Portlanders for Parking Reform

Better Parking Policy For The City of Roses

You are here: Home / Posts

Posts

Inclusionary Housing In Sellwood Hits Parking Stumbling Block

By 9 Comments

Update: Take a minute and email Commissioner Eudaly at chloe@portlandoregon.gov. Ask her to look into this situation in Sellwood. Ask her to work to remove barriers to more housing and let her know you think we need to build affordable housing, not more parking, in Portland. If you can, cc or bcc pdxshoupistas@gmail.com so we know our campaign is working.

In February 2017, new inclusionary housing rules went into effect in Portland and, as of early April, there has been only one qualifying multi-family building submitted for review under the new rules.

As previously reported, the Urban Development Group (UDG) asked for Early Assistance on refiling three permitted developments in Sellwood. If approved, this project could provide 40 units of affordable housing in Sellwood, but the deal is in jeopardy due to minimum parking requirements.

UDG is currently permitted to build three buildings in Sellwood.  Combined, the projects would add 187 market rate units, 46 parking stalls, and no units guaranteed affordable for tenants making less than 100% of the median family income (MFI).  These permits were filed, along with hundreds more, in the months before February’s inclusionary zoning mandate was enforced.

Less Housing = More (And Affordable) Housing. Permitted development has 187 market rate units, 0 guaranteed affordable, 46 parking stalls, proposal is for 170 market rate, 40 affordable, 0 parking stalls.
UDG Proposal would trade 46 parking stalls for 23 more homes (and allow 40 affordable homes)

The request for early assistance affirms much of what proponents of parking reform have been saying for years:  Required parking reduces the amount of housing built and makes it more expensive.  With the required 46 parking stalls waived, UDG would be able to build 23 more apartments for a new combined total of 210 homes.  Of the 210 apartments, 170 would be market rate, 31 would be affordable to tenants making 60% of the MFI, and 9 would be affordable to tenants making 80% MFI.

For every two parking stalls eliminated in the project, we get one more home for Portlanders. Because those additional homes still bring in rents and the project is not burdened with expensive parking, the development pencils out with the affordable housing as well.  This is how the system is supposed to work.

But the deal, as proposed, is unlikely to get approval from Commissioner Eudaly’s Bureau of Development Services (BDS).

To qualify for a parking waiver, the building must be “located 1500 feet or less from a transit station, or 500 feet or less from a transit street with 20-minute peak hour service.” That level of service is defined as “service provided by public transit to a site, measured on weekdays between 7:00 AM and 8:30 AM and between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM. The service is measured in one direction of travel, and counts bus lines, streetcars and light rail lines.”  BDS has some leeway in interpreting the code and according to their response to UDG, they don’t consider the level of service near 1717 SE Tenino Street to be sufficient. The issue seems to be a few points in the “peak hour” where the schedules have a gap of a few minutes beyond the 20 minute requirement.

There are two bus lines nearby 1717 SE Tenino that could be considered north/south routes (although one runs east/west at the location), the 99 and the 70 and the MAX Orange Line Station at Tacoma/Johnson Creek is just over 1/2 mile away (3 minutes by bike or 12 minutes leisurely walk).  Combined, the transit options are very good and the location is in the heart of Sellwood, walking distance from restaurants, New Seasons, Sellwood Middle School and much more.

But unless BDS interprets the code favorably, say by considering TriMet’s admitted 3 minute plus/minus for schedules to provide some flexibility, it’s very likely that Sellwood will lose the opportunity to have 40 affordable units built and, in their place, shelter for 46 cars will be provided to the community.

Ultimately, however, the situation highlights the capricious nature of minimum parking requirements. A few minutes on a TriMet schedule can lead to a very walkable apartment building having the same requirements as a building far from transit in the SW hills.

With BDS approval, three locations could support a combined 170 market rate apartments and 40 affordable apartments

If Portland City Council wants affordable housing to be built, they should remove all parking requirements for projects meeting the inclusionary housing mandate, wherever they are built. This would not only prevent corner-cases from sinking much needed housing projects, but would also help Portland catch up to our critical climate action goals.

