Portland City Council OKs plan that calls for more duplexes, triplexes

Infill debate

Developer Vic Remmers built this home on Southeast 65th Avenue in the Foster-Powell neighborhood.

(Luke Hammill/Staff)

Portland is moving toward a set of policies that aims to discourage home demolitions while increasing density in residential neighborhoods.

The Residential Infill Project concept approved by the City Council on Wednesday would limit the size of new homes while allowing more duplexes, triplexes and small-scale apartment buildings.

Housing advocates say it could open up more affordable housing options in expensive areas of the city, where the average price hovers around $339,000.

But some residents argue that multifamily homes could fundamentally change their neighborhoods' character and hurt property values.

Even though the council approved the concept, it won't take effect until a reconstituted council approves new zoning code language. That's expected to happen next year.

The proposal to scale back the square footage of new houses is meant to discourage home demolitions. In the recent home-building boom, it became common to replace a single-family house with a larger, more expensive house.

Reducing the size of the replacement home, the theory goes, would reduce the profitability and by extension the incentive to demolish.

But allowing more duplexes, triplexes and small-scale apartment buildings would allow more affordable housing options in increasingly expensive, low-density areas.

"I'm concerned that if we have huge areas of the city that are zoned for one house per 5,000-square-foot lot, we'll become a city where those homes cost a million dollars apiece," said Commissioner Steve Novick.

Neighborhood groups have said that the concept simply encourages builders to replace homes with duplexes and triplexes, effectively rezoning neighborhoods traditionally composed of mostly single-family houses.

A stakeholders committee supported the plan, but a dissenting group of its members described it as a giveaway to builders, not an affordability measure.

"Higher density does not equate to less expensive housing," the group wrote in a report. "As long as there is strong demand for housing and it can be profitably built and sold, rezoning for increased density will cause the value of the land to increase, the demolitions to accelerate, and the housing prices to rise accordingly."

The council also called for fewer "skinny houses," which have become common in areas where historic lot lines allowed builders to split more traditionally sized lots in two. It approved a proposal by Commissioner Amanda Fritz that would prohibit lot-splitting based on historic lot lines.

In other areas that allow greater density and skinny houses outright, the concept would reduce the height allowed.

Fritz described the issue as one of the most important in the plan. Before winning a seat on the council, she was involved as a neighborhood activist fighting the development of skinny houses.

-- Elliot Njus