Pressure cooker: can Portland grow the right way?

Downtown Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The history of cities has always been fluid. Metropolises continuously rise and fall in population, in affordability, and in economic activity—and not just the obvious examples like Detroit’s decline or Dubai’s dizzying rise.

Portland too has continuously transformed, even before the boom and bust cycle of the past decade. A 19th century pioneer town gave way to the timber-industry capitol of the 20th century, for example. In more recent years, as timber has given way to an economic mix of high tech, athletic apparel and food & drink, the city’s industrial enclaves have become high-density neighborhoods like the Pearl District and South Waterfront, and once downtrodden neighborhoods have gentrified as middle-class home buyers have returned to the central city after a generation of suburban flight. And with our progressive land-use laws, the metro area has densified more than it has sprawled (at least compared to other cities), which makes for a better sense of place but drives up the cost of living.

Yet while both physical and economic change is inevitable, these days it feels like some kind of tipping point has been reached in the city, or at least a period of particular transformation. More than the past decade’s economic boom, this one has seemed to affect existing, close-in Portland neighborhoods.

It is happening in almost every corner of the city, or at least those within a few miles’ drive of downtown. Historic homes being replaced by bigger ones, or by duplexes and triplexes. On major arterials, thriving buildings are being demolished to make way for bigger ones. This increasing density is better than the alternative that existed five or six years ago, when foreclosures were mounting amidst the Great Recession. It’s not exactly the same problem as the housing boom that existed in the 2000s before the bust, when speculation was driving up prices. Yet high prices remain, as well as the worry that our sense of place, or the kind of sweet spot the city has enjoyed between affordability and amenities, may be in jeopardy.

One can see the tension play out in a number of ways.

On the affordable housing front, the city has fallen behind its goals. In the Pearl District, for instance, a 1997 agreement between the city and Hoyt Street Properties (the private developer contracted to build out former rail yards) to have 35 percent of all housing units be affordable has fallen short. In South Waterfront too, a 2003 pledge to make 582 out of the first 3,000 units constructed affordable has also failed to happen.

An apartment building in Southeast Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

It’s not just a question of the total number of affordable housing units but also where we’re building them. Healthy cities have a variety of different income levels living more or less in a mix, not in segregation. Despite the strictures of the 46-year-old Fair Housing Act, which is intended to sprinkle affordable housing across neighborhoods, an overwhelming majority of subsidized housing over the past decade-plus has existed in the poorest portions of the metro area. There is also very  little affordable housing in affluent communities. A 2012 Oregonian report by Brad Schmidt found that Lake Oswego and West Linn, for example, contributed just 0.1 percent of the 34,000 affordable units in the three-country metro area. Instead, poor residents have been clustered in areas like Gresham and east of 82nd in Portland.

There are small bits of good news. As Schmidt reported last week, Portland’s City Council, perhaps prompted by the failure to build enough affordable units in the Pearl and SoWa, has recently approved an alteration of its urban renewal areas led by Mayor Charlie Hales that will raise another $3.5 million for affordable housing. A resolution from Commissioner Nick Fish will commit $47 million for 270 more units in South Waterfront. The close-in Zidell Yards development is said to be earmarking acreage for an affordable-housing project, and there is new affordable housing coming to the Pearl, even if too much of it is clustered together.

Even so, affordable housing—even if we went on a huge building spree—will not solve the broader crisis of affordability in Portland proper, where even the middle class is increasingly feeling squeezed out. Portland has recently been ranked as the most quickly gentrifying city in America. When this kind of high-end development and construction reaches fever pitch, as it has done in other big, popular American cities like San Francisco, Austin and Washington, DC, there is an increasing question of how the middle class can remain in the game, as well as whether we might lose something larger along the way: a sense of what it means to be Portland.

And affordability is not the only aspect of this emerging crisis. The city may be even more up in arms over what it is doing to our fabric of historic homes. All over Portland’s neighborhoods, developers and builders are tearing down old houses to make way for duplexes and other multi-family buildings. There is so much destruction happening so fast that entire publications like the Portland Chronicle have been created to document this grim continuing story. The latest? A 100-year-old house in Elliott went bye-bye to make way for a five-story apartment complex. A 130-year-old home in Hosford-Abernethy is about to meet the wrecking ball. And the church at 801 NE Failing street that dates to 1904 is being demolished by developer Peter Kusyk, the same person who previously had planned to tear down the historic Marquam Home in Laurelhurst (which was saved at the 11th hour when neighbors agreed to buy the home).

The economics have changed compared to the last decade's boom: developers like Kusyk who back then were more likely to work in the suburbs are now turning their attention to Portland's close-in neighborhoods as they've become more popular and suburban land has become scarcer. And even if Kusyk had never been born, another developer would do the same thing he's doing: eying the church's site with only a profit motive in mind. The church has sat vacant for years and no one came along who was both willing and financially able to preserve the building, either as another house of worship or converted into some other type of facility. Yet the system could have been better equipped to make preservation an attractive option.

