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Date ArticleType
9/1/2023 Member News

HBA Scores Major Win with Permitting Consolidation in Portland


HBA Government Affairs Director provided invited testimony on behalf of the home building industry and a broad coalition of organizations in the business community to support a systemic overhaul of Portland’s permitting functions. Following months of groundwork, HBA’s lead role in advocating for the unification of Portland’s permitting functions into a single entity was finally approved with a 5-0 vote by the Portland City Council on Wednesday, August 30th. This is a huge win for builders in Portland who’ve long experienced the disfunction getting a single permit through 7 different bureaus.

With 15 individual organizations co-signing, HBA took a lead role in drafting and submitted a letter urging council to approve a plan that is aims to fundamentally reform the nature and process of permitting functions within the city. Here is the letter for review. With this vote, council directed staff to offer a roadmap and funding plan that will house all permitting functions within the city into a single, new entity by July 2024. While there is still much work to do to see this measure through, we applaud Commissioner Rubio and her team for bringing this to the finish line with council's full support.

HBA is also closely engaged in other projects related to the city’s housing production goals, including a recently released Housing Needs Analysis Draft and the RICAP 10 Code Clean-up Project. Additionally, we are working with Commissioner Rubio’s office and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to advance a once-in-a-generation proposal called the Housing Regulatory Relief Project, which will tackle bike storage requirements, ground floor active use, bird-safe glazing, land use vesting timeframes, design review, and neighborhood contact regulations. While there is still a lot of work to be done, we are hopeful that through HBA’s leadership, housing production will bounce back in Portland.