1. Increasing
Housing Opportunity
through Inclusionary
Strategies
Draft for discussion
August 30, 2013

2. Today’s Proposed Agenda
• Welcome and Introductions
• Overview
• Affordability – the need, the gap, and uses and limits of current tools
• Who’s doing what to support inclusionary housing?
– Fair Housing Council ‐‐ “toolkit”
– City of Portland Opportunity lens
– City of Portland tax abatement programs
– Washington County
– Lifting the state pre‐emption – CAT and OPAL and others
– Housing Alliance agenda
• Resource expansion
• Tax abatements/exemptions
– Other efforts?
• Strategic opportunities and considerations
– Viability of lifting the pre‐emption?
– “work force” housing conversations as political opportunity?
– Other ?
• Next steps / Adjourn
– Legislative workgroup to be named/ convened by Speaker Kotek
– Housing Alliance begins discussion of 2014 and 2015 agenda in early September
– Do we want to continue meeting to share information and resources and perspectives?

3. Why Inclusionary Strategies?
• Increase individual, family, and household
access to safe, decent, affordable housing
– Rental and ownership options
• Increase individual, family, and household
access to opportunities – school, jobs, green
space, healthy communities
• Increase individual, family, and household
housing choice
• Decrease racial and economic segregation and
disparities

4. What do we need to know?
• What strategies create inclusionary housing?
–“inclusionary zoning”
–Anti‐discrimination laws, education, and
enforcement can discourage biased
practices
–Housing subsidies, transportation and
other planning tools can create options
within communities and “opportunity
communities”

5. Inclusionary Zoning Defined
“inclusionary zoning” refers to requirements
placed on builders to include lower cost housing
options within developments or pay an “in‐lieu”
fee
• requirements can be mandatory or voluntary
• Most mandatory programs include a subsidy or cost
offset (CHP/NHC paper, 2013)
• Zoning, planning, tax abatement, and other policy
tools can create incentives for including lower cost
housing within developments

6. Why doesn’t inclusionary housing
happen on its own?
– Affordability and costs of housing
– Lack of access – because of location,
transportation barriers, discriminatory practice,
physical attributes, or other factors
– Market preferences for homogeneous and higher
end development

7. Barriers to Inclusionary Housing in
Oregon
• Political will at the local level
– Local jurisdictions don’t see the connection and/or perceive
conflict with economic development agendas
• Housing expertise at the local level
• Oregon’s land use laws make our development more
compact
• Smaller developments are typical (rental and ownership)
• West coast housing prices are high, communities have lots
of second homes. Our wages are low.
• East of mountains, markets now weak
• Pre‐emption on mandatory IZ
• Affordability issues

8. Affordability issues
• Oregon’s housing prices and people’s
incomes are out of balance (see
http://www.oregonhousingalliance.org/resources/)
– For renters on fixed incomes, and with full time
jobs
– For folks wanting to own homes
– In every county of the state

9. Affordability issues
• Existing housing subsidy resources are fully
allocated
– All rental housing resources target below 80% of area
median incomes
– Most target below 50% or 60% of Area Median
Income, much targets even lower incomes
• Housing subsidy resources are shrinking
– Federal budget cuts have been devastating and are
continuing
– State resources can’t keep up
– Local resources through federal government
shrinking too

10. Affordability Issues
• Requiring “affordable” units in market‐rate
development is harder than it sounds
– Profit margins are tight
– Credit market is tight
– Developments are small
– Other requirements already add costs (parking,
design factors, system development charges)
– Some areas which have a “work force” housing
market can’t get housing built by private
developers

11. What’s being done now?
Where are there opportunities
to advance the goal?

12. What else can we do?

13. Next steps
• Resource page at
http://www.oregonhousingalliance.org/inclusionary‐housing‐resources/
• Let Janet know which parts of this
conversation you want to be engaged in
• Let others know how to stay in touch with
your efforts