Portland Included in FHWA’s Parking Pricing Case Studies

By 1 Comment

(On-Street Parking in Boise Neighborhood)

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) last month released two documents – “FHWA-Parking Pricing Workshop Summaries” and “FHWA Sponsored Parking Pricing Projects Update 2017” – on parking management and pricing initiatives in several U.S. cities including Seattle, Denver, and Portland.

Since FHWA sponsored the Portland Parking Symposium in June 2015, the City of Portland has made notable changes in its parking policy and management programs such as (1) raising downtown meter rate to $2.00; (2) developing an on-street parking toolkit for NW Portland; and (3) removing parking minimums for housing projects under the Inclusionary Housing Zoning Code near frequent transit.

The workshop summaries document also noted a neighborhood on-street parking permit system in the works:

“few neighborhoods currently have parking permit programs, and the city is looking to enact new policies to address parking shortages where they exist. Everyone who lives in those residential districts will be entitled to parking; however, it will not be free”.

However, the highly anticipated permit program never came to fruition. After a year-long public process and receiving support from both neighborhoods and city staff , the residential permit program was blocked from even getting a vote by Commissioner Amanda Fritz. Subsequently, all documents and information about the residential permit program were removed from the project website.

The FHWA report shows many other cities, such as Boston, Denver, Houston, and D.C., use neighborhood residential permits to help manage on-street parking. There is no reason why Portland cannot implement this tool. It is unclear whether City Council plans to revisit the residential permit program this year, but the pressure for residential permits will continue to grow as some neighborhoods may resist new development under Inclusionary Housing and increasing housing infill due to fear for more competition for on-street parking.

In Sellwood, the key to Portland’s new affordable housing program turns out to be … no parking

By 3 Comments

A proposed 89-unit building at SE 17th Avenue and Tenino, one block off Tacoma in Sellwood. Rendering: Myhre Group Architects via Portland Bureau of Development Services.

This is a guest post from the blog of Portland for Everyone, which covers housing abundance, diversity and affordability in Portland.

Which is more important to the future of Portland:

  1. homes that are affordable to lower-income people, or
  2. storage for upper-income people’s cars?

The question doesn’t get much starker than with two new buildings proposed last week in Sellwood and nearby Moreland, close to the Willamette River in southeast Portland.

If they move forward as proposed, the two apartment buildings — one with 89 homes, the other with 54 — seem to be the first fruits of the inclusionary housing ordinance approved by the city council in December.

Depending on how the design works, the buildings could add as many as 29 new apartments that would rent for as little as older apartments east of 136th Avenue do today.

The new homes would be in the walkable, relatively transit-rich Sellwood-Moreland area, less than half a mile from the new Orange MAX Line and the Springwater Corridor bike path into downtown. Their affordability would be guaranteed for 99 years.

Here’s the tradeoff: in order to afford the lower-rent units, the buildings would have to be built with no on-site parking.

Every underground parking space costs $550 per month in additional rent

Parking garages are expensive, especially underground garages like the ones UDG had previously proposed for the Sellwood area. As of 2013, each underground parking space added $55,000 to the cost of a building, which translates to about $550 per month that comes ultimately from rent payments in the new building.

The city council’s decision last November to waive parking requirements for apartment buildings that participate in the inclusionary housing program was one of the crucial offsets intended to prevent the program from halting new development.

If the two new “early assistance” requests filed last Tuesday by Urban Development Group is any indication, that plan is working.

UDG already owns the land on both sites. The building at 17th and Tenino would go onto the site of a drive-in restaurant:

A new building here would have 89 apartments if it sets aside some homes for lower-income Portlanders, or 79 apartments if it includes on-site parking instead.

The building at Milwaukie and Yukon would be on the site of this house:

A new building here would have 54 apartments if it sets aside some homes for lower-income Portlanders, or 47 apartments if it includes on-site parking instead.

Here’s are the notes from city staff summarizing the request from the would-be developer, spotted Monday by Iain MacKenzie of NextPortland.com:

In other words, the developer doesn’t have to include units affordable to lower-income people in his buildings, because both projects were green-lighted before the city’s new inclusionary housing rule took effect. But if including low-rent units means he doesn’t have to include on-site parking, then including the low-rent units could actually make the building more valuable.

