The following article appeared originally in Strong Towns on June 11, 2025. It is reposted here under Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 4.0 International).
More than a thousand new homes have quietly slipped into Portland’s single-family neighborhoods over the past two years—and most people haven’t even noticed.
That’s by design. These aren’t skyscrapers or subdivisions on the outskirts of town. They’re duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and cottage clusters, made legal by the city’s Residential Infill Project (RIP), which went into effect in August 2021. In a new report, Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability confirmed what housing watchers have long suspected: this gentle shift is making a measurable difference…