Morgan, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, has been actively involved in Oregon land use planning in both long range planning projects and development review for the past 25 years. He has worked for the cities of West Linn, Lake Oswego, Tigard, and has been with the City of Portland for the past 15 years in both the Bureau of Development Services and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS). Currently he is the staff project manager for Portland’s Residential Infill Project, which seeks to increase the range of permitted housing types while lowering housing costs in single dwelling neighborhoods.

This week's guest is Morgan Tracy.   Morgan Tracy, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners has been actively involved in the Oregon land use planning in both long range planning, projects and development review for the last 25 years. He has worked  for the cities of [00:01:00] West Linn, Lake Oswego, Tigard and has been with the City of Portland for the past 15 years in both the Bureau of Development Services and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. Currently, he is a staff project manager for Portland's Residential Infill Project, which seeks to increase the range of permitted housing types while lowering housing costs in single dwelling neighborhoods.

Kol, what are your thoughts on our interview with Morgan?

Morgan has been very deep in the weeds and details of overhauling, a complex residential zoning ordinance for the City of Portland for the last five years. This task was daunting and a journey, not just for him, but for all of the engaged citizens who saw this overhaul as a great opportunity to make a difference in the future of the city that likes to chart new territory nationally in matters, related to urban planning and infill.

Capturing his perspective on how this process could be translated to other jurisdictions is hopefully going to be valuable for future research and application of middle housing, zoning, rewrites. Kelcy, what were some of your takeaways?

[00:02:00] Morgan gives great examples of how one can participate in city council meetings in an effort to make change in one's local jury state. And why it's crucial that citizens get involved with the process of rulemaking as a planner, as a planner, deeply involved in quite possibly the most progressive zonings shift in the country.

Morgan shares his experience as someone on the front lines, as the liaison to the community and rule makers.

Let's get to our interview with Morgan.

Kol Peterson: [00:02:25] Good morning,

Morgan Tracy: [00:02:26] Morning, morning, Kol and Kelcy, it's great to be here, thanks for having me.

Kol Peterson: [00:02:30] Thanks for being here.   Morgan,  the Residential Infill Project is familiar to those of us who are in Portland, obviously, let's assume that people are not familiar with it, but they're fairly sophisticated in this general urban infill topic, very familiar with ADUs. Can you describe for us what RIP is for somebody who might be unfamiliar with it from outside of the city of Portland?

Morgan Tracy: [00:02:52] Yeah.  It's a bit, it's a bit challenging to do this in a condensed form cause it took five years of work. So boiling that down, I can [00:03:00] concise.

As a big challenge, but here, here we go.  I would say that the Residential Infill Project was the city's first major overhaul of the single dwelling zoning since corner lot duplexes were allowed in 1991. So it had been about 25 years when we got started. Now, these changes expand the types of housing allowed on most lots to include duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and options to create additional ADUs in nearly 90% of the single dwellings zone neighborhoods, simultaneously new tools to limit building sizes will ensure that this development maintains the look and feel of those neighborhoods.

And together, these changes allow a broader range of compatible housing types that are comparatively less expensive than new single family homes, making neighborhoods more accessible, more inclusive, and more sustainable over time.

Kol Peterson: [00:03:45] All right.  I should have asked you this , but I'm gonna ask you, now, what is a good title for you to give some framework for what your role was within the residential input project?

Morgan Tracy: [00:03:56] So my, my official title with the city is  a City Planner II, which [00:04:00] doesn't mean much to many people. So, but extensively, the work that I'm doing is, is managing the project.

I coordinate our team, our staff, our consultant work, work on the project timelines and make sure that we deliver a project on schedule when we can. Generally, I go by the title of project manager.

Kol Peterson: [00:04:18] So this project running five years,  how did the history of Residential Infill Project come to be and why in the world did it take so long to get there?

Morgan Tracy: [00:04:29] Well, as you can imagine, it's a bit of a complicated project, a little bit of, a little bit of controversy involved. But let's, let's start with the history.

So the project began in 2015 and in 2015, we are hearing a lot of calls about concerns resulting from outcomes from infill development. So we were seeing lots of small homes being demolished and replaced by big, expensive new homes. We, we're seeing about more than a house per day being demolished on average.

And we're also seeing the housing prices in 2015 were beginning to price out families earning a hundred percent of the Median [00:05:00] Family Income. So that essentially translates to about half of the families in Portland would be unable to afford to purchase a house in the city. So recognizing the city could not prohibit tear downs and simply applying stricter limits to new development would tighten the supply of new housing, which exacerbates housing costs.

We brought together two objectives, which was addressing the scale of new development and increasing housing options in neighborhoods. And part of the, I think the real challenge in this project were these are two almost at-odd objectives that we had to balance  and bet with the public in multiple scenarios, multiple occasions So you know, you, you asked why it took so long.

There were several steps along the way, either fortunate or unfortunate. But first off  we started under a different administration  under Charlie Hale as mayor, and he had decided towards the end of his term that he wasn't gonna run again, but he wanted to see some product.

And we weren't at a point where we can deliver a new code and new maps and all that stuff. So, [00:06:00] we 'd agreed to bring forward a concept plan, which  essentially lays out the basic trajectory that the project is going to follow. And the positive side of that is it's good to take the temperature of your decision makers to see if you're going in the right direction before you really invest a lot of time and effort.