Which is to say: because of the city’s new rules, a developer is now asking to build homes for lower-income people instead of storage for higher-income people’s cars.

A good tradeoff for tenants and the environment, housing advocates say

Vivian Satterfield, standing at right, at a 2016 workshop in support of inclusionary housing.

Vivian Satterfield, deputy director of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregonand a leading advocate for the city’s inclusionary housing requirement, welcomed the proposals in an interview Monday.

“Having access to public transportation, being in walkable communities, actually benefits us all, including those of us who have multiple vehicles,” said in an interview Monday. “These are things that should be afforded to lower-income folks.”

If that means that parking a car in central Sellwood gets a little more annoying, she suggested, so be it.

“There are tradeoffs,” Satterfield said, adding that as she spoke she was looking across a “sea of parking lots” along 82nd Avenue.

Tony Jordan of Portlanders for Parking Reform agreed.

“This request is a win-win for affordability and our environment,” Jordan said in a text message. “We hope that other developers will choose the same route.”

David Mullens, a project manager for Urban Development Group who is managing the proposals, declined a request to discuss the projects.

This is only a request for advice from the city’s permitting staff; it’s entirely possible that UDG will decide to pursue its other plan instead. Whatever happens, we’ll be watching this example closely. It could be the first sign of big things for Portland.

Portland for Everyone blogs about how to get abundant, diverse, affordable housing. You can follow it on Twitter and Facebook or get new posts by email a few times each month.

PDC’s Parking Problem Restricts Ability To Deliver On Strategic Goals

By 4 Comments

The Portland Development Commission has a parking problem.

The agency has committed to spending $32 million in taxpayer provided urban renewal funds to build an obsolete-on-arrival valet-only hotel parking garage which is steps away from a MAX station. That project’s price tag has increased by $6 million dollars before construction has even started, casting doubt on PDC’s already shaky projections that the garage would generate a $500,000/year profit.

A parking garage right next to a light rail station.
Drawing of PDC’s Hotel Parking Garage

An additional $5 million in PDC money is earmarked to upgrade another parking garage, the 10th and Yamhill SmartPark Garage, in a project that will likely lead to the displacement of several existing businesses in the city core. Another $3 million dollars is budgeted to secure resources to build district parking garages in the Central Eastside Industrial District, building the parking itself will surely cost many more millions.

 

The fact that these projects are at odds with the city’s climate action and transportation goals should be enough reason for Mayor Ted Wheeler to initiate a change in strategy, but a report PDC delivered to the Planning and Sustainability Commission reveals more problems.

PDC’s parking obsession hinders it’s ability to deliver on it’s strategic goals to advance social and economic equity and support a vibrant central city.  PDC commissioned a policy impact calculator from ECONorthwest to “help PDC and its partners understand potential financial impacts to PDC’s development activities and to help PDC respond to the new policy environment” which includes: inclusionary zoning (IZ), new green building requirements, system development charges for parks, and a construction excise tax. The calculator was used to conduct pro forma analysis on 5 prototype projects.

Included in these prototype developments is a potential affordable housing project and parking garage in Old Town. This prototype project would contain 3 floors of residential space made up of 79 multi-family units.  This, much needed, affordable housing would be built above 3 floors of podium parking. The report notes that a density bonus for more housing would be allowed for this project, but wouldn’t be used because the extra height required for the building would trigger more expensive building materials or significantly more expensive underground parking.  Notably, the parking in this building isn’t required or even targeted for the residents of the building, it would, instead, induce more commuter and visitor traffic to downtown.

A density bonus applied to the Old Town prototype would require more expensive construction or an underground parking structure.

This report is only exploring options for PDC and it points out that the density bonus for affordable housing isn’t a true financial incentive due to  the fact that other costs scale with the development.  Nevertheless, the inclusion of a parking garage in the project instead of more housing is further evidence that PDC is pursuing short sighted goals to encourage driving when it should be focusing on building affordable housing in areas of economic opportunity.

Mayor Ted Wheeler and his fellow Commissioners should ask PDC to calculate what a 6 story building with 5 floors of affordable housing for humans and no shelter for cars would look like. It may not pencil out, but it would be a project far more worthy of public subsidy than a parking garage disguised as affordable housing.