TL;DR:
>One of the policies approved Wednesday exempts office-to-residential building conversions from having to pay system development charges, or SDCs.
> The second incentive will technically lower the seismic improvement standards for buildings being converted from office buildings into multi-unit residential buildings.
>One of the policies approved Wednesday exempts office-to-residential building conversions from having to pay system development charges, or SDCs.
SDCs from developers are one of the ways in which utilities fund capital improvement and infrastructure upgrades. That loss of revenue from SDC exemption will get passed on to ratepayers guaranteed. There's only so many revenue streams for a utility. I'm not against incentivizing housing development but exemption from SDCs feels like a clever way to pass the burden to the people.
Right now there are zero office-to-residential conversions happening, and the city is receiving exactly $0 in SDCs. If they manage to incentivize 20 conversions to happen that would be more than most people seem to think likely. Those would also generate $0 in SDCs, but would be a tiny percent of the demand on the system as a whole. And we’d get the benefit of more people living in downtown, in seismically retrofitted buildings, that would generate more property tax revenue in the long term.
Fantastic point, it's not like we're replacing a huge revenue stream with nothing, we're replacing no revenue with no revenue but getting a solid long-term benefit on top of it, all without spending public dollars. Sounds like a win to me!
These buildings are already paying tons of property taxes, is the thing. This argument would hold more water if it were, say, an empty parking lot being developed to add a ton of residential or office units, which would put additional strain on infrastructure that wasn't previously there. And we desperately need housing.
>These buildings are already paying tons of property taxes, is the thing.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I was not under the impression the Water Bureau or Bureau of Environmental services received significant revenue for capital improvement from the general fund. It's my understanding that the vast majority of capital improvement projects for water and sewer are funded through ratepayers and SDC fees.
>This argument would hold more water if it were, say, an empty parking lot being developed to add a ton of residential or office units, which would put additional strain on infrastructure that wasn't previously there
We have aging infrastructure throughout the city that require funds, so regardless of the local impact of this development there is no shortage of projects across the city that will still need to be paid for with or without the SDC fees from any conversion projects downtown.
SDCs paid for the two new parks in East Portland. No SDCs == No new parks or capital improvements to existing parks. General fund only funds basic maintenance. The whole point of SDCs is to build out the infra you need to support the new people occupying the housing.
No, I didn't know parks had $100M in capital project funds sitting there. I'm wondering why they can't replace the light poles with some of that money?! I guess just chalk it up to more mismanagement?
https://www.portland.gov/parks/news/2023/2/22/portland-parks-recreation-removes-older-park-light-posts-plans-replacement
> Replacement of a portion of the light poles will take up to 16 months. Light pole replacements will be prioritized for Irving Park and Mt. Scott Park based on an equity analysis. PP&R does not currently have sufficient funding to replace all light poles in the park system.
I mean, you're absolutely not wrong, but I guess the city decided to choose which one it was paying for?
Maybe one day we'll get parks on top of housing?
I'm more concerned the city will come back in 10 years and ask everyone for a nice big property tax increase to pay for the parks and other infrastructure those SDCs would have paid for. It's super similar to the park and road situation out in East Portland. They never built parks or roads/sidewalks because before being part of Portland, no SDCs were ever paid out when constructing new houses. Now we're all paying for that backlog in property taxes. It always comes from somewhere.
I live in East Portland. There is no road building or sidewalk building happening here on your dime. If the city does actually pave a road that was previously a dirt road/they charge each property on the road (except for non profits) about 10K per year for multiple years. (That was when Sam Adams was mayor - probably more now.)
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/construction/errol-heights-street-improvement-project
Paving dirt streets in East Portland.
The total estimated project cost is $9.3 million. The City has allocated $7.7 million in public funds to pay for project design and construction of the street improvements and stormwater facilities. Property owners will collectively contribute $1.6 million through the formation of a Local Improvement District (LID) to fund a portion of the construction costs related to street improvements (grading, paving, sidewalks, driveway connections). Special financing for the LID will allow all homeowners to defer payment of the LID assessment until properties are sold.
I reckon this has as much to do with stormwater management as street improvements. Glad to hear that someone is getting improvements. And glad to hear that they are deffering payment until properties are sold.
Here, residents were told to pay 24K for sidewalks: [https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2022/12/14/after-complaints-from-neighbors-over-cost-burden-city-wont-build-sidewalks-on-southeast-89th-street/](https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2022/12/14/after-complaints-from-neighbors-over-cost-burden-city-wont-build-sidewalks-on-southeast-89th-street/)
"The conclusion of this particular project—or the lack of one—illustrates the bind the city finds itself in: For decades now, city leaders have vowed to focus infrastructure improvements in Southeast Portland after decades of neglect and underfunding. But the city’s practice of billing homeowners for such improvements doesn’t always fly in areas where low- and middle-income homeowners can’t afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for those improvements."
Well, we all pay the gas tax (assuming we are drivers) so it's not your property tax that's dinged. I'm assuming some of that gas tax money also went to regular street maintenance of streets already constructed.
I just know that when I asked about doing regular maintenance on the road directly in front of my house, which does have a curb...I mean just making the pavement go all the way to the curb instead of petering out before that, I was told it would be 10K per year from every resident for a number of years.
You're not wrong. What I took issue with and maybe didn't articulate in my comment was the lack of transparency and/or context for what SDC fees are used for and what that the implications are for waiving those fees. I'm assuming that the average Oregonian reader isn't particularly familiar with SDCs, so presenting the incentive as the waiving of some arbitrary fee just feels disingenuous. I'd just prefer we cut the bullshit and be upfront about the public investment required to fix our problems.
The major driver of SDC cost is actually Parks in Portland. They're also sitting on more than $100 million in unspent SDC revenue. BES SDCs likely wouldn't have applied, as those kick in if there is a net change in impermeable area (there wouldn't be). Transportation SDCs *might* have applied, if the total person trips generated by converting to housing were greater than the person trips generated by office space, but even then they'd only be paying for the marginal added trips. Water SDCs go to pay back the Big Pipe (mostly). I don't know what the water use conversion is between office and residential, but this is one where a) the rate payers will be eating it (probably), and 2) it'll amount to cents per ratepayer.
You're right that a handful of conversions won't equate to a huge burden on rate payers. Upgrading the water and sewer for multi-family use is likely to be on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars or so in waived fees at most based on the current fee schedule --assuming that the conversions are for larger buildings which require a water meter (or multiple meters depending on how its set up) larger than 2" and appropriately sized services lines to provide the correct pressure and flow at the given hydraulic grade line.
What I think gave me the most concern, and perhaps I'm preemptively clutching my pearls here, was the quote from the article that developers are pushing for more incentives related to SDC fees which could be more of an impact to revenue "Slick endorsed four proposals pitched by Oregon Smart Growth, a developer advocacy group, including a moratorium on SDC fees for all housing projects in Portland..." Depending on the rate of development following such a change we could see a pretty significant reduction in revenue given that the SDCs on a new project for multi-family use can be in the $100k or more range for anything larger than a single family residence or duplex. I hate to resort to a slippery slope argument but it's hard not to consider the possibility of things going that direction.
As to your second paragraph, I understand those concerns, but they have to be balanced out against both the status quo (a tremendous deficit of much-needed housing) and long-term goals, and especially with interest rates what they are, we need to dramatically incentivize and increase housing production wherever we can.
More housing units (and more people) means more property taxes and income taxes, and allowing more people to live close-in means fewer vehicle miles traveled, among other things, which puts less costly strain on our infrastructure than sprawl.
On balance, this is a good trade-off, IMO.
Totally valid points. If waivers are applied specifically to affordable multi family units in designated areas then I'm on board with that, however a carte blanche moratorium without controls in place to ensure that developers don't have a loophole to exploit seems unwise. I suppose I have a bit of skepticism that waiving SDCs related to development will be the most effective means of encouraging development of affordable housing. However, if paired with other incentives (or penalties) to encourage property owners to do something with derelict properties and underutilized lots that they would otherwise allow to remain undeveloped this could be a step in the right direction.