It isn’t just that these houses and other neighborhood buildings are being torn down. Some of this is inevitable for any city: the passage of time and changing needs necessitate continual transformation of the housing stock. But what’s particularly troubling has been the lack of reasonable brakes on the process. 

With the church on NE Failing, for example, there was supposed to have been a 120-day waiting period before the building could be razed because it was part of the city’s official Historic Resources Inventory. That would have been the case a few decades ago. But now it’s possible to remove one’s property from the list, allowing demolition to happen quickly.

This question of whether or how much owners should have the right to remove their properties from historic building lists is also about to go before the Oregon Supreme Court, in the case of Lake Oswego Preservation Society v. City of Lake Oswego. The case centers on the state’s 1995 “owner consent” law, which allows for owner removal of a house from historic designations. It began from a dispute over the circa-1855 Carman House in Lake Oswego, which a new owner wants to raze in the name of fattening the wallet. But the case will have huge precedent. 

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t welcome most new development, be it in close-in Portland or the suburbs. It’s the engine that drives much of our economy and a matter of continuously reconfiguring the collective built environment for today’s needs. And with many thousands moving here every month, we’ve got to plan for a more highly populated and high-density future. Although there is arguably a real crisis going on with respect to the loss of our stock of old single-family homes, we need high-density apartments and condos to keep being built on our major streets. Yet there seems to be little question that the city and the metro area are falling behind with respect to fine-tuning just how that balanced growth happens. 

It’s easier said than done, for not everyone agrees on what steps to take. Last month when Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees the Bureau of Development Services, instructed staff there to “raise the bar” and show more willingness to reject discretionary land-use appeals of the zoning code, it seemed to some like a chance to bring a more balanced approach to the many neighborhoods where big apartment and condo projects rub up against single-family homes. Yet the first feedback I received was from a prominent award-winning local architect, who warned this created a dangerous precedent: more uncertainty for developers, and an antiquated standard for what constitutes compatibility. “The idea that she is placing ‘compatibility’ and the definition of what compatibility is in the hands of neighbors and staff will likely result in a stifled and homogenous building fabric,” the architect wrote by email.

Yet there are still some worthwhile steps that can be taken. On the Bike Portland blog as well as on his own site, developer Eli Spevak of Orange Splot offered a series of moves that could be taken to create what he called a “more affordable urban infill policy.” We should allow or expand allowance of internal conversions of older homes to two or more units in single dwelling zones, Spevak wrote, so long as their exterior is minimally altered and they retain their single dwelling appearance. We could make it easier for a second home to be built on the same lot as an older home, capping out the combined square footage as equivalent to a large new home, and waving some of the remaining restrictions on accessory dwelling units. We might try removing the “household” definition from the zoning code to open up spare rooms for occupancy in larger homes. 

And perhaps most of all, we could implement inclusionary zoning, something that is banned in only Oregon and Texas but would do a lot to ensure developers include affordable housing in new multi-family building projects.

Even if we were to do everything possible and make all these moves—the rejection of owner consent laws, the implementation of inclusionary zoning, the enforcement of Fair Housing Act strictures for distributing affordable housing across neighborhoods and suburbs of all income levels—the Portland metro area will still transform. Certain neighborhoods will still be too expensive for the overwhelming majority to live in. State laws and local codes will always be playing catch-up to contemporary realities. And we don’t even know what the next crisis will bring. We very well may be headed for another economic bust in a few years, and if so, that will bring another round of foreclosures and cash-strapped government budgets.

What’s more, we can’t ever fully separate the dangers of massive growth from the benefits. After all, perhaps never before in Portland’s history has the nation been more focused on our city as not only a destination, but a way of life: one that’s a little quirky but refreshingly less corporate; one that favors pedestrians and transit over the automobile; one where architecture is rooted in good values like collaboration and sustainability more than ego. We have a hell of a lot going for us. It’s just that now is the time to make sure that it’s more blessing than curse, and that ours is a city that everyone has a chance to embrace.

 

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Comments

[Adam H.]

If you preserve every old house and refuse tear-downs that increase density; you end up like San Francisco, where only the rich can afford to live.

[Brian Libby]

Adam, that's a great point. I'd meant to say something similar in my post: that even though we need to stop historic homes from being demolished at an alarming rate, we do need to keep committed to density itself.

[maccoinnich]

"On major arterials, thriving buildings are being demolished to make way for bigger ones."

Are we really seeing this? Williams and Division are probably the two streets that have changed most in the last five years. In both cases the new buildings have largely gone up on lots that were either vacant or derelict. I'm really struggling to think of somewhere where a thriving building or institution has been lost.

Perhaps some people will mourn the loss of what Williams looked like in 2011 (https://goo.gl/maps/4HNo6) or what Division did in the same year (https://goo.gl/maps/u1Jre), but I don't.

