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HBA members have for years doubted the veracity of local buildable lands inventories (BLIs) that cities use to determine their existing capacity to support new housing. As part of the Tualatin 2040 project, HBA served on the city’s Technical Advisory Committee and worked with local stakeholders to develop and advance pro-housing strategies. Pursuant to Metro’s 2040 Household Distributive Forecast, Tualatin must ensure that developers can build 1,014 new housing units within city boundaries over the next two decades. In order to determine where these units will go, Tualatin produced a BLI. However, due to mapping irregularities, the city improperly identified eleven parcels as vacant or partially vacant, despite the fact that they collectively contained over 800 units of for-sale, rental, and assisted living housing. HBA was able to uncover these irregularities though a detailed parcel level analysis and ground truthing. Once uncovered, we worked with city staff to remove the eleven parcels from the BLI, which resulted in a 37% reduction in Tualatin’s available housing capacity. With this amended BLI, the City Council is now better positioned to truly understand Tualatin’s critical housing needs. To learn more about our work on BLI’s throughout the region, contact Ezra Hammer at ezrah@hbapdx.org. Next Article