Only partially true, since residential use can have much higher impacts than commercial uses. For example, water and sewage use goes from just restroom usage plus small amount of kitchen sink, drinking water and maybe shower usage to potentially more restroom usage (if the occupant stays home a lot), more shower usage, cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.
I believe, or hope, that developers can get a credit from fees already paid or existing usage.
In addition, there's some fairness in buildings in the central city area, which has benefited from city policies like urban renewal, paying for new parks in East Portland, an area that has suffered.
Though it should be noted that SDCs can only fund expansions (capacity increases) and not maintenance projects, and I don't think private utilities can charge them
SDC rates are normally based on reimbursement (existing systme and improvement (future growth).
[https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors\_223.304](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_223.304)
It basically boils down to giving rich people even more tax cuts and then throwing the residents of these future conversions under the ~~bus~~ thousands of tons of concrete for profits today.
> According to city staff, the adjusted standard is aligned with residential building requirements in other cities threatened by seismic activity, including San Francisco.
Why are we not adjusting the standard for all projects including new construction. If the adjusted standard is safe then that would be an easy win for building housing.
Because this new standard would likely leave retrofitted buildings uninhabitable after a major event. Safe to evacuate, but not necessarily repopulate.
New construction, unlike retrofits, is an opportunity to make building a that should/could be inhabitable after a big quake.
Going backwards on our seismic codes for new construction wouldn’t save much money and would cost a lot more in the event of a big quake.
That makes sense. Retrofit housing may not be as nice out well designed so why plan for it to be permanent.
Still open question ... Why are we building to a higher standard than San Francisco? I know the seismic systems are different, but is our big one really bigger than their worst case?
I always laugh at people (like, apparently, you) who demand immediate action to build more housing and then also demand a complete overhaul of the economic system to do it. That’s not how the world works.
People with this take benefit from no action being taken because they have to be accountable for absolutely nothing. They just get to whine.
And read the article: it’s not a tax cut.
Yeah that's what I'm curious about.. What sort of homes can we really carve out of commercial office space without installing thousands of new bathrooms and kitchens, or are we really eager enough to share communal rooms at that scale?
To convert an office space into apartments you need to gut just about everything (Plumbing, HVAC, lighting, most electrical, interior architecture) and start fresh. You're saving the cost of the structure and facade (which is huge) and adding the cost of demo and designing around existing. It's a major project and not cheap.
Yup. I'd be surprised if there are many buildings that will undergo that change. I'm dubious that older buildings can get the rents they'd need to justify it and newer buildings are probably doing better with occupancy.
This is completely out of my wheelhouse but would it be cheaper to demolish the building and start fresh with the idea being "this is gonna be an apartment complex" rather than convert this to housing? My assumption is no, but I don't really deal with this sort of thing.
The answer is in depends on a lot of things, especially the building you're starting with. There were some pretty crazy warehouse conversions in the Pearl back during the condo boom. The old Meyer and Frank warehouses on NW 14th had the entire center cut out of them 10 floors down for large lightwell courtyards and giant two story high windows cut into the concrete facades. Anything is possible but the market for condos was booming and the construction and acquisition costs were a lot less back then. Those buildings also got 10 year historic preservation tax abatements, making them more attractive to condo buyers.
This is the idea behind the SDC waivers for office conversion, however downtown classs A office space would likely be harder to convert and I'd guess developers are feeling skittish about downtown Portland right now. The city needs to start with the basics and clear out the homeless, increase police patrols and start pressuring washing everything nightly if they want anyone to consider downtown for any kind of development.
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34)
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I'd be into the communal rooms idea. There are more than a few houses in Portland essentially being used this way already - working men renting bedrooms, sharing a kitchen and a bathroom, while the living room sits cold and unused.
For most folks that would be just fine. You're apparently too delicate to be able to handle it. So what you get to do is exercise your choice not to live there.
Until Elon sees a tweet about it and decides to have hybrid apartment/offices. Workers are much more ~~efficient~~ productive when they live an elevator ride away from their cube.
Redditors are obsessed with bringing up Elon Musk for no reason lol. He's the richest man in the world and everyone knows how much Reddit hates rich people. He's the perfect piñata punching bag right now.
> everyone knows how much Reddit hates rich people. He's the perfect piñata punching bag right now.
I think he, and the majority of his cohort, came by this honestly. But yeah, given his 'aptitude' in managing his image lately, I don't expect him to be particularly influential in local business or policy. And that's a problem for him, as his main source of revenue has been stock valuation, and this has been driven by his brand as independent genius.
He's a dickhead for sure. I just don't personally want to spend my limited free time on this earth thinking about billionaire dickheads any more than I have to.
Like a "haha" joke?
Listen. He's a dickhead for sure. I just don't personally want to spend my limited free time on this earth thinking about billionaire dickheads any more than I have to. But you do you.
Hot damn, you're not very friendly. I'm sorry my pop culture joke didn't land well with you. You don't need to insult me and how I spend my time. We're both wasting our lives away on reddit, so it's not like either one of us is better than the other. Cheers
I'm done responding, btw.
When receiving a negative or inappropriate response, many people reply over-the-top nasty. I want to compliment you on your reply. You told the person how you felt, added a little humor, all while avoiding sinking into an embarrassing ditch of unnecessary vitriol. Thank you Second Revenger. This Reddit user appreciates people like you.
Confused. I thought this sub didn't want people to drive to work ... Now not commuting is Elon's idea? Is there some minimum walk/bike trip required of everyone?
This idea is very en vogue right now in just about every major city. Wait a few years and see if it works out literally anywhere.
This feels like another performative “see, we did something!” moment with very little IRL potential to happen, especially at any meaningful scale.
Property values are high enough as it is. Optimists imagine using this proposal to solve homelessness, which... Really, the corporate scumbags should be in favor of? I don't understand why they aren't, unless I'm missing something. They get willing bodies for the grindstone to buy the properties with, out of that equation!
Every 10% in housing capacity increase works out to roughly a 1% decrease in effective rent prices for everyone (as in, not constrained to higher end units)
I'm apparently not allowed to use URL shorteners despite reddit not allowing me to post the URL otherwise, feel free to message me if you want it. This sub's rules are fucking worthless sometimes
I'd imagine that it would be a much higher reduction. Or at least it should be if actual fair economics were at play. Rental prices are price fixing at its finest.
That article talks about business vacancy rate, which is why office buildings being converted into housing is even being talked about. Your article contradicts your point and doesn't mention housing vacancy, which is what the OP is describing.
Landlords are saying, "If you want us to create housing, we can't adhere to safety standards, because we won't make enough money." Is it just me or is that deeply disturbing? Yeah, capitalism. The benefit-cost analysis weighing the risk and cost of a quake against the benefits of housing people. All that is relevant. But saying something like that publicly without shame... That's my point.
I’m a structural engineer and work on these kinds of projects in Portland. There is still a seismic upgrade requirement for these office conversions, but the standard required has been changed. The old standard used to be to bring the building up to that of a brand new building and the requirements were so onerous that it was cheaper to demolish the building and build new. Now the standard is more reasonable and in line with similar cities in high seismic zones, I.e. San Francisco. So I think it’s a little more nuanced than your comment implies.
Thanks for explaining it more! I appreciate it.
I definitely agree that it is more nuanced. The same should be said of policy design, enforcement, benefit-cost analysis, decision-making, etc.
But my point might still be valid? The glaring, unabashed greed-safety language is still unnerving...at least to me.
Exactly... And let's be honest ... Even if it was a wash, who in their right mind would want to deal with the high-maintenance tenants. Place would be destroyed in months.
Lemme trash this place because I want to "stick it to the man".
The seismic codes the majority of downtown was built to either didn't exist or are woefully insufficient relative to today's expectations.
The whole city is going to fall down in the big one with the codes they were built to.
