analysis
BY KEVIN MATTHEWS
Housing Mix is Key
City manager’s growth plans examined
C
ity Manager Jon Ruiz rolled out his summary version
of Eugene’s growth plan for the next 20 years at a
Eugene City Council work session March 14.
Over the course of the week of March 19, his presentation
and the supporting staff materials, including overall maps,
became available for viewing on the city website.
The broad conceptual directions of the city manager’s
recommendation follow the Seven Pillars of Envision
Eugene, a framework distilled by staff a year ago from the
several day-long meetings of the 75-person Community
Resource Group (CRG).
However the public has seen few details during the last
12 months of technical refi nement work. Perhaps 80 percent
of that detailed research, study and documentation has been
done through the Technical Resource Group (TRG), a joint
working team of about half a dozen citizens and several
staff, sometimes also working with outside consultants.
Perhaps 20 percent of the city manager’s Envision Eugene
recommendation has been worked up by city staff working
quietly, with essentially no public input. This leaves some
important questions for the community to consider, and just
a few weeks to weigh in on them. If you’ve been wondering
when Envision Eugene would ever get to the bottom line, in
terms of the key provisions, that time is now.
Historical housing mix . The single biggest open
issue in Envision Eugene is what’s known as the “housing
mix.” This is the ratio of new housing which will be built
as detached single family homes, compared to all other
types of housing, called multifamily, including single
family attached (such as row houses), small apartment
and condominium buildings, and large apartment and
condominium buildings.
Eugene had about 43,000 standalone homes and about
26,000 homes in multifamily buildings of some type,
through about 2008. Comparing all the exact numbers gives
us the city’s “historical housing mix” of 61 percent single
family and 41 percent multifamily.
With our 20 year population growth projection locked
in at 34,000 people (about 0.9 percent per year growth), we
are planning to build about 15,000 new dwelling units of
all kinds over the 20-year planning period, through about
2031. We know that about 6,000 of those new dwellings
will be single family, and we know that about 6,000 will be
multifamily. The question boils down to the remaining 3,000
dwelling units. How many of those will be standalone, and
how many will be multifamily?
This is not a question of pushing people who want them
(and can afford them) out of standalone houses. In 20 years,
in anyone’s current proposal, we expect to have somewhere
between 50,000 and 53,000 single family homes in Eugene
— all those we have today, plus several thousand more.
Future housing mixes . When the TRG looked at
housing mix, it documented impacts of housing ratios
to bookend a reasonable range of options, 60 percent
single/40 percent multi (similar to the historical rate), and
40 percent single/60 percent multi (a strongly progressive,
sustainability-oriented rate). However, because it has
worked as a strictly technical research team, the
TRG did not take a policy position.
The city of Springfi eld is planning
for 52 percent single/48 percent multi.
Corvallis is planning for 50 percent
single/50 percent multi. Albany is
planning for 47 percent single/53
percent multi. And the actual housing
mix built in Eugene for 2009 and again
for 2010 was 39 percent single/61
percent multi.
The city manager’s current recom-
mendation of a 55 percent single/45 per-
cent multifamily housing mix would be most
regressive of any of these comparators. It projects
construction of 8,250 new single family dwelling units,
and 6,750 new multifamily housing units, including student
housing.
What housing mix means . Friends of Eugene (FoE) is
advocating a 45 percent single/55 percent multifamily hous-
ing mix, the reverse of the city manager’s recommendation.
FoE recommends that we plan for construction of 6,750
new single family dwelling units and 8,250 new multifam-
ily housing units.
A pivotal difference is the amount of land it takes to add
more standalone houses, compared to adding more attached
dwellings. As it turns out, if Eugene plans for a housing mix
of 50/50 or anything more progressive, our residential land
need can be met sustainably, without the need for an urban
growth boundary (UGB) expansion, thus preserving our
surrounding rural farm, forest, and natural areas — and the
life choices of the people who already live in those outside-
the-UGB areas.
Most housing observers fi nd that a higher proportion
of multifamily housing provides better affordability for
the citizens who need it most. A higher proportion of
multifamily housing also fi ts better into Eugene’s plans for
compact urban growth through mixed-use redevelopment of
core commercial areas.
Many housing observers also note the unprecedented
large demographic shift of baby boomers hitting retirement
ages, and project that 20 years from now there will be a
growing excess of single family homes nationwide — not
because anyone who can afford it will be pushed out of a
house they want to be in, but simply through the process of
consumer choice over time.
Jobs and people . Another important policy dial in
balancing Eugene’s growth within the existing UGB is the
projected jobs growth rate. The city manager is currently
recommending a 1.4 percent per year jobs growth rate. That
means that over the next 20 years, while we add 34,000
new people in Eugene (about two thirds of whom are likely
workers) we would be planning to add 35,800 jobs. More
jobs than the total of new people!
FoE currently recommends that Eugene instead plan for
a 1.27 percent annual jobs growth rate. That is the average of
the 0.88 percent population growth rate, with the high 1.67
percent rate projected for the next 10 years
by the Oregon Economic Department
(OED) while we hope to be recovering
from the deep job losses of the Great
Recession.
Projecting 1.27 percent per year
jobs growth for Eugene is not only
more sound and reasonable than
aiming for a pie-in-the-sky number
of new jobs greater than the number
of new people, but it would also put
less unreasonable pressure on our
plans for constructive redevelopment in
the commercial and industrial land base.
Expanding questions . Overall, the city
manager’s recommendation would expand the 34,000 acres
currently inside the UGB by more than another 1,000 acres.
About 250 acres of the expansion is for park areas which
seem reasonable and appropriate.
Important questions remain about the proposed 475
acre expansion in northwest Eugene for large lot industrial
growth, and the proposed 350 acre expansion, mostly in
southwest Eugene, for residential growth in the form of new
subdivisions with single family houses.
If Eugene gets to a housing mix of 50/50 or better, the
residential expansion area would be moot — which would
let the whole community better focus on our primary job of
high-quality core-commercial redevelopment.
In the meantime, for both the industrial and residential
areas, FoE believes the community needs to see a full and
accurate accounting of the both the taxpayer and utility
customer costs of public infrastructure to support growth
in those rural areas, and of the full environmental costs of
growth into prime farmland, across wetlands in a critical
habitat path, and over oak savannah hills.
Once the actual costs of expanding are understood, then
the community should simply apply equal criteria to the
options of growing inward or growing outward. This fair
and balanced “alternatives analysis,” which is required by
state law before expanding the UGB, has not yet been done.
Growing better, not just bigger . Eugene’s long-
standing growth management policies say, “Support the
existing Eugene UGB by taking actions to ... use existing
vacant land and under-used land within the boundary more
effi ciently.”
With a more modern housing mix, a more neutral jobs
growth rate, and with a close look at a real alternatives
analysis before jumping to propose expansion, we can
actually do what our community policy asks of us.
FoE believes the result will be a strong plan to grow
Eugene better, fully maximizing the value of all our personal
and community investments within the current UGB.
FoE believes the result will be a safer, greener, more
prosperous Eugene for all who call this place home.
Kevin Matthews is a community volunteer on the Envision Eugene
Technical Resource Group, president of Friends of Eugene and Southeast
Neighbors, and editor-in-chief of ArchitectureWeek magazine.
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MARCH 29, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
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