ARTICLE
HBA staff have been following the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities (CFEC) rulemaking since it started taking shape last year. While OHBA has been actively working at the state level through the rulemaking process, work groups and in meetings with DCLD staff and the governor’s office, HBA has been participating in meetings at the local level. Just as HBA is concerned about the unintended consequences of the rules being proposed around CFEC and how the adoption of required compliance land use and transportation rules will affect our ability to produce housing, local jurisdictions, and Metro have some of the same concerns. At a time when local jurisdictions are experiencing increasing workloads due to growth, are under-resourced to deal with the increasing activity, and are already having to implement large projects such as HB 2001 and SB 458 compliance, the timing for a new land use and planning mandate is poor. In addition, the process seems to be designed to move ahead at all costs without taking into consideration the concerns of industry and local jurisdictions nor offer the extensive vetting typically used for this kind of change. OHBA and HBA will continue to offer the industry voice on this issue, but still share concerns with local jurisdictions that this issue may ultimately end up in courts after everything is in place.