The downside of that is the project took so long that by the time we got back to city council, four years later, it was an almost entirely new council. We just had one city council left. So that was a bit of a fruitless exercise. We also spent 14 interesting, exhilarating months with the planning and sustainability commission.

We went through almost every single detail of that project, point by point by point by point in a series of monthly meetings. And about two thirds through that process, the planning and sustainability commission, after hearing public testimony and considering the objectives, and then the proposals, gave us some rather very different direction, which caused us to go back to the drawing board and start over on our code.

[00:07:00] Not entirely, but it really  changed the fundamental building blocks that we  come to them with. So we had to redo our analysis, redo the code, and that took  some more time. Unfortunate outcome of that was we were also about to lose two of our planning commissioners, they were terming out.

And so by the time we got back to them, we were really  in a rush to get a decision from them. And so we came back to them with this revised proposal and said, here it is, here are the stats, the data, and the analysis, what do you think? And we'd unveiled a displacement risk report and didn't really spend a lot of time going through that report. Understanding the implications, what the data was really telling us.

And so they felt rushed to a decision and they had a rather split decision. It was a five to four decision. And so that created a little uncertainty at city council. We had to take time to work with the council offices, go through these reports, help people understand what they were telling us. We started the city council process and right before we were about to finish, COVID struck and that's through another five months [00:08:00] on the end.

So now a little bit of that's me, but a lot of that's just the circumstances of the project.

Kol Peterson: [00:08:05] Just as an observer slash public participant, I could tell this was an extreme, highly engaged public process and there was so much commentary from the public on this.

And I, I couldn't imagine having to balance all of those different  inputs that you guys had to manage. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that, but just to give people some context for that, how many public comments would you say the City of Portland received on the residential infill project?

Morgan Tracy: [00:08:33] Close to 15,000. We also were, at one point we sent out 123,000 notices to property owners.

Kol Peterson: [00:08:41] Yeah. So  this would be  on the scale of a very highly, both engaging and engaged topic in terms of the impact that it was going to have on people and the level of input that they wanted to provide, relative to most public processes. Would you say that?

Morgan Tracy: [00:08:58] Yeah,  it was [00:09:00] both super engaging, everybody had an opinion, no matter where you were what, what sort of venue you were at.  Just about everybody you talk to either lives in, or has lived in a single family home or single family neighborhood and has opinions about that.

So there's that, and then  the geography was city-wide. So that's you know, that's  a lot of area, a  lot of peoples that are involved.

Kol Peterson: [00:09:19] Can you talk about  Bureau of Planning and Sustainability's role in developing policies and regulations for RIP, and maybe  talk about, just as a general 101 for those of us who aren't familiar with the process, the Planning and Sustainability Commission's role relative to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability its role, and then the City Council's role.  How does a policy become law at a local level?

Morgan Tracy: [00:09:44] You're asking for the version of, "I'm Just a Bill."

Kol Peterson: [00:09:46] Yep, "I'm Just the RIP". Yeah.

Morgan Tracy: [00:09:49] So BPS, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is in charge of legislative projects to change the city's zoning and development regulations. So we have the Bureau of Development Services which [00:10:00] does the implementation. They do the over-the-counter permit review and development review. 

Our role is really to go through the legislative process to make those changes happen. We make those decisions based on statewide planning goals. So the state has a statewide planning framework, and they might hear a little bit more about that in tomorrow's session. But we also have our own comprehensive plan and our comprehensive plan identifies 700 plus policies that relate to housing, economic development, environment. And really it lays out the city's trajectory for its growth and development over the 20 year period.

The Planning and Sustainability Commission is our advisory body. So we would, as staff, we develop these projects based on public concerns, public calls for change, and we'll bring projects to the Planning and Sustainability Commission and others that they are the recommending body to the City Council on these projects.

The city council is the formal decision making body.

Kol Peterson: [00:10:54] Got it. So as a staff project [00:11:00] manager working on this project with so much public input and the interests of not only the city council members, but also the Sustainability Commission. What are some general guidelines that you had in mind for incorporating all these different inputs of  public ideas and suggestions?

Morgan Tracy: [00:11:19] It's tough. Right? So like I mentioned how these are sort of two competing objectives that we're trying to balance and not surprisingly, we heard testimony on both of those ends of the fulcrum.

But I think just sort of taking a step back,  planning is really a reflection of the community's values carried into the future. So we take the input of a lot of public when we developed a comprehensive plan, those translate into policy objectives for what we want our future to look like.

But when we're translating those values, one thing that can be a little bit dangerous is people are resistant to change, right? So if a community is resistant to change, understanding that change is inevitable and understanding of the thriving city is one that adapts and embraces and is prepared for that change.

You kind of [00:12:00] need to look beyond some of the immediacy of the concerns that are being expressed and think about the bigger picture and who's benefiting and who's burdened by these decisions.

We heard a lot of arguments that the solution to our housing affordability problem was just making sure that those small, less expensive homes weren't being demolished.

As long as no one's having children and people aren't moving here, that solution might work, but that's also not realistic.  Just ask the real old timers in Carmel, California. Very precious little homes that are $2 million and up.

 And land use matters. We also carry this history of not hearing from,  or actually some might suggest listening to the underserved and underrepresented communities like communities of color, renters, and the youth.

So we really had to apply an equity lens to our wayfinding on this project to carry forward proposals that were honoring the best parts of our community values, while also keeping an eye on a more prosperous future for all Portlanders.

