Housing Production Strategy (HPS) and Land Use Efficiencies (G 4-24 and G 3-24)

Housing Production Strategy (HPS) - Docket G 4-24 (to be completed in 2025)

Introduction

In Oregon, cities have a long-standing requirement to study and plan for their community's housing needs. In 2019, the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2003 (ORS 197.290) directing cities with a population greater than 10,000 to develop and adopt a Housing Production Strategy (HPS) no later than one year after the city’s deadline for completing a Housing Needs Analysis (HNA). 

• The City of McMinnville adopted a HNA on February 27, 2024 - Ordinance No. 5141  "McMinnville Urbanization Report"

The HPS must include a list of specific actions, including the adoption of measures and policies, that the city shall undertake to promote development affordable, fair, and equitable housing to address the housing need identified in the HNA. The HPS will contain an eight (8)-year timeline for adopting and executing each strategy. Cities must also evaluate their HPS progress and effectiveness at a mid-term checkpoint.

• What is a "Housing Needs Analysis (HNA)"? - Oregon cities must conduct a Housing Needs (Capacity) Analysis to determine if a city has enough land to meet projected housing needs for the next two decades. McMinnville’s last acknowledged Housing Needs Analysis was for the years 2003-2023. City Council adopted a new “McMinnville Housing Needs Analysis” on February 27, 2024. It was found that McMinnville’s current Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) will not accommodate all projected housing needs for the years 2021-2041.

Land Use Efficiency Measures (Work Task 2 of Sequential UGB Work Plan) - Docket G 3-24 (to be completed in 2025)

Background

This project also includes the identification of Land Use Efficiency Measures to accommodate the unmet residential land need identified in McMinnville’s HNA. One of the largest barriers to affordable housing in McMinnville is land supply.  Due to historic growth planning challenges, McMinnville has endured approximately ten (10) years of limited land supply.  This constraint has led to a housing supply deficit which has put significant pressure on housing prices in McMinnville resulting in exponential housing price increases, as well as a lack of land supply available for affordable housing development.

McMinnville started its growth planning for the planning horizon of 2003 – 2023 in 2001.  This effort was challenged and appealed, resulting in an urban growth boundary amendment that was not successfully acknowledged until April 2021 for that planning horizon of 2003 – 2023.  Since cities are meant to plan for growth every fifteen-twenty years, the state asked McMinnville to start another growth planning effort focusing on a planning horizon of 2021 – 2041. 

Basics

Growth planning consists of three (3) basic steps:

1. identify the amount of land needed to support the anticipated housing, employment, and public amenities of a future population at the end of the planning horizon;
2. if there is not enough land within the existing urban growth boundary identify land-use efficiencies that the City would like to enact within its existing urban growth boundary to accommodate the housing and employment need; and
3. if there still is need for additional land within the urban growth boundary to accommodate the future housing, employment and public amenities needed to support the future population at the end of the planning horizon, amend the urban growth boundary to accommodate that land need. 

The City is currently on Step 1 of this process, and is looking to complete Step 2 as a part of this Housing Production Strategy work.

Additional Details on the Housing Production Strategy (HPS)

Public Engagement

The following activities will take place throughout the process.

• Focus Groups
• Public Open Houses
• Survey
• Listening Sessions
• Social Media and City Website updates

Committees, Planning Commission, and City Council

Additionally, there will be five key groups that will stay engaged in the HPS project.

• Project Advisory Committee
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Committee
• Affordable Housing Committee
• Planning Commission
• City Council

Scope of Work for the Housing Production Strategy (HPS) Project

The City of McMinnville is engaging with ECOnorthwest to develop a Housing Production Strategy (HPS) that will provide a City-led action plan to meet the housing needs of McMinnville residents. The work will consist of the following tasks.

• Contextualized Housing Need:  The purpose of “contextualizing” housing needs is to expand on the discussion of unmet housing needs from the HNA by providing additional data (where necessary) and information about housing needs. This task will result in further discussions of the implications of unmet housing need in McMinnville, which will inform consideration and selection of actions for inclusion in the HPS.
• Land Use Efficiency Measures:  With consideration of the needs and potential actions identified in the HNA, this task will identify past measures adopted and develop and refine policy measures that use residential land more efficiently and facilitate housing production, affordability, and choice.
• Strategies to Accommodate Future Housing Need: Begin looking at housing policies, projects, and programs that the City has implemented in the last three to five years, especially policies related to affordability of housing. Proposed actions will be selected through a prioritization process that will be reviewed by City staff, Consultants, a Project Advisory Committee, Affordable Housing Committee, Planning Commission, and City Council. 

The HPS Report will include the following:

• Contextualized housing needs
• Summaries of existing measures and final proposed strategies
• How the City’s existing measures and final proposed strategies help to achieve fair and equitable housing outcomes, affirmatively further fair housing, and overcome discriminatory housing practices and racial segregation
• Understanding of capacity limitations of City resources (primarily staff time and funding) for implementing the selected strategies for inclusion in the HPS; and
• A conclusion addressing the following:
  • A qualitative assessment of how the strategies collectively address the contextualized housing needs identified in the HNA and HPS;
  • Discussion of how the proposed actions, taken collectively, will increase housing options for historically marginalized communities;
  • How the City’s existing measures and proposed strategies will affirmatively further fair housing, link housing to transportation, provide access to areas with high Opportunity (such as areas with concentrations of jobs or services or accessible by transit), address needs for people facing homelessness and equitable distribution of services, create opportunities for rental housing and homeownership, and mitigate vulnerabilities to displacement and housing instability;
  • The rationale for any identified needs not being addressed; and
  • The City’s plan for monitoring progress on the housing production strategies.