Portland’s recent switch to City Council district elections could result in many changes, including unexpected impacts on housing availability. Research drawn from 100 California cities shows a dramatic decrease in multifamily zoning permits occurred when other cities switched to a district model. This raises the question: will this decrease in multifamily zoning permits play out with Portland’s recent change in government, too?
In 2001, California passed the California Voters Rights Act, which prohibits at-large elections for City Council seats, arguing that at-large elections discount the minority vote. Over 100 cities switched to a district-based model, where citizens are split into several districts that elect their own city counselors.
Michael Hankinson, George Washington University assistant professor of political science, is a leading researcher in the field of Urban Studies and has written extensively about local elections, housing supply, and equity in local government issues. He worked with Asya Magazinnik, Hertie School professor of social data science in Berlin, to study California cities’ change to district-based elections for a 2023 article in the Journal of Politics titled “The Supply-Equity Trade-off: The Effect of Spatial Representation on the Local Housing Supply.”
NEWS: Portland’s new city councilors talk homelessness approach
A switch to district-based election causes “no effect on the permitting on single-family homes, but causes a 44% decrease in the number of multifamily units permitted annually,” according to their report.
Hankinson and Magazinnik found in their study that at-large elections force “less politically powerful constituencies to bear the brunt of those costs” of increased housing supply. In other words, compared to district elections, at-large elections cause racial minorities and low-income people who are less politically powerful to disproportionately experience the concentrated costs of new housing, such as “noise, traffic congestion, and stereotypes of new arrivals.”
These stereotypes include believing that people in concentrated housing will bring more crime and noise to an area or decrease school quality. Cities put dense housing in areas with people of less political influence because people of all demographics “often fear development’s cost,” and they have less of a voice to state their opposition, according to another article authored by Hankinson this year, “How Self-Interest and Symbolic Politics Shape the Effectiveness of Compensation for Nearby Housing Development.”
Hankinson and Magazinnik found that new housing was more evenly geographically distributed after the implementation of district elections, and that they “also end the disproportionate channeling of new housing into minority neighborhoods.” This is because, in district-based elections, people who were previously less politically powerful now have a voice on the city council and vote against new housing in their district.
The logroll system
District-based local governments often follow a logroll system, Hankinson told Street Roots.
“In a logroll system, the government relies upon favors of other city council members to make progress,” Hankinson said.
This creates an unspoken “aldermanic privilege” in which the council votes in unison with a city councilor who votes against a permit considered less desirable, such as a large homeless shelter or affordable housing complex, in their district. This is done under the assumption that other city councilors will do the same for them if there is a similarly undesirable request. Each councilor effectively acts with the full backing of the council rather than independently voting based on their own policy beliefs.
“It’s the idea that you all take care of each other but don’t solve the overall problem (of creating more housing supply),” Hankinson said.
“Portland’s potential to follow the trend of decreasing multifamily housing supply will depend on if the City Council follows the Universal Logroll found in other district systems,” he said. It should also be noted that each district in Portland has three different city councilors, who may not always come to a united consensus.
Additionally, Portland has a different permitting system than the cities in Hankinson’s study.
His research was based on cities where “the distribution of goods (new housing) is from discretionary review (not by right), so it’s things that go before the planning commission or City Council,” he said.
The Portland permit model
Portland’s at-right model was described to Street Roots by Ken Ray, public information officer for the Portland City Permitting Commission.
“If the building’s proposed use is allowed under the site’s existing zoning, and the construction plans meet the requirements of building codes, a permit is issued,” Ray said. “Decisions can be appealed to higher authorities, including City Council, by those who have standing to appeal, but those appeals must be filed within certain time periods after a decision is made and often involve costly fees.”
The City Council votes on a small number of appeals annually. However, most permits are issued directly from the Planning and Zoning Commission and are determined by at-right. Therefore, the logroll system may not be as applicable, as city councilors do not have as much sway in building permits.
“Some (but certainly not all) development projects require land use reviews before applications for building permits can be filed,” Ray said. “Land use reviews vary in scope and complexity. Some land use decisions are made by city staff while decisions on more complex projects may go to a hearings officer or a review body such as the Design Commission or the Historic Landmarks Commission.”
