay.
Ian Crozier 2:33:31 - 2:33:31
2:33:31Certainly.
Mitch Green 2:33:32 - 2:33:33
2:33:32Thank you.
2:33:35Vice Chair Green?
Mitch Green 2:33:37 - 2:37:33
2:33:37Yeah, I just wanted to address some of Councilor Pirtle-Guiney's comments and concerns.
2:33:43I think just to level set here, the invitation to have the presentation was to— I don't have any immediate policy goals here, nor does the chair, aside from my just general interest in upzoning, which I think has been abundantly clear across a range of issues, but was a desire to see opportunities to pull into this committee some of the interesting conversations that are relevant I think it's really important to have conversations that are relevant to the committee that are informal and then happen outside of it.
2:34:11'Cause I had the opportunity to be part of a conversation with a bunch of design students and some practitioners, some architects, some developers.
2:34:19And being able to share that with members of the committee who have a vote and a voice here felt like a really good use of time.
2:34:27But then also to have this dialogue.
2:34:30So I— if we were to adopt anything that's not already on the books, It wouldn't pass muster if we couldn't answer very clearly, like, what all of the trade-offs are and what sort of, like, interactions there are with life safety and the like.
2:34:47I think part of the purpose here was to also recognize that even under allowable circumstances that have already been adopted, it's challenging to even do what we're allowed to do because we've got some other other sort of corner pieces that haven't been solved for that are frankly on the administrative rulemaking side, the fire marshal and the like.
2:35:08And so starting these conversations just openly to say if we are going to make tweaks and ask our partners in public safety to work with us and be partners on and kind of try to benchmark— well, first of all, come with that conversation with us.
2:35:25We start I think in the envisioning process too, so it's not completely just disconnected, I think, from the design principles.
2:35:35I also want to note that these would be new construction buildings, and the fire risk that exists in most of these situations are because they're old building stock with antiquated systems that have building materials that are given over to fire conditions.
2:35:55And, you know, likely— well, what I would like to see, I suppose, but what I have seen is a lot of use of engineered timber materials like mass timber, cross-laminated timber, which is very fire resistant.
2:36:09And so I think there's a way to have this conversation that says these are not static— like, fire risk is not a function of Yeah.
2:36:18So, like, I think that's a good point.
2:36:18I think that we're looking at these things as static variables independent of each other.
2:36:20But, like, when you take together all the variables of what goes into making a building and what goes into making a place where someone lives, they all interact with each other that then contribute jointly to the fire risk.
2:36:33And so if you're saying, okay, we have one fewer staircase, but we built this thing with cross-laminated timber, and we have egress opportunities that are closer to where people And so on and so forth, then you might have the case where it's a joint, like on the whole, it's safer for everyone.
2:36:53I think that's what I've seen when I've been in these conversations.
2:36:55And so what you're seeing here is sort of like, hey, let's pull some of the conversations I get to have outside in my district and start to talk about it there.
2:37:05So rest assured, I don't have something waiting in the wings that I'm gonna plop down here.
2:37:09Thank you.
2:37:10I think some of this stuff probably needs some painful land use process and maybe some state action, but, you know, and some tough conversations with the fire marshal maybe.
2:37:24But we want that to be generative.
2:37:25We want that to be grounded in like us caring about, you know, I think the thing you care about.
2:37:31So just wanted to add that and respond to that.
2:37:35Chair Mayer.
2:37:36Thank you, Vice Chair.
2:37:37I appreciate the response, and I think there's conversation to be had there.
2:37:44What concerned me was hearing this kind of broad array of benefits that looked to me in the presentation and the pictures like they were dependent on a lot of different changes.
2:38:04And I think sometimes there is an inclination, not by this council in particular, but in, in lawmaking and in policy work, to get excited about one solution that has some benefits and attribute many other benefits to it and move forward in a way that creates risk for other solutions.
2:38:27Without being clear about that risk and with promises that don't come to fruition.
2:38:33And if we're talking about a lot of lots, probably in my district, I'm not willing to have us do that.
2:38:42I think a conversation holistically about how we create safe buildings that provide the living environments that Portlanders are looking for is really Thank you.
2:38:51I think that this is absolutely important, and this should be one of many factors that we weigh together.
2:38:58But to move in this direction quickly, which is what I was worried was coming next, that sometimes happens here, we get a presentation and then suddenly we're moving quickly, was— is, I will say, pretty concerning to me.
2:39:13I know that there are studies that take into account different variables.
2:39:17That show different option— different risk patterns.
2:39:24But I think there's a lot more for us to understand about how those risks interact.
2:39:28And I think we need to take seriously the practitioners who are saying that this could make their jobs harder to do.
2:39:40All right.
2:39:41I don't see anyone else in the queue.
2:39:43Do we have any final thoughts, committee or panelists?
Ian Crozier 2:39:48 - 2:39:57
2:39:48We'd just like to say thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today and to talk about this subject that we think is very important.
2:39:59Yeah, thank you.
2:40:01Thank you so much for your time.
2:40:03With that, colleagues, our— this is our only committee meeting in August, so our next meeting is going to be on Tuesday, September 1st, after the council recess, and we're going to have updates soon on that agenda.
2:40:15Uh, but I will go ahead and adjourn this meeting at 4:34 PM.