So in this topic about single family zoning, we heard from a lot of single family homeowners that already had houses. That really [00:13:00] wasn't the crux of the problem we were trying to solve.  Compatibility of neighborhoods, the longevity and the livability of neighborhoods certainly was a concern, but to address the housing crisis, it was really about the people that weren't in those homes. 

Fortunately,  we also completed this eight year planning process to complete the comprehensive plan, so we had a lot of policy guidance that we could rely on it to give us direction on that.

Kol Peterson: [00:13:22] That's really interesting point that I hadn't thought about that from a planning perspective, given these like policy overlays, that the fundamental audience that you were trying to draw inputs from wasn't necessarily those who are currently living in single family homes, but those who might be able to in the future, which exists right now, it's just that that's not the audience that you would necessarily directly go to, generally speaking, for  that kind of information. You're rather you're looking for everybody else who isn't in those single-family homes almost.

Morgan Tracy: [00:13:53] Yeah. Yeah. Even more confounding as the generations that aren't born yet. Right. So we're looking at population trends and what [00:14:00] household composition trends are looking like to project what that future need might be.

 One of the stats that we repeated and in our outreach was about the dwindling size of households.  Fewer people per house, but the buildings themselves were getting larger and larger. So there was this  disconnect between the demographic need and, and the development trend.

Kol Peterson: [00:14:20] Portland has somehow managed to put into place this Residential Infill Project Plan that enables for middle housing and two ADUs in a manner that hasn't been done elsewhere yet in the United States. And I'm curious if you have observation as to why it is that Portland was somehow able to get ahead of the curve on this particular topic while other cities who probably have people who are interested in similar ideas have not been able to get more inclusive infill housing regulations enacted.

Morgan Tracy: [00:14:57] Awesome project management! No. So this [00:15:00] is obviously a really hot button topic. And I mentioned, you know, every, every time we had conversations, somebody had an opinion about it. And it's also one of these topics that's sort of seen as counter to elected officials sense of self-preservation. I mean, most of their support,  the people that are most politically engaged tend to live in single family zoning.

And the sanctity of the single dwelling zone runs deep  in many people's minds. So every time we introduced the project to a group, we had to hold on embrace for what I would call the "Freak Out Curve". And it didn't matter if it was, I mean, the neighborhoods, yeah, obviously. But even other bureaus, other staff, even our own bureaus and honestly, ourselves. When we started this project, there was a moment where we're trying to just wrap our heads around, what does it mean to have four units in a single dwelling zone? What does that even mean? You know and it was, it was at this moment, I was at a neighborhood meeting and it was talking about the fundamentals of zoning, Euclidean zoning, separation of uses industrial, commercial, residential zones. And it struck me in that moment.

I was like, huh, I've never really [00:16:00] thought about why we separate residential uses in the multi-dwelling and single. Since, you know, extensively they're, they're the same use, they're just in different density levels. And  if you dig into the history of single dwellings zoning, you start to learn about that. Even from its very inception, and I'll talk about that a little bit more  later. But going back to how Portland is able to get ahead of the curve,  I can pat ourselves on the back for putting together a great proposal. The planning commission certainly helped improve that. And it was most notably the courage of our city councilors who kind of acted in their own self-interest to approve this project.

But to that point it was our housing advocates who championed those other voices to come forward and give our council the confidence to act. So in terms of other jurisdictions that might be interested in tackling these matters, it's a multi-pronged approach that is needed to do it.

Kol Peterson: [00:16:55] Yeah, I think there's a unique coalescence of both passionate [00:17:00] people, smart people who care about their city here as well as a really competent planning staff at the city.  I've long admired what the City  of Portland and in Oregon at large have been doing with land use.  This Residential Infill Project was a really significant landmark element or point in time in terms of doing something that was pretty cutting edge.

And it was interesting to be along for that ride as the code iterations change over those five years. And finally got to where they are, which was far beyond what really anybody at the outset thought might occur. 

I guess following on that commentary, is there some kind of cultural element or the urban growth boundary, or I guess you kind of said, you kind of answered this question already.

You said advocates are maybe the key linchpin to this equation, but why isn't that happening in other cities where there's housing advocates, if that's the case? Is there something about [00:18:00] Oregon or Portland in particular that is the secret sauce that allowed for this type of thing to occur here?

Morgan Tracy: [00:18:07] I'm not totally sure.  There's a bit of a secret sauce in terms of  the level of sophistication of engagement in the general public. And when we're talking about planning issues, we already have an audience that well, sometimes out-wonk us.  So  we're not necessarily starting from a bare bones scratch we're already sort of actively engaged in a, in a deep planning conversation, which is, that's a little unique frankly, based on other places I've worked.

The other approach is to try and convince and educate the public to come along, to understand their own self-interest in these types of changes. And that's really challenging.  

The messages that spoke most clearly to people that were on the fence were issues about where's your child going to live? If you want your children to be living close to you, where are they going to be able to afford a place to live? And as you grow older and you don't have children in your house anymore, where are you going to live as you want to downsize, [00:19:00] but you don't want to leave your neighborhood, look around your neighborhood and if it's all big houses, you don't have much choice there. So those kinds of messages are helpful.

But we were also in this watershed moment, frankly, and this is really erupted in the last year. But we're at this transition of racial justice and equity and equitable development, and a better understanding about the impacts of zoning and government regulations, that really highlighted the need for this change.