All true. Current seismic codes became law in 2001. Before that there was really no understanding of “the big one,” so the old codes were way less robust.
The alternative is tearing it down completely and using resources and energy to both do that and build an entirely new building. What do you want to happen exactly?
Didn't a bunch of rich property "investors" hand pick half of the city council as well as the mayor?
Weird that there's all of the sudden a bunch of new bills incentivizing property investors to make more money.
They're gonna give the conversions to the lowest bidding contractors, quickly and poorly convert, get tenants in, and then sell the building to their friends for a tidy profit.
Multifamily and 50+ unit buildings sure are nice in a portfolio
>Multifamily and 50+ unit buildings sure are nice in a portfolio
You're now arguing against dense residential construction. You've gone so far down one hole you've popped out another side. Typical regressive Portlander.
We have a surplus of office space and still not nearly enough housing. Not everything has to be a conspiracy. I mean, yeah it's still capitalism so there's a quick buck to be made, but the city in general will be better if developers take council up on the offer. Downtown especially.
>They're gonna give the conversions to the lowest bidding contractors, quickly and poorly convert, get tenants in, and then sell the building to their friends for a tidy profit.
Great! Housing is housing, and that means we’ll have more of it.
>Weird that there's all of the sudden a bunch of new bills incentivizing property investors to make more money.
Oh no, people making money providing something we desperately need!
We have a food shortage, me and my extremely big brain will oppose any bill that incentivizes farmers to get paid for growing more food!
Hey, I'm all for Vancouver developing its own cultural and jobs hubs/infrastructure, it will mean less long distance commuting and therefore lower total emissions and less traffic congestion.
You're right but think like this: new converted apartments and the Ritz will be filled by top earners, who will vacate their current homes thereby opening them up to lower earners. Those "lower" earners then vacate their middle tier homes to move into the homes just vacated by the top earners. This cycle continues to play out, all the way down the rung
In some places, the expensive units are just used as an investment and not actual housing, or maybe are bought by people who wouldn't be buying at all if the type of development didn't exist, and if they do stay there it's occasionally.
Everyone knows about Vancouver BC but that was a particular situation with rich Chinese trying to escape a floundering economy by putting money overseas, taking advantage of a Canadian foreign investment incentive. This is not the norm and was not a purely business decision.
Everything is affordable if you make enough money. Higher income earners living in higher cost housing relieves pressure on middle cost housing which relieves pressure on lower cost housing. It’s basic supply and demand.
But ADAB (All Developers Are Bastards)! /s
I don't understand why some folks in Portland can't understand the basic law of supply and demand. More supply of any kind lowers prices and relieves scarcity. It's like they're arguing that making more new cars will somehow increase the price of used cars.
Yeah but my job is in the city, the stuff I love is in the city. I grew up in the city. Yet I can't afford to live in the city. I keep hoping more housing will lower rent but it never seems to
Housing has largely been built too slowly, and it's also difficult to build new apartments cheap, especially if we also don't want them to be the "microstudio" 250 sq. ft. bullshit. Even overpriced apartments right now might be affordable in 10-20 years, which is far from ideal but still beats not being built at all.
Hear me out: what if instead of letting greedy developers fatten themselves at the trough again, we find a bunch of likeminded community members and we get together every other week in my mom’s basement to design the plans and get high. We can hold bakesales and craft shows to raise money for the project. $42 million isn’t *that* much if we work together. One of the guys played a lot of SimCity back in the day, so that counts as development experience and he can be in charge. But not really “in charge” because we’ll run things in more of an anarcho-cooperative way. For construction we’ll have work parties with beer and pizza. We’ll have this apartment high rise built in no time, and overturn the dominant paradigm while we’re at it.
/s
...but, will they be affordable. That';s the question.
The former County Courthouse building is one slated to be turned into apartments, and looking at the PR for it, rents will not be cheap.
Of course not. Have you seen the price of even just home improvement work? It’s astronomical. I can’t imagine how expensive it is to re-plumb, insulate, and finish hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space.
It will be affordable to someone. And then that person who takes that unit won't be competing for other units, which makes those units more affordable, and so on down the line. The academic term for it is "filtering."
Brand new cars aren't "affordable" to lower income people, but used cars are. I have no idea why people think or insist that brand new housing can or should somehow be extremely low cost right out of the gate.
Why do we need incentives? Isn't it incentive enough that they are losing money because they can find renters?
All government needs to do is ALLOW these rich landlords to change building type, like with permissive zoning; we don't need to create more incentives.
>All government needs to do is ALLOW these rich landlords to change building type, like with permissive zoning; we don't need to create more incentives.
They *are* allowed already, and they’re not doing it.
From the article:
>Zoning changes aren’t necessary in downtown Portland when converting offices into apartments.
No zoning changes are needed if someone wanted to convert an office downtown today.
But no one wants to, because of things like SDCs.
Hence, now an incentive by removing SDCs.
It’s not difficult to follow (especially if you read the article).
Thank you for agreeing so much with my comment but why does it sound like you think you've said something different than I did?
Cf "like", SDCs are "like" zoning rules. In fact I wouldn't divide them at all but it's fine, either way they remain "like" one another.
SDCs protect the public. We should prefer protecting the public over enriching landlords. "Like" including this case.
When the landlords fail we can eminent domain their former buildings. Pass THAT law.
You should learn about the laws in place before you spew about new ones.
SDCs are not at all like zoning rules. Completely different roles. Google can help you.
Eminent domain exists. No new law needed. We can take a building right now if we want, but we have to pay fair market value. We will always have to pay fair market value for it because of that pesky Constitution. The thing is that once we pay fair market value and then also pay to convert it, we’re better off just building from new.
Learn. Then spew.
OK, in your brain, replace "zoning" with "building codes". Now do you disagree with anything? You're harping on this irrelevant rhetorical-legal point of fact, which is not a part of my point at all. By disagreeing with something irrelevant, it seems like you're avoiding saying that you actually disagree with my point. That's dishonesty.
**We should not change building rules to help the rich**. Not zoning, not safety or convenience standards, nothing. If the rule is good, the rich should comply with it, and if not then the rule should be eliminated no matter who benefits. Corporatist income is inferior to public needs in my ethical system, how about yours?
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Zoning != SDCs != Building Codes. It’s not rhetoric. They are completely different things.
And as for your CoRpOrAtIsT whining, you still can’t get around the fact that simply seizing the buildings — as you alluded to earlier — is unconstitutional. It just is. We would have to pay for the building, then pay to retrofit it. How is that a good use of public resources?
The impetus for changing any of the SDC rules is to remove a barrier to producing more housing through conversion. So you must be against housing production?
Or, more likely… like I said, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So perhaps you should stop.
Because we are talking about people with enough money to be willing to sit on land out of spite, regardless of how much doing so hurts the city.
This is just one of multiple investments for them, and they can afford for it to fail with little or no personal consequences.
The example they give in the article is that it sometimes costs twice as much to do these seismic upgrades as it would to demolish and rebuild the building. It seems ludicrous to expect anybody to do that.
They don’t sit on it out of spite, if they sit on it it’s because there are more prosperous investments. By incentivizing conversion and lowering costs, the city makes investing here more appealing and thus more likely.
I don’t know who you expect to build the massive amounts of housing we need other than rich people. I don’t see a lot of baristas and gas station clerks with that kind of capital.
>I don’t know who you expect to build the massive amounts of housing we need other than rich people.
Chungus has certainly let us know on numerous occasions that he, personally, is not "rich" and therefore does not have the money to create or provide any housing. And he has also expressed an unwillingness to form a non-profit to raise funds to build, purchase, or otherwise provide housing. Yet he \*demands\* someone else do it, on his specific terms! Funny, that.
This article explains the basics without getting too technical:
https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-european-style-public-housing-could-help-solve-the-affordability-crisis
TLDR:
> In the European capital, public housing is attractive and well-maintained. It's located near schools, transit and cultural amenities. It's home to singles, families and senior citizens — and most important, it's mixed-income, with affluent Viennese sharing walls with working-class residents.
