Trio of new bills goes too far in greenlighting new projects

When the Oregon Legislature established the groundwork for Oregon’s restrictive, contentious and litigious land use system in 1973, it made major construction projects significantly more costly and challenging to pull off. Think hotels, resorts, office buildings, manufacturing plants, shopping centers, subdivisions and apartment complexes.

Urban growth boundaries reduced the inventory of developable land and thus drove land costs steadily upward. Meanwhile, the state Land Use Board of Appeals developed a byzantine approval process that could continue ringing up legal bills for untold years.

That served to depress both wages and homebuilding, thus join other factors in helping push housing costs increasingly out of reasonable consumer reach. But the Legislature waited until the situation had reached a perilous political boiling point to finally react, and then, in our estimation at least, badly over-reacted.

We have been pushing for years for some carefully calibrated easing of Oregon’s onerously restrictive approval process for development projects, particularly the large-scale type that can really make a difference in local communities.

But what the Legislature ushered in with passage of SB 1537 in 2024, SB 974 in 2025, and HB 4037 in 2026, sends the pendulum swinging back in a wide arc. This trio of bills smacks more of “anything goes” than the kind of measured reform we’ve been longing for.

Yes, Oregon is in desperate need of more affordable housing of both the single- and multi-family variety. Yes, that perforce dictates smaller lots, higher densities, fewer amenities and reduced regulatory barriers.

But we draw the line at drastic reduction in public hearing notices, outright elimination of hearing requirements and appeal opportunities in some cases, and waiver of design standards local communities have spent decades shaping to their specific circumstances.

And though 21st century American politics have been marked much more by partisan divide than bipartisan consensus, the rush to prime Oregon’s affordable housing pump has proven about as bipartisan as it gets.

Of a potential 270 votes that could have been cast as the three measures each made their way through two chambers, only 20 nay votes were logged, 10 in each chamber. And most of those came on the initial bill in the series back in 2024.

SB 1537, Gov. Tina Kotek’s affordable housing centerpiece, laid the groundwork. It created a Housing Accountability and Production Office, expedited one-time UGB expansions and limited local design standards for affordable housing projects — setbacks, parking requirements, building heights and the like.

The next year, SB 947 put engineering reviews on a 120-day shot clock, waived aesthetic design standards on projects of 20 units or more, and streamlined rules for zone changes, planned unit developments and residential variances. Along the way, it eased public notice and hearing requirements by reclassifying residential various as “urban housing applications.”

Earlier this year, HB 4037 dropped the public hearing requirement for affordable housing applications meeting “clear and objective” standards. It also reduced public notice requirements about such projects and limited appeal rights on them to the proponents.

The latter two bills just took effect last month and this month, respectively, so the impact is just now beginning to be felt.

The immediate beneficiaries locally are a pair of contentious multi-family housing projects, one of 72 units downtown and one of 75 units out by Chegwyn Park and Grandhaven Elementary. Both received unanimous approval from the planning commission, based on the new rules limiting its purview.

Adding to the uncertainty, the constitutionality of HB 4037’s new limits on public notice, hearing and appeal rights has already come under challenge in connection with an apartment project in West Linn. Of course, it could, and probably will, take years to fully litigate.

We share the depth and urgency of public concern about our state’s dearth of affordable housing. We are also well aware it can take years to bring in new projects, even with the skids are politically greased, so there’s no time to waste. But the sweeping nature of the regulatory waivers the state housing bills seek to impose gives us great pause.

Surely we can find methods to bolster affordable housing inventory without brushing aside the traditional right of all Americans to have a meaningful say in development in their home communities. After all, we will be living tomorrow — and maybe for many tomorrows thereafter, long after the immediate crisis has eased — with the decisions being made today.

Our historic gripe with the state’s top-down land use system is the state making all the decisions based on its goals and guidelines, excluding community say based on equally heartfelt local goals and guidelines. This looks like more of the same to us, with the state now moving in a new direction, but still calling all the shots.