Archive for the ‘Affordable Housing’ Category

Coming Affordable Housing Challenges for Municipalities after the Great Recession

Posted on May 3rd, 2013 by

In the day-to-day practice of law, we are often asked to sort out problems big and small with little opportunity to control who walks in our door. However, at Garvey Schubert Barer, the firm’s dedication to pro bono representation provides encouragement and support for its attorneys in giving a voice to those who cannot afford one. Ed Sullivan and I use our land use expertise on the Board of the Housing Land Advocates, an Oregon non-profit organization which has as its mission the support of land use policies that ensure land is available for affordable housing development in sustainable communities.

Logo of the Housing Land Advocates website

Recently, Housing Land Advocates Board Members, Ed Sullivan and Karin Power, published an article, entitled, “Coming Affordable Housing Challenges for Municipalities after the Great Recession.” The article summarizes the challenges for cost-burdened renters in the current economy. The Great Recession’s effect on affordable housing in America was undeniably pervasive, and the statistical figures of cost-burdened rental households appear bleak when compared against the ongoing losses in rental housing stock. With fewer renters than ever supported through HUD assistance programs, however, municipalities simply cannot afford to take a back seat to the ramifications of additional housing unit loss, particularly as it appears that the number of rental households is poised for continued growth over the current decade. As this article details, municipalities can and should implement the limited and cost-efficient tools they have at their disposal to mitigate the impact of an increasingly competitive rental market on their low-income residents.

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TAGS:  Affordable Housing

Residential Parking and Transit: The Portland Puzzle

Posted on March 2nd, 2013 by

A recently decided case by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals (“LUBA”) says a lot about our land use system – perhaps too much. Richmond Neighbors for Responsible Growth v. City of Portland (February 20, 2013) started out as a challenge to project design and the parking requirements (or lack of such requirements) for a multi-family project at SE 37th and Division which was zoned for the multi-family use. Some neighbors formed Richmond Neighbors for Responsible Growth (RNRG) to object to the project. RNRG wanted input into the design of the site and structure to assure the “livability” and “character” of the area. Some neighbors also wanted fewer apartments. The City treated the application as one in which it had no discretion but to grant the application for 81 units. This development was one of several multi-family developments now proposed in Southeast Portland.

The City moved to dismiss RNRG’s case, contending that, under state law, LUBA could not review building permit applications based on clear and objective standards. LUBA, however, determined that not all the standards were clear and objective, and there was discretion that could be used to determine the height of this apartment building on a site with two different zoning designations. That discretion in determining the height led LUBA last November to conclude that it had jurisdiction to hear the case.

Now that their case could be heard, RNRG was faced with how to make that case. The final order doesn’t mention any challenges to the City’s lack of required onsite parking, as that standard involved no discretion. The one thing RNRG could challenge was the City’s interpretation of an obscure requirement that the “main entrance” for each tenant space be within five feet of the façade facing Division Street and, in fact, face that street. LUBA rejected the City’s interpretation of this requirement that it only applied to non-residential uses as contrary to the text of the regulation. Because the application would have to be revised substantially to meet the City’s code, LUBA reversed (rather than remanded) the City’s decision. (more…)

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TAGS:  Affordable Housing, Land Use in Oregon, Land Use Planning, LUBA, Planning

Affordable Housing-The Portland Region’s Biggest Failure

Posted on August 3rd, 2012 by

A recent series of articles by the Oregonian highlights a significant failure on the part of local and regional governments in the Portland region in one area of governance in which both levels of government are responsible. The series, Locked Out: The Failure of Portland-Area Fair Housing can be found here, and is likely to be considered for several journalism awards. In one sense, the story was not very surprising to those familiar with affordable housing in the region. Most local governments, who deal with pledges to assist and not discriminate against such housing, have done very little to plan for and provide for such housing. And Metro, which should be assuring that affordable housing is provided, finds it much easier to tout such popular objectives as open space acquisition, freeways and the zoo, rather than deal with the grimy realities of doing so.

The series consisted of four articles. The first and second dealt with the result of the failure to support fair housing that lead to the concentration of those housing units that are subsidized in peripheral parts of the region, where residents tend to be further from public transit, from food and other commercial facilities, and from the upscale regional center. Part of this story, however, is the level of resistance the journalist faced when making public records requests to evaluate the problem. The Portland Housing Bureau, Home Forward (the Multnomah County housing agency) and the Clackamas County Housing Authority either resisted those requests (with Home Forward paying $15,000 in legal fees to do so) or gravely overestimated the amounts it would charge for records that arguably should be released without charge to a newspaper in the public interest. If that resistance were based on the potential embarrassment of an exposé that public agencies failed in their duties to further affordable housing, they were right. For the article concluded that there was a concentration of affordable housing in Portland east of 82nd Avenue and that dramatic demographic shifts of ethnic minorities had occurred. Irvington and other inner eastside neighborhoods had become “gentrified” over time, while racial minorities were increasing rapidly in Outer Southeast Portland. (more…)

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TAGS:  Affordable Housing, Land Use Planning

Habitat for Humanity Invests Big in the Future of Portland’s Low-Income East Side

Posted on June 8th, 2012 by

Starting in 2009, in the middle of the recession and a depressed real estate market, Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit housing group, was betting and investing big in Portland’s low-income east side. Habitat was buying vacant land on the cheap, shopping from banks in repossession and at foreclosure sales to squirrel away land for future housing projects. Now, three years later, the first 22 homes in the largest Habitat project in Oregon history — a 65-unit subdivision left partly built by a private developer who abandoned it when the market crashed — are rising on Portland’s east side. Habitat, meanwhile, has become the 10th-largest home builder in the Portland metropolitan area by housing volume, and even more dominant on the lower-income east side. Moreover, Habit purchased 150 vacant lots for its “land bank,” which will keep the group busy for five years or more, even as it has increased its home-building output by 50 percent, to 30 homes a year from 20. (more…)

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TAGS:  Affordable Housing

Housing Code Enforcement Case Impacting Minorities

Posted on January 21st, 2012 by

Many urban local governments in Oregon have adopted housing codes to regulate substandard housing. These local codes ensure that dwellings remain healthy and safe for habitation and authorize government planning or development managers to pursue enforcement remedies where nuisance conditions exist such as insufficient fire protection, lack of heating, unsanitary conditions or overcrowding. Enforcement activities include property inspections, mandatory abatement and improvements, and sometimes the evacuation or demolition of structures. Although often solely complaint driven and significantly hampered by budgetary constraints, these codes authorize local governments to pursue nuisance abatement programs as they deem appropriate.

(more…)

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TAGS:  Affordable Housing

Temporary Protections for Homeowners Facing Foreclosures

Posted on November 30th, 2010 by

image courtesy of bankforclosure.comIn 2009, the Oregon legislature enacted a temporary change in the laws governing home foreclosures in order to address the current economic market and to provide homeowners with an opportunity to modify their loans to avoid foreclosures.  The new law requires that lenders inform homeowners of their right to request a loan modification and to process a loan modification request by the borrower in good faith and in a timely manner.  If a loan modification is submitted by the homeowner by the required deadline, the pending foreclosure sale cannot be completed until the lender responds to the request.  (more…)

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TAGS:  Affordable Housing