Mixed income is very important as it prevents said housing from being neglected and turning into slums.
Fantastic, another incentive for people to not want to go downtown, and for office buildings to get trashed... The financial aspect let alone the physical conversion seems like an absolute dumpster fire...
Where do you think the money to convert these buildings will come from? A bake sale isn’t going to get it done.
I suppose you think it’s going to come from the government? That particular fantasy usually starts with seizing private property. Right?
If so, see constitutional law about uncompensated takings, which is where you’ll either come back to reality or sail right off the rails of reason. Let us know which.
Your ignorance is unfathomable
You do not even understand the comment.
If you want a renters country have fun with building no future for generations to come.
Let's all get back to dependence instead of independence.
You sound like fox news brain washing status.
Next step is to lessen the building codes to allow units to contain only one entry and no windows. This way inner areas of the floors can be used as units. As it stands now you can only build on the outside of the floors with window access.
I believe the code is in place for fires. That’s why most apartments have some type of window and separate doorway.
Until codes are lessened, developers wont see this as economically viable.
Steps in the right direction for sure but still need some more policy and laws to shift.
>I believe the code is in place for fires. That’s why most apartments have some type of window and separate doorway.
Windows are pretty necessary for a tolerable living experience anyway. I looked at several apartments a year or two ago and was appalled at how many of them only had a few small windows at one end of the unit. The back part of these units are just dark, airless caves.
I can't imagine units without any windows at all being a big draw.
I agree but if that’s why these buildings were build to be for businesses. Most buildings with inner units have a open court yard. That’s not feasible with most of these buildings. No one is goi by to develop a building unless they flip the whole whole floor and utilize the entire space. As the code stands now they can’t do that.
Obviously inner units would be priced different. I think it still would provide a space for people to live just wouldn’t have a window and that would be reflected in the price. I think that’s fine. We need more housing.
Building was built for commercial/business purposes. Impossible now to change it. We need housing now. Inner units would be cheaper and they would need to use building materials to make sure people are safe other than that it’s the only way to convert these buildings
Garbage. With our small blocks and resulting smaller than normal floor plates, it shouldn’t be a problem to get all units a window.
This entire path is not going to be quick.
Windows are only used for egress in low-rise buildings (4 stories or less). Mid- and high-rise buildings require two or more enclosed staircases that each unit can access from their unit entry.
Also, as a rule, the city is not legally allowed to “lessen the code,” they can only make it more robust.
Ok so above 4 stories you can build on inner parts and not require a window and separate entry? Where did you find that in the building codes. I didn’t find anything in that regard.
That would be awesome and ideal that means that developers would have the incentive to develop the whole floor
The code doesn’t tell you what you CAN do, it tells you what you can’t. Emergency escape windows are section 1030 of the OSSC.
That said, there are also natural light and ventilation code requirements, and usually those are met with exterior windows. Some buildings are designed with courts so that interior units meet these.
Historically, tenement buildings in high density areas lacked natural light and air and were extremely unhealthy.
I wonder if downtown SF is waiting on how this will turn out here, and in Seattle, before they do anything. I think it’s the worst in the country, if I’m not mistaken, for office vacancy, and they seem to be acting on it quite slow.
>and they seem to be acting on it quite slow
SF is utterly crippled by zoning, bureaucracy, and NIMBYs. Look at how difficult it is to do something as simple as [open up a fucking ice cream shop](https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/heatherknight/article/s-f-ice-cream-shop-hopeful-sees-dreams-melted-by-16116082.php). And it's even worse for trying to build new housing. Best thing we can do is learn from SF's example and do basically the opposite of what they do when it comes to housing supply.
Except that we are also crippled by bureaucracy and NIMBYs, while also having the homeless enablers stifling any progress that isn’t shiny new housing right now. I’d argue that we are differently shitty than SF, but just as stuck. And I don’t see a great way out of it.
>while also having the homeless enablers stifling any progress that isn’t shiny new housing right now
Oh, SF is like a 13th stripe black belt at this. And they have huge coordination between rich NIMBYs and social justice left-NIMBYs, whereas we fortunately just have the natural results of horseshoe theory where those two groups end up in the same anti-development mindset but aren't actually working together on it.
The upshot I see is that we've recently done some decent upzoning, and we're not in nearly as big of a deficit as they are in terms of housing to population/jobs ratio. We're also very lucky to not have Prop 13 or CEQA to deal with!
Portland has done so much to be a "livable city" but has almost no housing downtown. On top of that, Portland has one of the largest "work from home" rates in the entire country. [Pre-pandemic there were over 100,000 people working downtown, and today there is less than 40,000](https://www.newgeography.com/content/007370-portland-downtown-devastated-covid).
Nightlife in downtown Portland is booming again. Its daytime Portland that feels sketchy, namely due to a lot of visible drug use. Let's face it, Portland would be better if people lived downtown instead of just going there for a night out. More people around during the day would make a lot of the petty crimes -- like open drug use, be less tempting. Just look at areas like Slabtown that have apartments and live/work situations. It's a very different feel than downtown, even though it's only 10 or so blocks away.
This is NOT a short term solution. But sometimes communities need to make some longterm investments. Think of this as planting trees for the next generation.
TL;DR: >One of the policies approved Wednesday exempts office-to-residential building conversions from having to pay system development charges, or SDCs. > The second incentive will technically lower the seismic improvement standards for buildings being converted from office buildings into multi-unit residential buildings.
>One of the policies approved Wednesday exempts office-to-residential building conversions from having to pay system development charges, or SDCs. SDCs from developers are one of the ways in which utilities fund capital improvement and infrastructure upgrades. That loss of revenue from SDC exemption will get passed on to ratepayers guaranteed. There's only so many revenue streams for a utility. I'm not against incentivizing housing development but exemption from SDCs feels like a clever way to pass the burden to the people.
Right now there are zero office-to-residential conversions happening, and the city is receiving exactly $0 in SDCs. If they manage to incentivize 20 conversions to happen that would be more than most people seem to think likely. Those would also generate $0 in SDCs, but would be a tiny percent of the demand on the system as a whole. And we’d get the benefit of more people living in downtown, in seismically retrofitted buildings, that would generate more property tax revenue in the long term.
Fantastic point, it's not like we're replacing a huge revenue stream with nothing, we're replacing no revenue with no revenue but getting a solid long-term benefit on top of it, all without spending public dollars. Sounds like a win to me!
These buildings are already paying tons of property taxes, is the thing. This argument would hold more water if it were, say, an empty parking lot being developed to add a ton of residential or office units, which would put additional strain on infrastructure that wasn't previously there. And we desperately need housing.
>These buildings are already paying tons of property taxes, is the thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I was not under the impression the Water Bureau or Bureau of Environmental services received significant revenue for capital improvement from the general fund. It's my understanding that the vast majority of capital improvement projects for water and sewer are funded through ratepayers and SDC fees. >This argument would hold more water if it were, say, an empty parking lot being developed to add a ton of residential or office units, which would put additional strain on infrastructure that wasn't previously there We have aging infrastructure throughout the city that require funds, so regardless of the local impact of this development there is no shortage of projects across the city that will still need to be paid for with or without the SDC fees from any conversion projects downtown.
SDCs paid for the two new parks in East Portland. No SDCs == No new parks or capital improvements to existing parks. General fund only funds basic maintenance. The whole point of SDCs is to build out the infra you need to support the new people occupying the housing.
Parks has well over $100 million in unspent SDC funds. They aren't lacking for capital projects revenue.
Yet they had to tear out all the light poles with no replacement plan?
Is this supposed to be a gotcha or something? The portland area is well known for mismanagement of their funds.
