Housing Land Advocates recently submitted its opening brief in the Oregon Court of Appeals challenging the adoption of the urban growth boundary expansion for the Portland Metropolitan Area by Metro and the casual approval of that expansion by Oregon’s Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC). As set forth in the brief, HLA is concerned that local governments will follow Metro’s roadmap to avoid increasing density to accommodate affordable housing by endorsing the adoption of density limitations by way of plans, ordinances or charter amendments to further exclusionary zoning restrictions in violation of state law.
HLA is looking to the courts to assure that LCDC and Metro cannot be let off the hook so easily, and that Metro must also look to existing neighborhoods to determine whether these areas can accommodate needed additional density before turning to expanding the existing urban growth boundary. The question that Metro has avoided is whether these neighborhoods can accommodate a 3% increase in buildable lands instead of a boundary expansion that once more results in providing luxury housing for the wealthy instead of needed housing for those less well off. Metro must lead instead of turning a blind eye to housing exclusion. That effort begins in the outer suburbs such as the City of Happy Valley and include other high-priced areas such as Lake Oswego, West Linn, and Sherwood, among others, to determine whether there are buildable lands that could increase density to allow affordable housing. Only then, will Metro start to lead the region out of exclusion to the equity goal to which it purports to aspire.
HLA notes Metro’s conversations about equity, but “conversations” do not replace those actions and hard planning work necessary to end local exclusionary zoning practices. The years between UGB expansions should be spent less on toolkits and more on identifying and leading member cities to expansion proposals that aim to end exclusion and gentrification, and stanch the forces that push marginalized communities to the edge of the urban growth boundary. The equity issues that HLA’s all volunteer-board argues in this UGB appeal provides the court with what is needed to make the right decision in this case, that is to send Metro back to the drawing board and transform its “conversations” about equity into practice in housing supply solutions.
Unless the LCDC’s approval of the subject UGB expansion is overturned, the Commission will have undermined a pillar of Oregon’s state land use program for compact UGBs. Beyond Metro, LCDC’s decision in this case, if sustained, will have provided a roadmap for local governments throughout Oregon to avoid the command of the Urbanization Goal (Goal 14) “to ensure efficient use of land,” paving the way for unnecessary UGB expansions, continued regulatory redlining, and other charter-based evasions of state land use policy across the State of Oregon
HLA wishes to applaud its pro bono attorney, Micheal Reeder, and volunteers like Al Johnson and other allies who helped formulate the arguments set forth here, as well as its lawyer board members for their leadership in this appeal.