The Governor’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing tax revenue methods for new housing. Several of these taxes could be imposed on Oregon residents. Why is this happening?
After 40 years as a land-use planner in Oregon it is painfully obvious there has been a continuing failure by jurisdictions to comply with Statewide Goal 10 (Housing) and we are now seeing a major pandering by politicians to development companies which could result in the public being taxed to pay for new apartment construction.
Goal 10 required cities and counties to determine housing needs for a wide variety of housing types and densities (including apartments and single-family houses). Affordability should have been a consideration, but apparently wasn’t. And unfortunately, most jurisdictions didn’t adequately accommodate middle-density housing, which often is located as a transition between the higher-density apartments and low-density houses following Euclidean zoning practices.
This situation is partly the fault of vaguely written goal language but also due to poor oversight by the Department of Land Conservation and Development and Metro, which were supposed to be monitoring plan update and zoning requirements to meet housing and other state goals in the Metro area.