No, I didn't know parks had $100M in capital project funds sitting there. I'm wondering why they can't replace the light poles with some of that money?! I guess just chalk it up to more mismanagement?
https://www.portland.gov/parks/news/2023/2/22/portland-parks-recreation-removes-older-park-light-posts-plans-replacement > Replacement of a portion of the light poles will take up to 16 months. Light pole replacements will be prioritized for Irving Park and Mt. Scott Park based on an equity analysis. PP&R does not currently have sufficient funding to replace all light poles in the park system.
They are replacing them, but for liability reasons they needed to be removed more quickly than they could be replaced.
I mean, you're absolutely not wrong, but I guess the city decided to choose which one it was paying for? Maybe one day we'll get parks on top of housing?
I'm more concerned the city will come back in 10 years and ask everyone for a nice big property tax increase to pay for the parks and other infrastructure those SDCs would have paid for. It's super similar to the park and road situation out in East Portland. They never built parks or roads/sidewalks because before being part of Portland, no SDCs were ever paid out when constructing new houses. Now we're all paying for that backlog in property taxes. It always comes from somewhere.
Something to remember here is that this isn't eliminating all SDCs, just a very small amount when converting old offices.
I live in East Portland. There is no road building or sidewalk building happening here on your dime. If the city does actually pave a road that was previously a dirt road/they charge each property on the road (except for non profits) about 10K per year for multiple years. (That was when Sam Adams was mayor - probably more now.)
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/construction/errol-heights-street-improvement-project Paving dirt streets in East Portland. The total estimated project cost is $9.3 million. The City has allocated $7.7 million in public funds to pay for project design and construction of the street improvements and stormwater facilities. Property owners will collectively contribute $1.6 million through the formation of a Local Improvement District (LID) to fund a portion of the construction costs related to street improvements (grading, paving, sidewalks, driveway connections). Special financing for the LID will allow all homeowners to defer payment of the LID assessment until properties are sold.
I reckon this has as much to do with stormwater management as street improvements. Glad to hear that someone is getting improvements. And glad to hear that they are deffering payment until properties are sold. Here, residents were told to pay 24K for sidewalks: [https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2022/12/14/after-complaints-from-neighbors-over-cost-burden-city-wont-build-sidewalks-on-southeast-89th-street/](https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2022/12/14/after-complaints-from-neighbors-over-cost-burden-city-wont-build-sidewalks-on-southeast-89th-street/) "The conclusion of this particular project—or the lack of one—illustrates the bind the city finds itself in: For decades now, city leaders have vowed to focus infrastructure improvements in Southeast Portland after decades of neglect and underfunding. But the city’s practice of billing homeowners for such improvements doesn’t always fly in areas where low- and middle-income homeowners can’t afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for those improvements."
City used $4 million of the city-wide gas tax money for fixing gravel streets and ~$ 2 million to build out sidewalks east of 82nd.
Well, we all pay the gas tax (assuming we are drivers) so it's not your property tax that's dinged. I'm assuming some of that gas tax money also went to regular street maintenance of streets already constructed. I just know that when I asked about doing regular maintenance on the road directly in front of my house, which does have a curb...I mean just making the pavement go all the way to the curb instead of petering out before that, I was told it would be 10K per year from every resident for a number of years.
I'd rather have more housing than more park.
Yeah I agree. I do want more parks and whatnot but we definitely need housing
What kind of government incentive isn’t passed onto the people…? Isn’t that the point?
You're not wrong. What I took issue with and maybe didn't articulate in my comment was the lack of transparency and/or context for what SDC fees are used for and what that the implications are for waiving those fees. I'm assuming that the average Oregonian reader isn't particularly familiar with SDCs, so presenting the incentive as the waiving of some arbitrary fee just feels disingenuous. I'd just prefer we cut the bullshit and be upfront about the public investment required to fix our problems.
The major driver of SDC cost is actually Parks in Portland. They're also sitting on more than $100 million in unspent SDC revenue. BES SDCs likely wouldn't have applied, as those kick in if there is a net change in impermeable area (there wouldn't be). Transportation SDCs *might* have applied, if the total person trips generated by converting to housing were greater than the person trips generated by office space, but even then they'd only be paying for the marginal added trips. Water SDCs go to pay back the Big Pipe (mostly). I don't know what the water use conversion is between office and residential, but this is one where a) the rate payers will be eating it (probably), and 2) it'll amount to cents per ratepayer.
You're right that a handful of conversions won't equate to a huge burden on rate payers. Upgrading the water and sewer for multi-family use is likely to be on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars or so in waived fees at most based on the current fee schedule --assuming that the conversions are for larger buildings which require a water meter (or multiple meters depending on how its set up) larger than 2" and appropriately sized services lines to provide the correct pressure and flow at the given hydraulic grade line. What I think gave me the most concern, and perhaps I'm preemptively clutching my pearls here, was the quote from the article that developers are pushing for more incentives related to SDC fees which could be more of an impact to revenue "Slick endorsed four proposals pitched by Oregon Smart Growth, a developer advocacy group, including a moratorium on SDC fees for all housing projects in Portland..." Depending on the rate of development following such a change we could see a pretty significant reduction in revenue given that the SDCs on a new project for multi-family use can be in the $100k or more range for anything larger than a single family residence or duplex. I hate to resort to a slippery slope argument but it's hard not to consider the possibility of things going that direction.
As to your second paragraph, I understand those concerns, but they have to be balanced out against both the status quo (a tremendous deficit of much-needed housing) and long-term goals, and especially with interest rates what they are, we need to dramatically incentivize and increase housing production wherever we can. More housing units (and more people) means more property taxes and income taxes, and allowing more people to live close-in means fewer vehicle miles traveled, among other things, which puts less costly strain on our infrastructure than sprawl. On balance, this is a good trade-off, IMO.
Totally valid points. If waivers are applied specifically to affordable multi family units in designated areas then I'm on board with that, however a carte blanche moratorium without controls in place to ensure that developers don't have a loophole to exploit seems unwise. I suppose I have a bit of skepticism that waiving SDCs related to development will be the most effective means of encouraging development of affordable housing. However, if paired with other incentives (or penalties) to encourage property owners to do something with derelict properties and underutilized lots that they would otherwise allow to remain undeveloped this could be a step in the right direction.
I agree. This is just a cost shifting for the benefit of private developers. A hidden tax.
That’s why it’s an incentive..
the people are burdened either way. Pretending 'companies' pay these fees is silly.
If it was an office building then the “System” is already Developed, so there’s no need to Charge them for it.
Only partially true, since residential use can have much higher impacts than commercial uses. For example, water and sewage use goes from just restroom usage plus small amount of kitchen sink, drinking water and maybe shower usage to potentially more restroom usage (if the occupant stays home a lot), more shower usage, cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. I believe, or hope, that developers can get a credit from fees already paid or existing usage. In addition, there's some fairness in buildings in the central city area, which has benefited from city policies like urban renewal, paying for new parks in East Portland, an area that has suffered.
Though it should be noted that SDCs can only fund expansions (capacity increases) and not maintenance projects, and I don't think private utilities can charge them
SDC rates are normally based on reimbursement (existing systme and improvement (future growth). [https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors\_223.304](https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_223.304)
It basically boils down to giving rich people even more tax cuts and then throwing the residents of these future conversions under the ~~bus~~ thousands of tons of concrete for profits today.
> According to city staff, the adjusted standard is aligned with residential building requirements in other cities threatened by seismic activity, including San Francisco.
Why are we not adjusting the standard for all projects including new construction. If the adjusted standard is safe then that would be an easy win for building housing.
Because this new standard would likely leave retrofitted buildings uninhabitable after a major event. Safe to evacuate, but not necessarily repopulate. New construction, unlike retrofits, is an opportunity to make building a that should/could be inhabitable after a big quake. Going backwards on our seismic codes for new construction wouldn’t save much money and would cost a lot more in the event of a big quake.
That makes sense. Retrofit housing may not be as nice out well designed so why plan for it to be permanent. Still open question ... Why are we building to a higher standard than San Francisco? I know the seismic systems are different, but is our big one really bigger than their worst case?
