Discussion: Portland development has slowed a lot.

[mhays]

Right now we have:
--High city fees
--High land costs on a per-unit or per-buildable-sf basis due to lack of zoned density
--High interest rates
--Rising and wildly uncertain construction costs due to tariffs
--A tanking economy due to tariffs and disappearing federal dollars, outside favored sectors (like via the 2022 CHIPS act)
--Many commercial/institutional construction consumers putting projects on hold for the short/mid-term for the same reasons

I don't have time to dive into a fee comparison, but Seattle has big development fees as well, and these are certainly affecting projects there. Along with fees on high incomes and various worker protections, this is a big factor in Bellevue's rise as a second downtown (though also slowing down). (On the flip side, WA requires that all significant cities/suburbs accommodate a lot of growth, and most do it by creating urban-zoned districts, which are proliferating around the region.)

[subterranean]

The savior complex is alive and well in the development community. We’ve even got developers of middle housing on LinkedIn saying “we don’t get any subsidies” but when pressed about getting SDC waivers to develop more affordable unit, it’s “yeah, well, about that, but…”

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/neil-hell...social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

[maccoinnich]

Just because the city can get away with charging developers tens of thousands of dollars a unit, for projects that are unlikely to directly benefit the future residents of said unit, doesn’t mean that not charging them is a subsidy…

[subterranean]

I completely and wholeheartedly disagree.

[mhays]

It would be nice to fund affordable housing through means OTHER THAN making middle-class housing more expensive.

[PhillyPDX]

Originally Posted by subterranean

I completely and wholeheartedly disagree.

I guess it should be called a subsidy if a single detached home would NOT get the exact same waivers. If there is a delta between fees/taxes for middle housing vs single, then it very much is a subsidy.

[maccoinnich]

It's not so much single vs multifamily, as it is incumbents vs non-incumbents. SDCs go towards funding a lot of great projects, but there's no particular reason why developers of new apartments (and ultimately, their residents, via rents) should be paying for, say, the North Portland Aquatics center. Portland didn't even start charging SDCs until the early 2000s or so, in the wake of Measures 47/50.