Urban Growth Strategies: Homes & Jobs for 2045

I participated this past Thursday in the kickoff meeting for the City of Eugene’s Urban Growth Strategies project. The goal of the project is to identify the essential tools, actions, policies, and land required over the next two decades to support housing and living wage jobs in our community. Given the number of ongoing projects related to housing and economic development, City staff reached out to a broad list of housing and development experts, employers, and business owners to help inform the Urban Growth Strategies project’s priorities and outcomes. They saw fit to include me among those they invited to be a member of the project’s Housing and Development Working Group.

Our homes are essential for providing us with shelter, safety, gathering, and comfort. They are the foundation upon which any stable, livable community is built. As we know all too well, securing affordable housing in Eugene has become progressively challenging. The simple fact is an insufficient number of new homes have been added to Eugene’s residential stock in recent decades, which in turn has spurred a crisis of affordability. A comprehensive understanding of the problem is essential, and in turn the crafting of efficient strategies and policies that will optimize land use and address the desperate need for more and diverse types of housing.

The kickoff meeting introduced the Urban Growth Strategies project and its components. The meeting included the presentation of some eye-opening data regarding housing needs and the barriers to the provision of affordable housing in Eugene and Lane County.(1) Additionally, we reviewed the various statewide mandates related to urban growth, as well as recent policy work directed by the City Council.

Beth Goodman of ECOnorthwest explains the City's role in housing development.

The State of Oregon requires municipalities to provide enough buildable land within their urban growth boundaries to accommodate estimated housing needs for 20 years. Moreover, House Bill 2003 requires cities with populations greater than 10,000 to update their housing needs and capacity analysis every eight years, while HB 2001, known as the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (OHNA), directed the Department of Land Conservation and Development to implement rules to increase housing production, affordability, and choice. On top of this, the Department established the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities Program, which requires Oregon cities to comply with requirements for the establishment of compact, walkable development standards.   

Crucial to the Urban Growth Strategies project is an evaluation of whether Eugene's Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) will require expansion to meet land needs over the next two decades. The City’s technical analysis will provide insights into the current adequacy of land within the UGB and explore additional tools to address any unmet land needs. The project will help identify a supply of land for residential use for the next twenty years by integrating housing capacity analyses, residential efficiency measures, and the current inventory of buildable lands. Importantly, it will also help establish a 20-year supply of land for non-residential use, incorporating data from an economic opportunities analysis, employment efficiency measures, and urban land needs.

Each Oregon municipality has its own unique challenges when it comes to the provision of an adequate inventory of affordable housing. These include constraints on how accessible federal funding is, infrastructure and site development needs, the lack of development-ready tracts, neighborhood resistance and the threat of delayed processes and appeals, and of course national market factors (high costs for labor, land, materials, and financing). The City of Eugene’s role in housing development is restricted to public policy matters related to the use of land and infrastructure, as its influence on market feasibility is limited. Nevertheless, the development of favorable city policies is crucial to helping address the housing crisis.

The desired policy outcome is revisions to the Envision Eugene Comprehensive Plan (EECP) and draft amendments to the Eugene Code, including creation of new parcel-specific land use designation maps and new chapters dedicated to housing, compact development & urban design, community health, and community engagement. The revisions to the plan—that the Working Group will influence—will provide Eugene with a roadmap toward market stability and long-term systemic change.

I found the kickoff meeting encouraging. In addition to the valuable background information that provided me with a much-needed contextual understanding, the opportunity to discuss current barriers to housing production in breakout groups was very welcome. How can the City support production of more housing affordable to households with incomes at 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI) or below? What about incomes in the 60%-120% range?

Two connected Point Access Blocks, showing unit diversity and typical vertical circulation. Source: Point-access block policy brief by Michael Eliason (Larch-Lab-PAB_Policy-Brief.pdf )

I am by no means an expert on affordable housing, but from my perspective as an architect, I see the building typology limitations baked into the current version of the International Building Code as a significant barrier to the production of more and varied types of housing. Specifically, the code does not allow multi-story “point access blocks” of more than three stories in height. Taller point-access block buildings—such as those up to six stories in height now allowed by the City of Seattle in its modified version of the IBC—are organized as compact plans around a single stairway and elevator core, as opposed to the dual-stairway and double-loaded corridor layouts typical of all new multifamily developments in Eugene. The benefits of point-block developments include the fact that they minimize the need for parcel assemblage, a process which increases costs and the time of development.(2) Whether the City of Eugene (or the State of Oregon) will implement similar code revisions to those adopted by Seattle remains to be seen, but doing so would undoubtedly improve the odds of meeting the housing affordability challenge.   

I plan to attend the full series of Housing and Development Working Group meetings. Future events will address gaps in existing housing policies, discuss potential strategies for housing production, and review draft revisions to the EECP. By prioritizing community input, technical analysis, and policy integration, the Urban Growth Strategies project aspires to shape a future for Eugene that is not only resilient but also responsive to the diverse needs of its residents. For your own opportunities to engage and contribute to this transformative endeavor, be sure to follow the project on Engage Eugene.

(1)    Among the more shocking statistics are that at 60% of the AMI ($53,460 per year), a family in Eugene can afford a monthly rent of only $1,340 or a home priced in the $134,000 to $160,000 range; however, the average monthly rent is $1,829 and the median home sale price is $479,500. Even households at 120% of the AMI are priced out of the Eugene market. The source for these figures is the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and are correct as of December 2023. 

(2)    Michael Eliason, an architect and urbanist based in Seattle, is the leading evangelist for and proponent of point-block housing in the U.S. In recent years, he has written extensively on the topic, as well as penning pointed critiques about the current state of multifamily housing development in North America. In response to a piece I wrote a few years back regarding 5-over-1 construction, he unleashed a flurry of tweets on Twitter (now “X”).