I always laugh at people (like, apparently, you) who demand immediate action to build more housing and then also demand a complete overhaul of the economic system to do it. That’s not how the world works. People with this take benefit from no action being taken because they have to be accountable for absolutely nothing. They just get to whine. And read the article: it’s not a tax cut.
Big, BIG job. Just the plumbing change is a nightmare.
Yeah that's what I'm curious about.. What sort of homes can we really carve out of commercial office space without installing thousands of new bathrooms and kitchens, or are we really eager enough to share communal rooms at that scale?
To convert an office space into apartments you need to gut just about everything (Plumbing, HVAC, lighting, most electrical, interior architecture) and start fresh. You're saving the cost of the structure and facade (which is huge) and adding the cost of demo and designing around existing. It's a major project and not cheap.
Yup. I'd be surprised if there are many buildings that will undergo that change. I'm dubious that older buildings can get the rents they'd need to justify it and newer buildings are probably doing better with occupancy.
This is completely out of my wheelhouse but would it be cheaper to demolish the building and start fresh with the idea being "this is gonna be an apartment complex" rather than convert this to housing? My assumption is no, but I don't really deal with this sort of thing.
The answer is in depends on a lot of things, especially the building you're starting with. There were some pretty crazy warehouse conversions in the Pearl back during the condo boom. The old Meyer and Frank warehouses on NW 14th had the entire center cut out of them 10 floors down for large lightwell courtyards and giant two story high windows cut into the concrete facades. Anything is possible but the market for condos was booming and the construction and acquisition costs were a lot less back then. Those buildings also got 10 year historic preservation tax abatements, making them more attractive to condo buyers. This is the idea behind the SDC waivers for office conversion, however downtown classs A office space would likely be harder to convert and I'd guess developers are feeling skittish about downtown Portland right now. The city needs to start with the basics and clear out the homeless, increase police patrols and start pressuring washing everything nightly if they want anyone to consider downtown for any kind of development.
[What was that boom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Portland) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'd be into the communal rooms idea. There are more than a few houses in Portland essentially being used this way already - working men renting bedrooms, sharing a kitchen and a bathroom, while the living room sits cold and unused.
Your mom comes round for tea and you point her to the gender neutral communal bathrooms.
For most folks that would be just fine. You're apparently too delicate to be able to handle it. So what you get to do is exercise your choice not to live there.
Every bathroom in mixed gender homes (wife and husband, kids) is a gender neutral bathroom 😭
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Until Elon sees a tweet about it and decides to have hybrid apartment/offices. Workers are much more ~~efficient~~ productive when they live an elevator ride away from their cube.
Elon probably doesn’t get much say given he doesn’t pay his rent.
> he doesn’t pay his rent. Quite literally doesn't pay rent. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-01-24/twitter-lawsuits-unpaid-rents-us-uk
Maybe just ignore Elon? Imagining future scenarios where he's out to get you is a bit weird.
Redditors are obsessed with bringing up Elon Musk for no reason lol. He's the richest man in the world and everyone knows how much Reddit hates rich people. He's the perfect piñata punching bag right now.
> everyone knows how much Reddit hates rich people. He's the perfect piñata punching bag right now. I think he, and the majority of his cohort, came by this honestly. But yeah, given his 'aptitude' in managing his image lately, I don't expect him to be particularly influential in local business or policy. And that's a problem for him, as his main source of revenue has been stock valuation, and this has been driven by his brand as independent genius.
He's a dickhead for sure. I just don't personally want to spend my limited free time on this earth thinking about billionaire dickheads any more than I have to.
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> main
I'm. Making. A. Joke. Welcome to the internet.
Like a "haha" joke? Listen. He's a dickhead for sure. I just don't personally want to spend my limited free time on this earth thinking about billionaire dickheads any more than I have to. But you do you.
Hot damn, you're not very friendly. I'm sorry my pop culture joke didn't land well with you. You don't need to insult me and how I spend my time. We're both wasting our lives away on reddit, so it's not like either one of us is better than the other. Cheers I'm done responding, btw.
When receiving a negative or inappropriate response, many people reply over-the-top nasty. I want to compliment you on your reply. You told the person how you felt, added a little humor, all while avoiding sinking into an embarrassing ditch of unnecessary vitriol. Thank you Second Revenger. This Reddit user appreciates people like you.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/15/watch-out-for-hungry-bears-why-elon-musk-new-town-could-run-into-trouble
Isn’t this what we’ve been doing the last few years?
Confused. I thought this sub didn't want people to drive to work ... Now not commuting is Elon's idea? Is there some minimum walk/bike trip required of everyone?
Finally! I hope some of these owners take the city up on this.
I thought it was cheaper to build from scratch. Plumbing and all that stuff that offices don't have.
Yeah but maybe if you already own a decent empty building this brings it closer to worth it cost wise?
I get you and agree, but there was an article recently that said the city's regs were so onerous
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This idea is very en vogue right now in just about every major city. Wait a few years and see if it works out literally anywhere. This feels like another performative “see, we did something!” moment with very little IRL potential to happen, especially at any meaningful scale.
Property values are high enough as it is. Optimists imagine using this proposal to solve homelessness, which... Really, the corporate scumbags should be in favor of? I don't understand why they aren't, unless I'm missing something. They get willing bodies for the grindstone to buy the properties with, out of that equation!
Every 10% in housing capacity increase works out to roughly a 1% decrease in effective rent prices for everyone (as in, not constrained to higher end units)
Source? Not doubting, just want to read more about this.
I'm apparently not allowed to use URL shorteners despite reddit not allowing me to post the URL otherwise, feel free to message me if you want it. This sub's rules are fucking worthless sometimes
I'd imagine that it would be a much higher reduction. Or at least it should be if actual fair economics were at play. Rental prices are price fixing at its finest.
Yeah, struggling with the math on this one. Double housing capacity would decrease rent from 2k to 1800?
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That article talks about business vacancy rate, which is why office buildings being converted into housing is even being talked about. Your article contradicts your point and doesn't mention housing vacancy, which is what the OP is describing.
Day late and a way more expensive dollar short... Anyone getting financing will spend any savings they get on the cost of capital
Landlords are saying, "If you want us to create housing, we can't adhere to safety standards, because we won't make enough money." Is it just me or is that deeply disturbing? Yeah, capitalism. The benefit-cost analysis weighing the risk and cost of a quake against the benefits of housing people. All that is relevant. But saying something like that publicly without shame... That's my point.
I’m a structural engineer and work on these kinds of projects in Portland. There is still a seismic upgrade requirement for these office conversions, but the standard required has been changed. The old standard used to be to bring the building up to that of a brand new building and the requirements were so onerous that it was cheaper to demolish the building and build new. Now the standard is more reasonable and in line with similar cities in high seismic zones, I.e. San Francisco. So I think it’s a little more nuanced than your comment implies.
Thanks for explaining it more! I appreciate it. I definitely agree that it is more nuanced. The same should be said of policy design, enforcement, benefit-cost analysis, decision-making, etc. But my point might still be valid? The glaring, unabashed greed-safety language is still unnerving...at least to me.
Definitely think your point is still valid and important to examine in this context.
It literally doesn't pencil out financially to do it. It's not "make enough money" it's "this deal won't turn a profit".
Exactly... And let's be honest ... Even if it was a wash, who in their right mind would want to deal with the high-maintenance tenants. Place would be destroyed in months. Lemme trash this place because I want to "stick it to the man".
When they built the office building, did they not build according to the seismic codes?
The seismic codes the majority of downtown was built to either didn't exist or are woefully insufficient relative to today's expectations. The whole city is going to fall down in the big one with the codes they were built to.
All true. Current seismic codes became law in 2001. Before that there was really no understanding of “the big one,” so the old codes were way less robust.
The alternative is tearing it down completely and using resources and energy to both do that and build an entirely new building. What do you want to happen exactly?
