Support City of Portland's Housing Regulatory Relief Package

Multifamily NW Members,

We need your help!

The Portland City Council is holding a public hearing on Wednesday, January 10th at 3:00pm to evaluate the merits of a sweeping 16-point Housing Regulatory Relief Package. This is welcome news to the multifamily industry, which has pushed for many of these changes for years — but which are especially critical now, as the city grapples with an ongoing housing emergency.

The package allows for 5-year temporary waivers and reductions regarding several development regulations, grouped into four categories:

1. Development standards (reduce bike parking spaces, waive active ground floor use requirements and nonconforming upgrade requirements, and reducing the number of loading spaces required for larger developments).
2. Design rules (waive façade articulation standards and dimensional ground floor space requirements, exempting security gates and lighting from design overlap chapter).
3. Central City (waive standards that apply to major remodels, waive ecoroof requirements and bird-safe glazing requirements, and simplifying the master plan amendment process).
4. Process improvement (remove references to on-street parking impacts, remove neighborhood contact requirements, reduce design review procedures, extend effective dates of land use reviews, and add a new type of density for attached houses).

Tell Portland City Council that this effort is worthwhile and will make a meaningful difference in our work to stabilize the housing market in Oregon. While Multifamily NW and several organizations throughout the business community would like to see these temporary provisions become permanent, this package is an excellent step in the right direction, and we have to be vocal supporters if we want to see more common-sense policymaking like this.

Thank you for your advocacy on behalf of Oregon housing providers!