ARTICLE
On August 28th, Portland’s City Council approved a small but important technical change to the way that affordable homeownership projects are approved. Following a year of joint-advocacy in Salem between Portland’s Government Relations team and HBA, Council voted to streamline the city's HOLTE program by giving Portland’s Housing Bureau the authority to approve builder applications for homebuyer affordability exemptions. In the past, as mandated by state-law, City Council was required to approve each project application through a resolution prepared by the Housing Bureau. The old process added unneeded time to get affordable homeownership projects started in the city. This change has the potential to help builders save weeks (potentially months) in development timelines for projects accessing the tax abatement exemption. This is a small fix, but an important one to help our members remove unnecessary delays in getting housing built more quickly in Portland.