This article is part of the series Legalizing Inexpensive Housing After a seven-year campaign, Portland on Sunday formally lifted a series of 97-year-old bans on seven different types of homes. Becoming legal today on the vast majority of residential lots in Portland: a duplex, a triplex, a fourplex, a mixed-income or below-market sixplex, a large … Read more
More homebuilding options are legal beginning August 1, but what’s likely to actually get built? Contacts: Michael Andersen, Sightline Institute, senior researcher, michael@sightline.org, 503.333.7824 Steph Routh, Sightline Institute, strategic communications manager, steph@sightline.org, 971.506.8385 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (July 30, 2021) PORTLAND – As of this Sunday, Oregon’s largest city is also the largest in the United … Read more
It’s happened again and again and again in Portland throughout the Cascadian city’s recent housing crisis. For one big project, it’s been happening since the second Obama administration. Someone proposes to build some apartments. Some people who own homes nearby dislike some aspect of the plan. They look for any leverage they may have over … Read more
If you don’t enjoy filing your taxes each year, please imagine trying to get around to it while dealing with an eviction. Or trying to document your income from five different gigs, two of which were paid in cash and three of which ended months ago. Or trying to do it from jail. And let’s … Read more
Strange as it may seem in a country that might be headed for double-digit home price hikes in the next two years, many US cities make it illegal for groups of people to share big houses. But that will no longer be the case in Oregon. On Monday, that state’s Senate approved House Bill 2583 … Read more
If the government pays hundreds of millions of dollars to help build and operate a high-quality transit line, people should generally be allowed to live near it if they want to. You’d think this would be uncontroversial. Especially among people who run public transit agencies. Unfortunately, some transit leaders here in Oregon seem to be … Read more
President Joe Biden wants you to lift your bans on duplexes, apartments, and car-free homes.
Like a tree twisted by a shadow above it, everything about anti-poverty policy in the United States has been shaped by one unusual decision: not to give poor people cash. Want housing, but can’t afford it? Join a voucher waitlist. (Oh, and also sign up separately to 17 other waitlists for particular buildings or organizations.) … Read more
In 2020, Portland legalized sixplexes citywide. A 2021 follow-up would allow driveway RVs and clustered tiny homes.
A federal child credit, a concept backed by both President Joe Biden and Senator Mitt Romney—a monthly payment of $250 to $350 for each child with a Social Security number—would be an epochal victory in the fight to house vulnerable Americans. The payments, which would phase out for the wealthiest families under both proposals, would … Read more