And so all of these things sort of all came together perfect moment and made that happen.

Kol Peterson: [00:19:32] Let's go right into that then.  Early on in the Residential Infill Project code update process, there was intended to be some differentiation zoning entitlements based on a variety of geographic factors that more of a conventional kind of "smart growth" type of mentality in terms of thinking about zoning, which is "we will upzone areas, allow for more housing along transit corridors", which is great, best practice.

And there was also  some concerns about [00:20:00] abating potential displacement issues that could occur for people who are low income or people of color. In the end, these elements were, as far as I could tell, effectively dropped  as geographic overlay variables within the Residential Infill Project, so can you describe how these changes in the policy came to pass?

Morgan Tracy: [00:20:19] I think we're going to talk a little bit about public engagement and involvement, but this was one of those moments that really shifted our, our thinking. And like you said, we started with a more traditional focus around transit increasing density around transit.

But what we heard from this coalition of groups that was sort of the anti-displacement coalition and our housing partners and our advocates,  they reminded us that while these areas were farther from frequent transit, they were still relatively close to other types of transit, less frequent transit.

So there's still transit available. It wasn't like there were in the, in the middle of the desert. They were also reminding us that these are still a lot closer to job centers, downtown, and [00:21:00] other commercial nodes than the suburbs that Portlanders were currently being displaced to. Even though they're a little farther from the action, they were still a lot closer than the suburbs or excerpts.

 I think the one that really caught us was, with regard to holding back these housing choices in areas that we concerned about displacement risk, they said, aren't these the very areas where you'd want to allow for less expensive housing types to be realized? So it's a little bit of this false equivalency.  If we didn't expand the housing options to those areas, in our minds, we were thinking that means no change, nothing's going to change there. Which,  in terms of the zoning, that's true. But in terms of the status quo, that's also true. The status quo is these small, less expensive homes being demolished and big, expensive homes being replaced in their place.

So that's not helping the displacement picture. It's creating more expensive housing and  doing nothing for the supply problem.

So, with that in mind, we sort of altered our course and said, [00:22:00] well, actually the planning, because this was one of the changes of the planning commission instituted was basically "go everywhere". Allow these in as broad, a place as you can, unless there's a, you know, some environmental or land hazard constraint that says you shouldn't. So that really altered our proposal.

Kol Peterson: [00:22:15] Let's go back to something you alluded to earlier which is a little bit of a history of Euclidean zoning in terms of single family zones.

Maybe you could speak to that a little bit? My reading of the case of Euclid v. Ambler indicated that at that point in time, there wasn't really a differentiation being offered that somehow duplexes shouldn't be allowed next to single family homes. In fact, it explicitly mentioned two family homes within that court ruling as being part of the residential zone.

I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about as far as the origin of single family zoning, but could you speak to this issue a little bit and the history of multifamily dwellings within single family zones?

Morgan Tracy: [00:22:55] Yeah, I mean a better speaker for you would be Richard Rothstein who wrote the Color of Law, [00:23:00] a tremendous book, highly recommended.

I keep bringing it up every time I'm talking about this topic, but essentially if you look  at the history we had prior to zoning, we had restrictive covenants, racial covenants that were in place. And when those were struck down, well actually before that we had zoning that was race-based zoning.

We had zones for whites, not in Oregon necessarily, but in other states. Zones for whites and zones for other other races. And when that was struck down had restrictive covenants relied on CC&Rs. And as those started to be challenged and not enforceable by the state ,we shifted to more of this Euclidean zoning, which established larger lot sizes, which put things at a price point that made it, by proxy essentially excluded people of different races, kind of as a direct translation  to income.

The Euclid V Ambler decision is interesting. You're right. I think it really is speaking about the differentiation between large multi-family development and smaller probably one and two family dwellings, but it makes some interesting assertions about how the single dwelling [00:24:00] zones need to be protected for the safety of children from the noise and disparities and the impacts of all that high active living in multi-dwelling zones.

But if you look at who's living where now, families with children are not necessarily able to get into a house and many are living in multi-family zoning. Maybe the demographics and the economics have changed a little bit, but if that's the premise for this differentiation and it's about,  safety for our children, we really need to rethink that.

So one way we thought it in RIP in terms of providing for different types of housing that are for different size families. And there was a separate project, the Better Housing by Design, that was really looking at ways to improve living conditions in the multi-dwellng sense. So we tackle both of those things.

Kol Peterson: [00:24:46]  This is a little bit of a riff here, Morgan.

So this trend that you've appointed to of smaller households is in fact, the reason that ADUs play such a prominent role right now in Portland, but that's also why they [00:25:00] pay prominent role everywhere in the United States. Similarly, you know, when I think about the public in urban development patterns, the same interests that people would have presumably in the city of Portland would probably apply elsewhere in the country.

So I think there's this  notion that I hear from planners, like you've said, that you're trying to incorporate the interests of citizens, but wouldn't those interests be more or less the same in any city and therefore, why not just like apply the same principles that were used in RIP everywhere in the country or conversely, why wouldn't we just adopt all this using some common set of values in terms of urban planning?

Morgan Tracy: [00:25:42] I wish it was that simple. think  there are a lot of commonalities the way people want to live, especially within the U S.  The United States housing culture is not necessarily monoculture there's, there's distinctions between European living, right.