In Portland, the Design Commission focuses on building aesthetics, and the Historic Landmark Commission focuses on historic preservation. These commissions vote on project approval.
Who gets heard?
Public comment is also a typical component of these decisions, according to the Design Commission’s website. There isn’t traceable data on the demographics of people who come to land use hearings in Portland, but Sarah Schindler and Kellen Kale’s research for the article “Neighbors Without Notice: The Unequal Treatment of Tenants and Homeowners In Land Use Hearing Procedures” gives insight into what the demographics of those hearings might look like.
“People who show up at land use hearings tend to be whiter, wealthier, older, and more likely to be homeowners than the surrounding community,” Schindler and Kale reported. “They also are more opposed to new housing construction in their communities. Thus, the views of these groups are amplified, and the outsized opposition to new housing (often referred to as NIMBYism) stymies needed development — despite the fact that these voices are not representative of the community as a whole.”
Schindler and Kale found this partly due to cities’ “scheduling of meetings during the workday, the burdens that attendance imposes on those who lack childcare, and the lack of communication to the public hearings in languages other than English.”
In Portland, the Design Commission hearings are bi-weekly on Wednesday afternoons, and the Historic Commission holds meetings on Monday afternoons — during the workday for many people.
However, “there is an even more fundamental reason for the underrepresentation of these community members: Because they are not invited,” according to Schindler and Kale’s report. “Unlike homeowners, tenants — who are disproportionately lower income and more likely to be Black and Latinx — often do not receive notice of public hearings under local ordinances.”
Portland is among the 84% of cities studied that do not require public notices of hearings to be distributed to tenants or occupants of the property, only homeowners. These hearings occur if the zoning code is changing or if a housing or commercial development is proposed to be built within a certain distance of the property. This means that renters, and therefore people who are disproportionately lower-income and minorities, are less aware of land commission meetings in Portland.
Decisions made by the Historic and Design commissions “may be appealed by the applicant, the owner and those entitled to notice, and any person adversely affected or aggrieved by the decision,” according to Portland’s Land Use Review Appeals website. People who believe that new housing development will have negative externalities have standing to appeal; however, people who would benefit long-term from more affordable housing are less likely to become involved.
The weight of the wait
Since the City Council doesn’t have jurisdiction over most zoning code decisions, it is Portland’s Historic and Design commissions that can significantly delay the process of getting permits for new housing. The average wait time from the date a commercial housing permit was submitted to the date it was issued was 594 days for permits issued since Nov. 2021, according to data from a public records inquiry request of all commercial permits issued in the last three years from the Portland Permitting and Development Department.
The timelines have been steadily increasing. There was an average wait time of 812 days for permits issued in the last year, compared to 519 days for permits issued between Nov. 2021 and Nov. 2022.
This could help explain why Portland differs in another way from most cities in Hankinson’s study. He found that most commercial housing was put in low-income and minority neighborhoods in at-large city council models. New multi-family units in Portland are built with geographical and economic diversity. The median income in the zip codes of new multi-family housing units permitted from Nov. 2021 to Nov. 2024 was $87,696, just 2.1% higher than Portland’s median income of $85,876, according to the same data inquiry request.
Extensive “permitting requirements directly increase the cost of building new housing by increasing soft costs, administrative burdens, uncertainty and delays” and “can drive up the cost of housing and contribute to the nation’s housing shortage,” according to a White House paper titled “Reforming Permitting Requirements to Lower the Cost of Building New Housing and Increase Housing Affordability.”
With long review processes, developers are incentivized to build expensive housing with higher profit margins and often require venture capital to keep the project afloat, according to the White House report. For many developers, lower-cost housing with lower profit margins isn’t worth the cost of going through the lengthy review process.
Portland’s at-right zoning code and the structure of multiple city councilors per district may make it more immune to city politics than the California cities in Hankinson’s research. However, Portland’s land review process and commissions still seem to be increasingly slowing housing development and incentivizing developers to build more expensive housing, perpetuating the city’s continued lack of affordable housing.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2024 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext.
This article appears in December 11, 2024.