A House bill passed in 2019 requires cities with over 10,000 people to come up with an eight-year housing strategy plan. Ashland’s was the first approved in the state. It includes initiatives like encouraging development of affordable rental housing and increasing opportunities for affordable home ownership. JPR’s Jane Vaughan recently spoke with Ashland’s Housing Program Specialist Linda Reid about the city’s plan.
Jane Vaughan: First, why does the city need this plan?
Linda Reid: Oregon, like many other states, is facing a housing affordability crisis, with rising home prices and rents making it increasingly difficult for many residents to find affordable housing. This is primarily due to a shortage of housing supply, particularly a shortage of affordable housing in many communities across the state and obviously here in Ashland.
JV: The plan lays out 15 strategies to address the city's housing needs, which, as you said, is mostly more affordable housing. One of them is potentially participating in a land bank or a land trust. Does Ashland have the land it needs for new housing?
LR: Yes, Ashland does. Part of the housing production strategy process is based on a city's housing capacity analysis, sometimes called a housing needs analysis, where a city looks at the population growth over a 20-year period and then looks at the land supply, both within the city and within the urban growth boundary, so land that can be annexed and brought into the city and then developed as those needed housing types. In doing that, the city does have enough land. And it's even zoned in ways that would meet the housing needs over that 20-year period.
JV: The report says that nearly half of households in Ashland spend a third of their income or more on rent. And the biggest complaint that we all hear is that people just can't afford the rent here. How do you plan to address that piece of it?
LR: There are a number of things that the city can do to support the development of what we would call deed-restricted regulated affordable housing units. We will be looking at establishing a construction excise tax, which could then be used to provide incentives, financial incentives, to developers. We're going to be evaluating an urban renewal or other financing tools, urban renewal districts to help with infrastructure. We'll also be looking at a multiple-unit property tax exemption to support the development of multifamily affordable housing. So a lot of those activities would be geared primarily at the development of more rental housing.
JV: The report has a timeline for each of the action items and when they'll be implemented. And that work ranges from 2023 to 2031. I know that housing is really complicated and takes a long time. But that seems like a long time for a crisis that's happening right now.
LR: Yeah, so not all cities pick so many strategies. But even within that, identifying 15 different strategies, the timeline is really that each strategy will be explored. So the exploration of the strategy itself is going to be an important undertaking and will involve a lot of community engagement and community feedback. And then we'll go through probably the Housing and Human Services Advisory Committee for review, the Planning Commission, and then ultimately to the Council. So each of those processes could take up to a year, especially the planning-related processes. And so that timeline is really allowing the city enough time to explore these options. Also, the city of Ashland is a relatively small city, and we have a relatively small staff. So that schedule really looks at only two, maybe three, of these items in a given year, just to make sure that the staff can manage them with the other work.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the legislation passed in 2019.