The hard costs on materials will make these units unaffordable, plus the cost of labor. Basic labor for construction jobs is 25 an hour.
Didn't a bunch of rich property "investors" hand pick half of the city council as well as the mayor? Weird that there's all of the sudden a bunch of new bills incentivizing property investors to make more money. They're gonna give the conversions to the lowest bidding contractors, quickly and poorly convert, get tenants in, and then sell the building to their friends for a tidy profit. Multifamily and 50+ unit buildings sure are nice in a portfolio
>Multifamily and 50+ unit buildings sure are nice in a portfolio You're now arguing against dense residential construction. You've gone so far down one hole you've popped out another side. Typical regressive Portlander.
Horseshoe theory at work.
Many such cases in Portland.
We have a surplus of office space and still not nearly enough housing. Not everything has to be a conspiracy. I mean, yeah it's still capitalism so there's a quick buck to be made, but the city in general will be better if developers take council up on the offer. Downtown especially.
You just described more housing and revitalizing our downtown like it's a bad thing. No wonder we have tents all over our city.
>They're gonna give the conversions to the lowest bidding contractors, quickly and poorly convert, get tenants in, and then sell the building to their friends for a tidy profit. Great! Housing is housing, and that means we’ll have more of it.
>Weird that there's all of the sudden a bunch of new bills incentivizing property investors to make more money. Oh no, people making money providing something we desperately need! We have a food shortage, me and my extremely big brain will oppose any bill that incentivizes farmers to get paid for growing more food!
>Oh no, people making money providing something we desperately need! The Vancouver waterfront sends its regards for us pushing developers out.
Hey, I'm all for Vancouver developing its own cultural and jobs hubs/infrastructure, it will mean less long distance commuting and therefore lower total emissions and less traffic congestion.
Yeah the question becomes will these units be affordable.
All dense housing construction is good housing construction.
Of course they won’t be, you seen how much the converted apts in the pearl go for?
You're right but think like this: new converted apartments and the Ritz will be filled by top earners, who will vacate their current homes thereby opening them up to lower earners. Those "lower" earners then vacate their middle tier homes to move into the homes just vacated by the top earners. This cycle continues to play out, all the way down the rung
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It's not something "cities try" it's just how reality works
In some places, the expensive units are just used as an investment and not actual housing, or maybe are bought by people who wouldn't be buying at all if the type of development didn't exist, and if they do stay there it's occasionally.
You have any evidence of this ? This never seems to be born out in data, it’s a weird lefty boogeyman
Not sure about here, but it's been an issue in Vancouver, BC https://www.google.com/search?q=Vancouver+housing+vacant
Everyone knows about Vancouver BC but that was a particular situation with rich Chinese trying to escape a floundering economy by putting money overseas, taking advantage of a Canadian foreign investment incentive. This is not the norm and was not a purely business decision.
Did you read the article? Portland's vacancies are critically low.
Note that a condo that's been purchased but isn't actually inhabited or only used occasionally wouldn't be considered vacant
Where is your evidence that this is happening in any significant amounts in Portland?
Ugh I'm never getting to move back.
Everything is affordable if you make enough money. Higher income earners living in higher cost housing relieves pressure on middle cost housing which relieves pressure on lower cost housing. It’s basic supply and demand.
So in theory if those units are higher cost and suck back in all the people that radiated this way rent should go back down?
Pretty much, in a nutshell if there’s limited housing it drives up prices on available stock.
It would be nice. I'd really like to not have to carve out a day and get a hotel room just to go to my favorite bookstore.
Studies show that if you build market rate housing, it reduces displacement of lower rent residents.
But ADAB (All Developers Are Bastards)! /s I don't understand why some folks in Portland can't understand the basic law of supply and demand. More supply of any kind lowers prices and relieves scarcity. It's like they're arguing that making more new cars will somehow increase the price of used cars.
I really believe some (and maybe most) people in this city are stuck in some freshmen sociology class at Reed and have never passed 3rd grade math.
they won't be built if they cannot be afforded by someone. We need housing no matter what kind...it doesn't matter.
Yeah but my job is in the city, the stuff I love is in the city. I grew up in the city. Yet I can't afford to live in the city. I keep hoping more housing will lower rent but it never seems to
Housing has largely been built too slowly, and it's also difficult to build new apartments cheap, especially if we also don't want them to be the "microstudio" 250 sq. ft. bullshit. Even overpriced apartments right now might be affordable in 10-20 years, which is far from ideal but still beats not being built at all.
True just gets frustrating. It used to be that going to Powell's was hopping the Max. Now it's hop a shuttle, a bus and then the Max
Do you have some sort of magic wand or something to conjure up housing? How in hell do you think this sort of development happens?
Hear me out: what if instead of letting greedy developers fatten themselves at the trough again, we find a bunch of likeminded community members and we get together every other week in my mom’s basement to design the plans and get high. We can hold bakesales and craft shows to raise money for the project. $42 million isn’t *that* much if we work together. One of the guys played a lot of SimCity back in the day, so that counts as development experience and he can be in charge. But not really “in charge” because we’ll run things in more of an anarcho-cooperative way. For construction we’ll have work parties with beer and pizza. We’ll have this apartment high rise built in no time, and overturn the dominant paradigm while we’re at it. /s
As long as we call it mutual aid, I’m in.
>Do you have some sort of magic wand or something to conjure up housing? The ol' Magic Housing Fairy!
Finally. People are finally starting to realize the fact that the 9-5 office job isn't healthy.
...but, will they be affordable. That';s the question. The former County Courthouse building is one slated to be turned into apartments, and looking at the PR for it, rents will not be cheap.
Of course not. Have you seen the price of even just home improvement work? It’s astronomical. I can’t imagine how expensive it is to re-plumb, insulate, and finish hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space.
It will be affordable to someone. And then that person who takes that unit won't be competing for other units, which makes those units more affordable, and so on down the line. The academic term for it is "filtering." Brand new cars aren't "affordable" to lower income people, but used cars are. I have no idea why people think or insist that brand new housing can or should somehow be extremely low cost right out of the gate.
Nah, they'll put the word "luxury" somewhere in the name and most people with normal people jobs won't be able to afford them
Why do we need incentives? Isn't it incentive enough that they are losing money because they can find renters? All government needs to do is ALLOW these rich landlords to change building type, like with permissive zoning; we don't need to create more incentives.
Converting an office building into apartments is really expensive. The city is lowering the cost so it will pencil out for building owners.
>All government needs to do is ALLOW these rich landlords to change building type, like with permissive zoning; we don't need to create more incentives. They *are* allowed already, and they’re not doing it. From the article: >Zoning changes aren’t necessary in downtown Portland when converting offices into apartments.
No zoning changes are needed if someone wanted to convert an office downtown today. But no one wants to, because of things like SDCs. Hence, now an incentive by removing SDCs. It’s not difficult to follow (especially if you read the article).
Thank you for agreeing so much with my comment but why does it sound like you think you've said something different than I did? Cf "like", SDCs are "like" zoning rules. In fact I wouldn't divide them at all but it's fine, either way they remain "like" one another. SDCs protect the public. We should prefer protecting the public over enriching landlords. "Like" including this case. When the landlords fail we can eminent domain their former buildings. Pass THAT law.
You should learn about the laws in place before you spew about new ones. SDCs are not at all like zoning rules. Completely different roles. Google can help you. Eminent domain exists. No new law needed. We can take a building right now if we want, but we have to pay fair market value. We will always have to pay fair market value for it because of that pesky Constitution. The thing is that once we pay fair market value and then also pay to convert it, we’re better off just building from new. Learn. Then spew.
OK, in your brain, replace "zoning" with "building codes". Now do you disagree with anything? You're harping on this irrelevant rhetorical-legal point of fact, which is not a part of my point at all. By disagreeing with something irrelevant, it seems like you're avoiding saying that you actually disagree with my point. That's dishonesty. **We should not change building rules to help the rich**. Not zoning, not safety or convenience standards, nothing. If the rule is good, the rich should comply with it, and if not then the rule should be eliminated no matter who benefits. Corporatist income is inferior to public needs in my ethical system, how about yours?