And how people arranged in a European cities and elsewhere. But, within [00:26:00] that, region wide or city by city, there's going to be just  a bit of nuance about  how development should occur that's reflective of the pattern and style of development that's already occurred in a place.

 I think one of the fundamental things that we got to with RIP was let's not talk about architecture.  The architecture changes, it's reflective of a time period, and that's a good thing. So we want to be able to see a period of development say, "Hey,  I know when that was built" and it wasn't trying to mimic this other period, so we moved away from that. We're really focusing on the basic building blocks of what you see in a typical Portland inner 5,000 square foot lot was kind of the building block. So single primary structure, a detached accessory structure, and you know, maybe it's a detached garage in the back kind of thing.

With that sort of basic building block, we said, what does it really matter? And I think some of those team out in our ADU regulation c hanges, like, what does it really matter if that that building has a garage or it's an ADU unit? What does it really matter? If that [00:27:00] primary structure is a house duplex, triplex, or fourplex?

Now all those units are arranged within that basic form. Go, go nuts. We're just going to be more concerned about not over utilizing the land capacity and generally reflecting the historic pattern of development.

Kol Peterson: [00:27:16] For the planning/zoning wonks amongst us, is it accurate to say that we've kind of are shifting more towards a form-based code within Residential Infill Project?

Morgan Tracy: [00:27:26] Our code is resistant to the form-based label, but really is a hybrid. It has a lot of form based attributes .

Kol Peterson: [00:27:32] Okay.

Morgan Tracy: [00:27:33] Yeah,  it's essentially here's your menu of entitlements and  your development standards and they kind of prescribe an envelope that you can work within and the rest is up to you.

Kol Peterson: [00:27:42] So, not to get too far in the weeds here, but that's kind of what this show's all about. So HB 2001, Oregon House Bill 2001, we're going to discuss in greater detail tomorrow, passed into effect a couple of years ago. And that statewide rule making process is resulting in the City of Portland [00:28:00] having to do a cleanup bill to be house compliant with house bill 2001.

As a city that is now having its hand forced, effectively, by state legislation under House Bill 2001. What is your reaction to this? Does it come across as heavy handed policymaking by ivory tower electeds? Or do you see it more charitably? How  do you perceive your role in terms of complying with these new statewide legislative directives as a city staff person?

Morgan Tracy: [00:28:29] I'm actually a bit split on this one. So you know, I, I think to start on the negative side on the negative side the bill is, is more broad than RIP applied to. So RIP was really focused on the higher density, single dwelling zones, the zones that are kind of closer in neighborhoods, have adequate infrastructure are not terribly constrained in terms of natural resources or land hazards. So we're, we're now looking at housing options for zones that are not centrally located, lack transit. I mean, not even [00:29:00] good transit for some transit, they lack transit and, and often lack infrastructure. And there's not a lot of properties in these really low density zones.

So middle housing in these areas is not really likely to be realized, and if it is realized it's going to cost a lot to build, which kind of runs counter our housing affordability objectives. So it's a bit of a fool's errand.

 But, the counter-argument to that is the, what we heard in testimony was why us and not them? So this makes it more uniform. More universal, more equitable, and I don't object to that part.

On the more positive side.  Another aspect of HB 2001  is a requirement that we come up with clear and objective  standards for cottage clusters. And we took a run, a cottage clusters with RIP, there was already significant amount of work on our plate.

Oh, and for our audience, cottage clusters are essentially  like multiple ADUs on a lot around a common open space,  smaller units that are all detached and clustered around an open space. But addressing all the variables in that type of development and trying to fit within that sort of historical context [00:30:00] of patterns of development in neighborhoods, just, it seemed insurmountable without an excessive amount of prescriptive standards.

So we were just like, we're going to be creating a workbook of standards for these things to make them clear and objective and not the discretionary review. So this new mandate is making us take another look at that and facing the fact that we're not allowed to address many of those variables and basically says, "here's the things you can address and that's it".

So that takes pressure off a bit and that's pretty exciting, actually. And a lot of the resistance we're going to face where we were going to face internally from other bureaus.  Primarily the infrastructure bureaus are, are most concerned about how this plays out. So now it's not a question about whether or not we're doing it, it's a question of how we're doing it. So that changes the conversation.

Kol Peterson: [00:30:44] Okay,  let's talk about the Senate Bill 458 for a moment. This is a very brand new piece of legislation that is potentially very impactful. So I'm just going to briefly sketch it out. Basically, if people are on, on residential lots in Oregon that are under [00:31:00] House Bill 2001, if you're building quote unquote middle housing, which is duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and cottage clusters, and townhouses, incidentally, not ADUs, which is significant.

But in, any case leaving that aside for a second, this is brand new legislation that the city will have to comply with.  If you build middle housing, you can do fee simple partitioning of that lot. So you could, if you build a cottage cluster, for example, on a 10,000 square foot lot, you could have eight, 1,250 square foot lots that you then can sell fee simple as opposed to doing condoization, which is achieving a similar outcome, but perhaps not as desirably from a consumer market perspective. Would the city have ever pursued this type of fee simple partitioning policy of its own accord? And what are some potential problems that you see with lot partitioning of middle housing and what are some opportunities that you see?