[john]

The church is a fantastic building, a local landmark. Adaptive reuse is the intelligent solution.
Density, this word makes little sense in urban planning. We should focus on creating neighborhoods that are vibrant, complex and have a "soul." Always look at the existing under utilized spaces first. Then maybe build small infill. Quality, scale, richness is the key. A city that is dense (density) may be dull.

[Jason]

While I appreciate the preservation of meaningful historic structures, keeping everything just isn't realistic. As you say:

"The church has sat vacant for years and no one came along who was both willing and financially able to preserve the building, either as another house of worship or converted into some other type of facility."

If there is no viable use for a structure, yet someone can make use of the land for a productive infill, then tear it down. If we artificially preserve every building over a certain age we will end up with a core of crumbling vacant buildings and sprawl in the burbs (and even higher prices in the core...)

[Brian Libby]

Jason, thank you for your comments. But NO ONE is saying we need to preserve every structure. Of course that would be ridiculous. And wanting to preserve this church is not absurd. It's fine if you don't like this church and want to see the profit motive carried through to its natural conclusion here. But you're framing this as if the desire to preserve this longtime community landmark is somehow outlandish, and that isn't the case. Many churches such as this have been preserved as community centers, arts facilities, or new churches. You're completely right that the community had their chance here and that there's no evil going on per se in tearing it down. But again, to want to protect this church is not to call for all buildings to be preserved, and to suggest as much frames this conversation in a way that isn't fair.

[Billb]

Point well taken B, key buildings should be saved and up-cycled. But I can support Jason in saying that much of our housing stock is completely out-dated and poorly laid-out. These old houses are big energy-wasters. Additionally they are not siesmic-braced or fire-sprinklered. Yes I know one can retrofit all this, but it is expensive, time-consuming and often only partially effective. Almost every house you bike by every day, could be replaced with beautiful energy-efficient modern housing with more units per acre. We should support that as policy and code. The statement of the Commissioner throws huge uncertainty into the already expensive and complex marketplace. We don't need vague concepts in the hands of generously-paid city employees with no skin in the game.

[Peter]

I'm all for preservation of historically valuable and *unique* buildings. But many of the 75-100 year old homes in our neighborhoods are indeed energy hogs, too dark, poorly laid out, and cling to a conservative notion of what a home should look like (picture a kindergartner drawing a square with a triangle roof on top).

We need more contemporary, interesting architecture on our residential side streets (think of Skylab's pre-fab Homb house on NE Ivy between MLK and 7th. I'd also like our residential side streets to be used more efficiently, in the form of rowhouses and 4-6 story buildings.

No, I'm not a developer. I'm the homeowner of a condo near Alberta Street, which has sadly turned into a low-rise boutique strip mall with almost no buildings higher than one or two stories. Missed opportunities on every block and fewer places to house all of our new residents. Not to mention the parking hassles because we didn't build densely enough to transition away from needing a car.

[Brian Libby]

Peter, I think you make some reasonable points. I too like the idea of neighborhoods being enlivened by an infusion of modern architecture. I also agree that not every home needs to be saved, and even that plenty of those old houses are not so great a place to live and be in, so it's understandable if many of them go. And I agree in most cases about the value in adding more multi-family dwellings. I just think it's sad when we start to think about the majority of the existing building fabric being replaced. There's something special to me about the homes in Portland's neighborhoods and a character greater than the some of its parts. I like that some of the old homes are tiny and a little rough around the edges. Of course some of that will go, and even should go. All I'm saying is that I think we all want to try and find some kind of proper balance.

[Justin]

I'm generally in favor of destroying old homes for increased density, but that church is practically a landmark. It's a real shame it's going to be demolished.

[john]

Older buildings- usually pre-WWII, like people need rehabilitation. They take time to understand and truly appreciate. The old growth lumber, plaster walls and ceiling, douglas fir flooring, built ins make for a good place to live. The "delight" becomes evident. Portland's spirit is alive with a good balance of old and new. That balance, once breached cannot be taken back. Proceed with caution the population may decrease and then the density mantra may be seen as foolish.

[David Dysert]

This is the challenge for our city. Most have enjoyed the low rise, low cost, easy access city Portland has been. In fact these qualities contribute much to the perceptions people have of Portland. Can Portland still be "Portland" if we lose those qualities? At the same time most have aligned with the IDEA of urban density and public transit over the auto. We like the idea of those concepts but it's not clear we will like the results. Perhaps we are the vegetarian who orders a veggie burger with bacon. Few cities of distinction have figured out how to grow up without becoming expensive and exclusionary. For many Portlanders this has become an emotional issue largely due to our curious need to continually define what Portland is and use it as a borderline to mark our identity. But in a very concrete way we are feeling the effects of this growth, and for too many that feeling is one of fear.