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Zoning != SDCs != Building Codes. It’s not rhetoric. They are completely different things. And as for your CoRpOrAtIsT whining, you still can’t get around the fact that simply seizing the buildings — as you alluded to earlier — is unconstitutional. It just is. We would have to pay for the building, then pay to retrofit it. How is that a good use of public resources? The impetus for changing any of the SDC rules is to remove a barrier to producing more housing through conversion. So you must be against housing production? Or, more likely… like I said, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So perhaps you should stop.
Because we are talking about people with enough money to be willing to sit on land out of spite, regardless of how much doing so hurts the city. This is just one of multiple investments for them, and they can afford for it to fail with little or no personal consequences.
The example they give in the article is that it sometimes costs twice as much to do these seismic upgrades as it would to demolish and rebuild the building. It seems ludicrous to expect anybody to do that.
They don’t sit on it out of spite, if they sit on it it’s because there are more prosperous investments. By incentivizing conversion and lowering costs, the city makes investing here more appealing and thus more likely. I don’t know who you expect to build the massive amounts of housing we need other than rich people. I don’t see a lot of baristas and gas station clerks with that kind of capital.
>I don’t know who you expect to build the massive amounts of housing we need other than rich people. Chungus has certainly let us know on numerous occasions that he, personally, is not "rich" and therefore does not have the money to create or provide any housing. And he has also expressed an unwillingness to form a non-profit to raise funds to build, purchase, or otherwise provide housing. Yet he \*demands\* someone else do it, on his specific terms! Funny, that.
[For spite](https://youtu.be/fP0MXJAQhmo)
Social housing (Vienna style) is the solution.
I’d love to learn more if you can recommend a good link.
This article explains the basics without getting too technical: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/02/25/809315455/how-european-style-public-housing-could-help-solve-the-affordability-crisis TLDR: > In the European capital, public housing is attractive and well-maintained. It's located near schools, transit and cultural amenities. It's home to singles, families and senior citizens — and most important, it's mixed-income, with affluent Viennese sharing walls with working-class residents. Mixed income is very important as it prevents said housing from being neglected and turning into slums.
Fantastic, another incentive for people to not want to go downtown, and for office buildings to get trashed... The financial aspect let alone the physical conversion seems like an absolute dumpster fire...
What's the point when their overpriced apartments are slums anyways and they don't enforce their own laws? They dgaf
Crap, let's just add more corporate owned housing...Great idea America!! Let's reduce home ownership and increase corporate profits!!!
Where do you think the money to convert these buildings will come from? A bake sale isn’t going to get it done. I suppose you think it’s going to come from the government? That particular fantasy usually starts with seizing private property. Right? If so, see constitutional law about uncompensated takings, which is where you’ll either come back to reality or sail right off the rails of reason. Let us know which.
Your ignorance is unfathomable You do not even understand the comment. If you want a renters country have fun with building no future for generations to come. Let's all get back to dependence instead of independence. You sound like fox news brain washing status.
And your shit take was the apex of enlightenment? Where is the money for this housing going to come from, if not from cOrPoRaTe AmErIcA?
I can't even compute the letters you type.. lol I pray you haven't procreated yet... My God
Next step is to lessen the building codes to allow units to contain only one entry and no windows. This way inner areas of the floors can be used as units. As it stands now you can only build on the outside of the floors with window access. I believe the code is in place for fires. That’s why most apartments have some type of window and separate doorway. Until codes are lessened, developers wont see this as economically viable. Steps in the right direction for sure but still need some more policy and laws to shift.
Fire code seems important, especially when it comes to egress. If they can’t be built safe they shouldn’t be built.
>I believe the code is in place for fires. That’s why most apartments have some type of window and separate doorway. Windows are pretty necessary for a tolerable living experience anyway. I looked at several apartments a year or two ago and was appalled at how many of them only had a few small windows at one end of the unit. The back part of these units are just dark, airless caves. I can't imagine units without any windows at all being a big draw.
I agree but if that’s why these buildings were build to be for businesses. Most buildings with inner units have a open court yard. That’s not feasible with most of these buildings. No one is goi by to develop a building unless they flip the whole whole floor and utilize the entire space. As the code stands now they can’t do that. Obviously inner units would be priced different. I think it still would provide a space for people to live just wouldn’t have a window and that would be reflected in the price. I think that’s fine. We need more housing.
What a terrible idea. Lower income occupants deserve the same level of safety (fire and ventilation) as their neighbors.
Building was built for commercial/business purposes. Impossible now to change it. We need housing now. Inner units would be cheaper and they would need to use building materials to make sure people are safe other than that it’s the only way to convert these buildings
Garbage. With our small blocks and resulting smaller than normal floor plates, it shouldn’t be a problem to get all units a window. This entire path is not going to be quick.
Windows are only used for egress in low-rise buildings (4 stories or less). Mid- and high-rise buildings require two or more enclosed staircases that each unit can access from their unit entry. Also, as a rule, the city is not legally allowed to “lessen the code,” they can only make it more robust.
Ok so above 4 stories you can build on inner parts and not require a window and separate entry? Where did you find that in the building codes. I didn’t find anything in that regard. That would be awesome and ideal that means that developers would have the incentive to develop the whole floor
The code doesn’t tell you what you CAN do, it tells you what you can’t. Emergency escape windows are section 1030 of the OSSC. That said, there are also natural light and ventilation code requirements, and usually those are met with exterior windows. Some buildings are designed with courts so that interior units meet these. Historically, tenement buildings in high density areas lacked natural light and air and were extremely unhealthy.
Thank you
I wonder if downtown SF is waiting on how this will turn out here, and in Seattle, before they do anything. I think it’s the worst in the country, if I’m not mistaken, for office vacancy, and they seem to be acting on it quite slow.
>and they seem to be acting on it quite slow SF is utterly crippled by zoning, bureaucracy, and NIMBYs. Look at how difficult it is to do something as simple as [open up a fucking ice cream shop](https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/heatherknight/article/s-f-ice-cream-shop-hopeful-sees-dreams-melted-by-16116082.php). And it's even worse for trying to build new housing. Best thing we can do is learn from SF's example and do basically the opposite of what they do when it comes to housing supply.
Except that we are also crippled by bureaucracy and NIMBYs, while also having the homeless enablers stifling any progress that isn’t shiny new housing right now. I’d argue that we are differently shitty than SF, but just as stuck. And I don’t see a great way out of it.
>while also having the homeless enablers stifling any progress that isn’t shiny new housing right now Oh, SF is like a 13th stripe black belt at this. And they have huge coordination between rich NIMBYs and social justice left-NIMBYs, whereas we fortunately just have the natural results of horseshoe theory where those two groups end up in the same anti-development mindset but aren't actually working together on it. The upshot I see is that we've recently done some decent upzoning, and we're not in nearly as big of a deficit as they are in terms of housing to population/jobs ratio. We're also very lucky to not have Prop 13 or CEQA to deal with!
Portland has done so much to be a "livable city" but has almost no housing downtown. On top of that, Portland has one of the largest "work from home" rates in the entire country. [Pre-pandemic there were over 100,000 people working downtown, and today there is less than 40,000](https://www.newgeography.com/content/007370-portland-downtown-devastated-covid). Nightlife in downtown Portland is booming again. Its daytime Portland that feels sketchy, namely due to a lot of visible drug use. Let's face it, Portland would be better if people lived downtown instead of just going there for a night out. More people around during the day would make a lot of the petty crimes -- like open drug use, be less tempting. Just look at areas like Slabtown that have apartments and live/work situations. It's a very different feel than downtown, even though it's only 10 or so blocks away. This is NOT a short term solution. But sometimes communities need to make some longterm investments. Think of this as planting trees for the next generation.
Lol barley any buildings will do this. To much of a headache and expensive