Morgan Tracy: [00:31:54] Yeah. So when we were at the Planning and Sustainability Commission, the fundamental challenge with the [00:32:00] RIP housing types is they are largely suited for condo ownership or rentals. So duplex, triplex, fourplex, or multiple units sharing a lot, so the only way to own those units independently is to condo them.

So in the, in the conversations with the Planning Commission, their recommendation to City Council as sort of a follow-up project, ,was a request to look at a streamlined land division process.  Similar to our cottage cluster conversations was going to be challenging with our infrastructure bureaus.

Frankly, the concern about 4 58 is really about infrastructure, not necessarily the bureaus.  Not to get too into the weeds, but things changed. The requirements for infrastructure change dramatically when you start dropping property lines. So the ability to share utilities versus separate utilites.

And the construction standards for those separate utilities and whether you need a public line or a private line, whether it's plumbing code or infrastructure code, all flips as soon as you start dropping property lines and they're vastly different.

So, Planning Commission had that recommendation to City Council, I think it was something [00:33:00] that the bureau was interested in creating fee simple ownership options. There was a hope that condos would  picked up,and maybe there'll be some legislative changes that made the exposure for condo builders a little less and make them a little more palatable to build.

But you know, we'll see if that that still happens. But the fee simple option is just an easier thing for builders to build a structure, sell the unit,  and move off and not be associated with the project anymore. They're not tied to that project for 10 years, like they would be with a condo.

From the consumer side,  I think there's still going to be the need for some form of homeowners association to deal with the common elements in these middle housing land divisions, but it's not the same type of homeowner's association you would have with a condo, necessarily.

There's a little more consumer acceptance of a fee simple lot. I think what the challenge is the infrastructure, and we try and to develop standards that are feasible and don't lead you down a dead end in terms of your application. So if you can start with a [00:34:00] site plan and come up with your development proposal, come in  the infrastructure requirements are generally synced really well with the zoning requirements that you don't necessarily run into problems. Not all the time, I'll hear that in the chat, but but generally  they're synced up pretty well to work well together.

I think for the initial future after SB 458 goes into effect, and we see the first few middle housing land divisions happen, there may be a few that run into a brick wall, which will not make anybody happy.

 Not going to make the developer happy, it's not gonna make the city staff happy, and it's going to be a little uncomfortable. We're going to work through what a good model plan looks like. And once people figure that out then I say taking off, but there's gonna be a little rough start, I think.

Kol Peterson: [00:34:42] I'll make one little policy note, which is from my vantage. In some ways I feel like it's unfortunate that ADUs were not included in the definition of middle housing in House Bill 2001, and as a result are not being captured by Senate Bill 4 58, which I see is almost an administrative oversight. We [00:35:00] won't focus on that particular topic unless you have any commentary about that.

 In general, I see RIP and House Bill 2001 is having an intertwined policy history that is House Bill 2001 couldn't have occurred without the groundwork that RIP laid out in the city of Portland was kind of the biggest city in Oregon and RIP couldn't have perceived that as expeditiously in five years without state legislative law forcing its hand.

So  in states  that do not have a city like Portland that has pioneered middle housing strategies, which is most states. What roles do you think states  

Morgan Tracy: [00:35:35] I think states can play a huge role and I think it's an important role. We realized as the City of Portland,  we're a big player sort of a laboratory for the state.

And we can demonstrate that certain approaches are feasible and implementable and not the end of the world, sort of things. ADUs, I think we were  on the forefront of that food carts on the forefront of that, not us, but, you know. 

I would say, first of all, for those cities in states that don't [00:36:00] have state law dictating them to do these, now they  have Portland,  Seattle, Minneapolis soon, hopefully Austin to point to. And say, look, it's, it's doable. It's been done. And, and we have a model to follow. So there's that, but I think the role of the state is really an important one because housing is a regional issue.

It's a statewide issue and dealing with it at a really discreet city level puts you at risk, really. I mean, if you, if you look at what's happened in the Bay Area, those cities are gun shy to deal with their housing prices because  it's a political hot button topic. And they take the heat for taking their fair share of the growth and other cities get off scot-free.

And so, you know, at a statewide level, it, it helps distribute that burden more equitably. I think that's super important if, if not at the state, at least at a region wide level.

Kol Peterson: [00:36:51] You know, Michael Anderson, the guests yesterday, framed it  in terms of game theory,  which was interesting way to think about it.

And I think it's more or less [00:37:00] echoing what you're saying, which is like state level legislation takes the game theory equation out of, out of play a little bit for all of them.

Morgan Tracy: [00:37:08] But the other part of it is if you're talking about local politicians making decisions, those decisions are immediate and in people's face and  taking it to the statewide level, you can have policy debates  on the merits of the policy and less about  NIMBYs, and that's less about  the opposition to change, you know?

Kol Peterson: [00:37:24] Correct. Yeah. Interesting. So what advice would you have for planning staff that are handed the task of ushering a controversial infill housing policy into being?

Morgan Tracy: [00:37:34] So I have a story to share here. When our new intern started  back at the very beginning of our project.  We were about to host our first open house, she was a little nervous about that.

I warned her it might be a bit cantankerous, but I told her to think of it like a trip to the dentist. It might be a bit painful, but it's for everyone's benefit. And most importantly, it will come to an end. And if you're  thinking [00:38:00] about a project, it's overall, it's sort of the same thing,  it's going to be a bit painful. It's for everyone's benefit and it will have a start and an end.

