Great news: OR's land use board just approved the first tranche of rules re-legalizing middle housing, executing 2019's state law.

The fine print came out quite pro-housing, a major blow against long-term patterns of city-mandated housing segregation.

https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/Commission/Documents/2020_07_Item-6_Middle-Housing_Staff_Report.pdf

This tranche sets the rules for duplex legalization in cities of 10k-25k population.

My favorite bit: Strikes down local rules requiring more than 2 parking spaces per duplex. Research showed this makes a HUGE difference in whether lower-cost homes would actually get built.

Another fun detail: 2 homes don't have to be connected to be a "duplex."

Cities can say "sure if you've got room for a full-size home in your backyard, go for it it." (The state's model code will legalize this by default, though cities can opt otherwise.)

If widely adopted, this would make it much easier to create homes without demolishing old intact ones, which is generally good for price of housing, quantity of housing & energy-efficiency (because demolishing perfectly good buildings wastes the energy it took to build them).

Predictably, this set of rules didn't get a ton of pushback ... in most Oregon cities of 10k-25k outside Portland metro, most folks are too poor to be interested in nimbying.

But state rulemakers will now move on to larger cities & the PDX suburbs. Welp. https://twitter.com/andersem/status/1283118365364514817

This afternoon's unanimous decision from the Land Use and Development Commission is encouraging (and the result of advocacy from many people including @1000oregon, @AccessoryDwell & us at @Sightline).

Hopefully it presages pro-housing decisions as we move to bigger cities.

Can't resist one last note about striking down parking mandates above 2 spaces per duplex.

Because duplexes will be legal on any lot in these cities, the state has sorta capped ALL parking mandates at 2/lot.

Even in cities that regulate parking by bedroom (like Corvallis; results shown here), now all you gotta do to fit your project on a lot is ... make it a duplex.

Good context from Brandon.

The law Oregon passed voluntarily last year is a *wildly optimistic* version of the hypothetical "suburb destroying" fair housing rule the president has been going on about every day for weeks. https://twitter.com/BranBrez/status/1286459244619763717

Trump thinks he'll win reelection by rallying the nation's nimbys around the alleged horror of Joe Biden letting you build a house in your backyard if you want to, or maybe (gasp) letting apartments exist somewhere in your city.

He twitted this today: https://nypost.com/2020/07/21/joe-bidens-disastrous-plans-for-americas-suburbs/

And I dunno, maybe it'll work.

But in Oregon, whatever Joe Biden may or may not do, we've left that much of the debate behind. Let's move on to the next part, and hope other states will join us.