What B.C. cities can learn from Portland, Ore., about ending single-family zoning

As British Columbians prepare to welcome a new premier on Nov. 18, many are waiting to find out how much David Eby's proposal to end single-family zoning will help with the housing shortage.

Eby, a former housing minister, became premier-designate in October after being acclaimed as leader of the New Democrats. He ended up as the only candidate for the job after the NDP disqualified challenger Anjali Appadurai.

One of Eby's proposals is to increase density by allowing home builders to replace a single-family home with up to three units on the same footprint.

It's the type of initiative already familiar to Oregon.

In 2019, the state passed a bill that allows duplexes to be built in areas zoned for single-family housing and up to four homes on almost any residential lot in cities of a certain size. In 2020, officials in Portland introduced a law allowing up to six units with strict affordability requirements.

"Starting in the 1920s, it was legal in Oregon ... to start saying, 'You are not allowed to build that sort of structure on certain land. We call that zoning,'" said Michael Andersen, a senior housing researcher at the non-profit Sightline Institute in Portland.

"It started in the fanciest parts of Portland, and gradually, this became popular and spread around the city."

Andersen spoke to Gregor Craigie, the host of the CBC's On The Island, on Tuesday about how ending single-family zoning has affected housing in the city of Portland.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you describe the 2019 Oregon law? How did it effectively ban single-family zoning?

I would say the flip side of that is to say it re-legalized fourplexes. Starting in the 1920s, it was legal in Oregon ... to start saying, 'You are not allowed to build that sort of structure on certain land.' The consequence of that, though, is that it has contributed to this shortage — too few homes for too many people chasing the same ones, which drives the price up, and it also separates communities by income. 

So when Oregon revisited this question in 2019, it just said we're going to set a new standard for cities. They have to be no more exclusionary than to say, you can build up to the first four units on a lot, and we're not going to distinguish that much between the first and the fourth unit.

But then Portland went a bit further in 2020. What did the city do?

What they said was, "OK, we're going to let you go up to six units if you can meet affordability standards in addition to that four-unit-for-any-lot rule."

There was no affordability requirement on the one-plexes, and at the time, what we were seeing was that a lot of one-unit structures were being demolished and replaced with giant one-unit structures, which were much more expensive. So given that choice, we decided we'd rather have the four units that are somewhat lower in price even if there's not a strict affordability requirement on them.

Does any early data suggest whether this is working in Portland?

The zoning took effect in August 2021, so we have the first year of data. If you assume that those lots would have been redeveloped anyway, then the net impact is in the range of 200 to 300 homes per year [in Portland] that have been added as a result of the new zoning. So it's not a huge change to the pace of things.

Is it an important contribution to increasing the affordable housing supply in a city like Portland?

I would say it's worth doing, not only because of the effect on supply, which, as I mentioned, isn't going to be huge. It's like between one and two per cent over the next 30 years. 

The bigger effect is first in the long term. As every unit in the city reaches the end of its useful life, under the new law it's very likely to be replaced by a handful of less expensive, though new, nice units. Secondly, as a result of that sort of gradual [dispersion] of the new housing at somewhat lower cost, I think it's just a good way to scatter people of different incomes through neighbourhoods.

Is it fair to say that a move like this may be a start rather than the solution to housing affordability in growing West Coast cities?

It is certainly not a finish line on either housing poor people or on building enough homes, so we don't chase poor people away. I think it is a way to modestly change and to ensure that more neighbourhoods can gradually evolve and gracefully evolve without sending people away as the solution to change.