 In some cases, you know, that end might not be the end you were hoping for, it might not be might not be a positive outcome but taking a run at it, if nothing else, its at least making a step in the right direction.

Kol Peterson: [00:38:21] What were some of the most unusual or awkward types of public comments that you received during the Residential Infill Project?

Morgan Tracy: [00:38:28] I told Kol earlier that all the points I'm saying today are my own opinion. I'm only expressing my own views. So these are not the official views of the city. So keep that in mind. Okay.

So at our first open house with our new intern she received a handwritten letter saying well, it was admonishing her for being part of this whole thing and that she should do herself a favor and quit.

And it was her second day on the job. No we had this one's a little more uncomfortable. We just pioneered an online platform for [00:39:00] submitting public comments and hadn't really worked through all of our publishing policies. So this is called the Map App and people can just submit letters or type in comments online, and they can be anonymous, but you have to add some basic information. We received one that was so overtly and patently racist.

It was just it was awful. And we're like, well, what do we do with this? You know, now we have to ask the question of freedom of speech versus civility, not something we had to do in mailed in comments.  We can just put those in the file and pass them on  to the decision makers, to read. Not something you have to deal with in person testimony because you deal with that directly as it's happening. But  to have this thing lingering website, what do do with that? So that that create a little internal rethinking.

 Another one was a piece of testimony that I found to be incredibly tone deaf. We had a large number of people talking about exclusionary, single family zoning and how I was keeping people out of neighborhoods.

And one neighborhood decided to submit a drawing of a castle with the [00:40:00] words, single dwelling zoning, complete with cards and ramparts, looking at a Trojan horse with RIP written on the side as though the lower income people were there to lay siege to the neighborhood. 

 More positively on the flip side, one of my favorite bits of testimony was a gentlemen who testified at council, came in with a two liter bottle of Coke and set it on the, on the table and said, you know, if I'm having a party and all I've got is this two liter bottle of Coke, that's not very helpful. And he reaches down and brings up the six pack. He's like, but if I break that two liters up into six pack, I can give everyone a Coke. So that's what, you know, that's what we're talking about with the single family house versus a fourplex.

Kol Peterson: [00:40:40] That was an epic public testimony. I witnessed that.

So on that note,  from a project management perspective? What kind of public input do you find to be most helpful and useful? Like super technical technocratic input? Groups of stakeholders all saying the same things?  "Hey, we want more affordable housing..." [00:41:00] Diverse opinions from, you know, a whole bunch of different people? Open-ended responses? Or is it more structured statistical data input that you find to be the most helpful?

Morgan Tracy: [00:41:11] Well, I'd say  certainly  don't ask the planning staff to quit. Don't be overtly racist but more seriously. So you know, planners have their own experiences, their own biases in place. And as policymakers, we challenge ourselves to think more broadly from multiple perspectives.

So general comments are good for expanding those horizons and those perspectives. Compelling anecdotes are good for decision makers,  the two liter bottle and the six pack, you know, that was humorous, but there were other more heartfelt stories  that spoke to decision makers.

I would say that's less so for planners. So if you're speaking to the decision makers the compelling anecdotes are good, but for planners I would consider constructive public input as something that identifies an issue, supports it with facts, and hopefully proposes a solution. The thing that gets a little challenging as planners to explain is we'll see the issue,  we'll take into [00:42:00] consideration the facts. We might not adopt your, your proposed solution because there are other things that we're thinking about; legal, fiscal, political implementability, but it highlights issues that, that we'll start to analyze and come up with different solutions for. 

I think a good example of this that's related to this topic about ADUs is, it was something that came up, actually, in an earlier project about ADU conversions in basements and how some basements were larger than 800 square feet. And so we were just not able to convert, we had to do weird, crazy things to meet that 800 square foot limitation. And why don't you just let the basement be converted?

That didn't get resolved in that first project. But when we were thinking about this project, we were like, well, that's a great idea for encouraging home retention.  Why don't we make that an allowance for existing houses to do?  You can't do it with the new home, but if the home's already there, why not? No harm, no foul. It's just a large basement that's now in ADU.

And then there's also the aspect of the hyper-local conditions.  Planners have a good appreciation for the city as a whole, or if we're doing neighborhood scale planning, dive deeper, but a project like [00:43:00] RIP, which is citywide, there's a lot that gets lost in that averaging the city-wide data. Even down at the census tract level just the particularities of the different parts of the city that we're not going to spot that are going to get  lost in the noise or in the data.

An example of that was conversations we'd been having about parking, parking was a huge issue in this project. But we were trying to make the point about the benefits of utilizing on-street parking and how that functioned better, is more efficient than requiring onsite parking. And one neighborhood was concerned about their narrow streets and filling up the narrow streets with cars.  There were some benefits to that in terms of slowing traffic and some other the things, but they, they brought up a good point that actually hadn't occurred to us, which was well, if those narrow streets fill up entirely with cars and there's no gaps in that parking, when you have two cars approaching on a 200 foot long block, or longer, what happens?

I mean, now people can kind of pull aside and let the other person pass, but if it's all filled up, what happens? If there's no driveways, no [00:44:00] gaps in the parking, that's a problem. And so that really actually kind of changed our thinking about the limitations we had on garages and driveways. And so we sort of loosened up that a little bit and recognize that having some of those gaps  is probably going to be necessary.

And ultimately it's going to be a  PBOT,  our transportation bureau, is going to have to manage those streets a little more actively as we see them filling up. But that's a problem for later.

