Model Text Amendment for Dwelling Unit Equivalents

Some years ago, I was looking at building a four-plex in Portland, Oregon. At the time the local impact fees were calculated at $20,000 per Dwelling Unit. That was the fee for one of the 4,000 SF single unit houses that were replacing little 800 SF workers cottages as One-forOne Tear-downs, and it was the fee for one of the 500 SF one bedroom four-plex units I wanted to build in a diverse walkable SE Portland neighborhood.

$20,000 per Dwelling Unit translated to $5 per SF for the big house in the one-for-one Tear-down scenario. $20,000 per Dwelling Unit is $40 per SF for a 500 SF one bedroom apartment. My tenants would be paying $200 a month in rent to amortize a fee that does not actually purchase land or building materials.

I had a hard time finding sites where I would be allowed to build four units on a 50 x 100 lot. There are 8.7 5,000 SF lots in a net acre and four dwelling units on a 5,000 SF lot is 35 Dwelling Units per acre. —Never mind that there were lots of 4 and 12 unit buildings on 50 x 100 lots up and down the street where I found a vacant lot, the zoning code would only allow single family residential buildings to be built.

This experience showed me how inequitable and unreasonable the definition of “Dwelling "Unit” can be when it is used to assess fees and calculate allowed density. Portland’s Comprehensive Plan contained all kinds of well-intentioned policy language about increasing housing affordability and housing choice, but those policies could not be implemented because the local zoning code made such things illegal. One more frustrating example of why we cannot have nice things, (even though we have adopted an elaborate policy document that says we want to…) NOTE: Recent statewide legislation has changed what you can build in Oregon cities with more than 10,000 people.

The Proposed Text Amendment above is a patch which can fix this problem in your local zoning code.