$35 million federal housing loan

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Single-stair building reform

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Transcript

Candace Avalos 8:03 - 8:12

Unidentified speaker 8:13 - 8:13

Steve Novick 8:14 - 8:14

Tiffany Koyama Lane 8:15 - 8:15

Unidentified speaker 8:15 - 8:16

Steve Novick 8:16 - 8:16

Unidentified speaker 8:17 - 8:17

Mitch Green 8:18 - 8:18

Unidentified speaker 8:19 - 8:19

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 8:20 - 8:20

Unidentified speaker 8:20 - 8:21

Candace Avalos 8:21 - 8:23

Unidentified speaker 8:24 - 9:28

Michael Anderson 9:29 - 9:29

Candace Avalos 9:30 - 10:01

Unidentified speaker 10:02 - 10:08

Candace Avalos 10:09 - 10:16

Unidentified speaker 10:17 - 10:23

Candace Avalos 10:24 - 10:33

Unidentified speaker 10:35 - 10:37

Kevin Foster 10:53 - 10:53

Candace Avalos 10:53 - 10:55

Steve Novick 10:55 - 14:13

Candace Avalos 14:15 - 14:18

Unidentified speaker 14:19 - 14:20

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 14:24 - 14:29

Lacey Sutton 14:31 - 17:01

Rebecca Dobert 17:01 - 17:02

Lacey Sutton 17:02 - 17:29

Unidentified speaker 17:33 - 17:34

Candace Avalos 17:35 - 17:49

Unidentified speaker 17:51 - 18:57

Kevin Foster 18:57 - 18:58

Unidentified speaker 18:59 - 20:41

Candace Avalos 20:45 - 21:16

Unidentified speaker 21:16 - 21:16

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 21:16 - 21:16

Ian Crozier 21:16 - 21:16

Candace Avalos 21:17 - 21:42

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 21:46 - 21:46

Candace Avalos 21:48 - 22:29

Kevin Foster 22:30 - 23:10

Candace Avalos 23:12 - 23:12

Kevin Foster 23:12 - 24:24

Candace Avalos 24:28 - 24:31

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 24:32 - 25:16

Kevin Foster 25:16 - 25:36

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 25:37 - 25:49

Kevin Foster 25:49 - 26:07

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 26:08 - 26:36

Candace Avalos 26:37 - 26:40

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 26:41 - 26:50

Steve Novick 26:51 - 26:54

Candace Avalos 26:54 - 26:59

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 26:59 - 27:05

Candace Avalos 27:05 - 27:09

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 27:09 - 27:12

Candace Avalos 27:12 - 27:19

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 27:19 - 28:03

Candace Avalos 28:05 - 28:05

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 28:06 - 28:06

Candace Avalos 28:10 - 28:20

Kevin Foster 28:22 - 28:23

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 28:23 - 28:24

Candace Avalos 28:24 - 28:49

Elana Pirtle-Guiney 28:50 - 28:50

Kevin Foster 28:51 - 28:52

Candace Avalos 28:52 - 29:30

Unidentified speaker 29:30 - 29:36

Lacey Sutton 29:36 - 29:36

Candace Avalos 29:36 - 29:38

Kevin Foster 29:38 - 29:39

Candace Avalos 29:39 - 29:40

Kevin Foster 29:40 - 29:42

Candace Avalos 29:42 - 29:49