housing & industry advocacy

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS UPDATES • HBA OF GREATER PORTLAND

North Plains City Council OKs First Reading of Proposed UGB Expansion

On June 5th, the City of North Plains Council approved the first reading and ordinance in a step to formally adopt the proposed plan to expand the city’s Urban Growth Boundary for housing and employment lands. Thank you to all HBA members who testified in favor of the proposal! As outlined in their UGB Expansion Draft Report, the city determined that they needed to produce 1,348 new units over 20 years, 558 of which were determined to be accommodated inside existing limits. The city plans include over 167 acres of new residential lands, which would include nearly 800 new housing units. The total land masses will be located on the north and west side of town, in addition to nearly 687 acres of land designated for commercial or industrial.

Lake Oswego Updating its Urban Forestry Plan

The City of Lake Oswego is looking for input from builders on a planned update of their Urban and Community Forestry Plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2007. Following the state’s Urban Forest Report which was completed in 2022, the City Council established the goal of updating their own plan to reflect best practices and new information. The purpose of the Urban and Community Forestry Plan is to bring together policies, practices, and plans related to Lake Oswego’s urban forest and serves as a planning and policy tool for managing its urban forest. As part of that effort, the City’s planning department is seeking to host a focus group with builders in Lake Oswego to get feedback and learn how they can support a healthy building environment.

Washington County Inspection Delays Beginning to Drop

There may be some good news coming out of Washington County, as inspection wait times appear to be dropping from where they were a month ago. Following several recent hires on the inspection team, the county has gone from conducting an average of about 140 inspections daily to over 200 inspections. This has meant that the delays have dropped from a high of around 12-days to about one week. While some inspection types are being completed faster, others like structural inspections can still take up to 10 days according to several builders. While still not ideal, this does represent some marginal progress in a section of the county’s Land Use and Transportation department, which has been struggling to meet service level targets since the pandemic hit three years ago. HBA staff and members who build in the county will continue to press county leadership and elected officials to fix these ongoing issues.

NAHB Spring Legislative Conference Recap

HBA member delegates and staff were in Washington D.C. this month for the NAHB spring conference to advocate for pro-housing legislation at the federal level. On June 7th, more than 700 members from across the country marched on Capitol Hill to ask our lawmakers take steps to address the nation’s

For more information on any of the below items, please contact Director of Policy and Government Affairs Preston Korst at prestonk@hbapdx.org housing affordability crisis. Oregon HBA members and staff met with five of our state’s congressional delegation, including with Representatives Cliff Bentz, Suzanne Bonamici, Lori ChavezDeRemer, and Val Hoyle, and Senator Ron Wyden. Among the items we advocated for were increased production of transformers, reduced regulation of local codes, and increased funding for workforce development programs.

WES’ Updated Rules and Regulations went into Effect July 1st

Following nearly two years of internal work and strategizing, Clackamas County’s Water and Environment Services updated its Rules and Regulations program to provide more consistent and streamlined review criteria for new developments and ratepayers. The new rules went into effect July 1st, 2023 and will address items like annexation, EDU assignments, SDC payment processing, and the creation of reimbursement districts. The overall benefit will be that builders operating across WES’ several service districts will now experience greater uniformity when working with the county. HBA and our members provided testimony in front of the County Commission in May in favor of these new rules and regulations.

ICYMI: Metro Hires New Planning Director

In case you missed it, Metro has hired a new Planning, Development and Research Director. Catherine Ciarlo was hired several weeks ago to lead the agency’s teams that help the region plan for and manage growth. Ciarlo comes to Metro from the City of Portland where she led the Bureau of Transportation’s development permitting and transit programs. Before that, she worked at Jacobs (now CH2M) as a project manager. HBA is working to get Catherine in front of our Portland Builders and Urban Development Council and Government Affairs Committee to welcome her and discuss our association’s key priorities.

Beaverton Hiring Community Development Director

Following the pending retirement of Cheryl Twete, the City of Beaverton is hiring a new Community Development Director, who will have broad authority to manage the city’s housing growth and planning efforts in the coming years, particularly related to Cooper Mountain’s development. HBA will be sure to offer city leaders our hopes of seeing someone fill that position with a strong desire to work with builders in producing new housing for existing and future residents of Beaverton.

SDC Updates

It’s budget season for our municipalities which means that most if not all, are considering adjusting their SDC methodologies to accommodate for market conditions/inflation. While so far there haven’t been any wildly unreasonable increases to fees, there are a couple that are engaging. We would like to note that the City of Portland did formally