Kol Peterson: [00:44:26] Problem for a hundred years from now.

All right.   So we're going to skip right into some of the Q and A's from the audience . So Kelcy, take it away.

Kelcy King: [00:44:34] Yeah, great. We have a couple of really great questions  Rena has been waiting for a little bit her question is, "we are looking to address housing affordability and the missing middle, as you know, relevant data can suede decision-makers and the general public. Where can municipalities obtain good and reliable real estate data, including housing cost, affordability, housing types, and vacancy rates?

Morgan Tracy: [00:44:54] So sales data is available through CoStar, but it's a subscription service you have to pay [00:45:00] for.   And the reason I said, darn it is because I wasn't involved in the housing needs analysis that was conducted. So all the data research that went into looking at the distribution of the types of housing, the construction trends, the the general income levels by household,  all that research was done by a different set of planners.

So I don't have a good answer for you on that.

Kelcy King: [00:45:20] Thank you. Sandra  asks. So why is single family separate from multifamily if it is all residential category?

Morgan Tracy: [00:45:29] Yeah, that's, that's my perspective too. Going to the perspective of form-based codes, there are distinctions and  where you want to focus your large-scale development, many unit type development, and the reasons for that are primarily driven by infrastructure  and transit planning, so you  don't want to disperse your residential densities so much that you don't have a the phrase critical mass. And for infrastructure planning, you kind of need to plan how big the pipes are going to be based on how many * are going to be realized on that area.

So [00:46:00] there's a little bit tied to that. I think that's not why these two zones were created initially, but I think there's still planning need for how you allocate how much growth is going to happen in the area. So you can put the right amount of resources and services there.

Kelcy King: [00:46:16] So that kind of goes into something that I I'm hoping to understand a little bit better because I live  up north in Bellingham, Washington, and we're still working really hard advocating for density.

So what agencies are you working with and have you worked with, to identify the needs and solutions for how  the RIP is addressing the needs of people of color and  low wage earners.

Morgan Tracy: [00:46:40] So we, I, again, I'm going to lean on our advocates. We, we had the Anti-Displacement Coalition, which was comprised of the Portland African American Leadership Foundation, The Native American Youth Association, Hacienda, CDC, a few different other community development corporations that provide affordable housing and [00:47:00] are actively dealing with finding housing solutions for those populations. So we had a lot of input from those groups, which was really helpful.

I think  one lesson learned from RIP is we didn't necessarily start with that equity lens that sort of evolved through the project and really started to gain traction around the time we were at the planning commission. So a lesson that I would share with other planners or other people getting started is start with that, start with that equity lens, bring those voices in early.

You're going to have a much different starting place  than if you  follow the more traditional Go to neighborhood associations and start down that path."

Kelcy King: [00:47:38] What is a cleanup bill?

Morgan Tracy: [00:47:41] When House Bill 2001  was adopted it largely followed the model that RIP was adopting, but it  had some nuance changes and some things that were inconsistent with what we had adopted and some things that we hadn't necessarily tackled.

And so the cleanup bill is we still have to comply with those requirements. And so [00:48:00] even though RIP is adopted, we have to come back and make the changes to bring ourselves fully into compliance with the state.

Kelcy King: [00:48:05] I'm going to stick to this one just because I had one other person asked this.  What studies were done in relation to the RIP to determine the effect of the capacity of utilities over time and is there any part of the RIP that considers promoting highly efficient homes and multifamily dwellings to keep that impact lower?

Morgan Tracy: [00:48:22] Hmm, that's a great question. So the on the analysis side, yeah, we did a lot of work with our infrastructure bureaus to look at the system citywide. I don't think it's really a surprise.

It's a surprise to people that live in neighborhoods that think that their infrastructure is crumbling, but you know, that the infrastructure  in the city, in the higher density zones  is over-built. So there's additional capacity that that is under utilized with single dwelling zoning.

So the amount and degree of development that we're expecting to see from these new housing types in the next 20 years is not huge. It's  in the range of 3% of the housing types are going to be these different housing types. It's [00:49:00] not going to be every new house is going to be a four-plex. So that's one thing.

The interesting part of the question is the look at high efficiency homes to mitigate the impacts of some of those issues.  So the things we looked at were stormwater, which really are related to impervious area and your ability to infiltrate.

And so we kept existing building coverage limits the same, and we reduced the total size of the buildings could be. So we actually reduce the potential impact in that regard. For water, I think there's a lot of conversation about what is a household with eight people versus a fourplex with two people in each unit.

You know, we can have those conversations all day. But metering is the first step of mitigating the usage. Sewer, it was an issue in certain locations, but there are projects on our CIP list to upgrade our treatment plants. So kind of had something already in mind for that.

The big thing really is transportation. And that was a bit of our rationale for trying to tie this to transit [00:50:00] initially. But again, the level of impact that we're anticipating from seeing this sort of shifting a reallocation of units in the city is pretty minimal it's on the, on the edges,  it's like almost like a carrying a number error kind of thing.

In terms of the big picture of 123,000 units, we're talking about five to 10,000 units that are going to get these different types in a sort of spread throughout the city. So not a, not a major impact in one location.

Kelcy King: [00:50:26] Thank you. I think I'll tie that up.

Kol Peterson: [00:50:27] Thanks for joining us today, Morgan.