ARTICLE
On November 15th, following input from HBA, the Lake Oswego’s City Council passed a resolution to codify and update their Demolition Tax program. Since 2020, the demolition fee has inherently increased costs to homebuyers and remodelers, but this month the city recently created a new path for builders to avoid the fee if they use enhanced deconstruction methods. Originally, the $15,000 tax applied to the demolition of any and all residential structures, with a small discount for certified deconstruction. HBA staff held several meetings with city officials and provided testimony to council urging greater flexibility of the fee’s application. As a result, the new rules enacted by council are set to go into effect December 15th, 2022 and will now allow full fee waivers if builders utilize certified manual deconstruction contractors/methods to remove an existing residential structure. Doing so will now save builders $15,000 on any demolition they undertake. There is also a new allowance for affordable housing to receive the waiver and a new requirement for deconstruction of homes built before 1940. Originally intended to raise funding for parks maintenance, since 2020 when the tax went into effect, there’ve been 83 demolition permits pulled and $1,125,000 in fees collected. Although we are disappointed that the council did not agree to sunset the tax as HBA had originally advocated, we are pleased that they listened to our testimony to allow more flexibility for discounts and waivers.