WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 The truth can break through. 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Hello and welcome back to Housing Voices. I am Marty. 3 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:09.000 And I'm Bre. 4 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:30.000 And we're back from our few weeks' sabbatical recess. Our recess, our recess. And today we've got some exciting, exciting people that are coming to talk to us, because housing, it's not just a headline. It's pressure and complexity. And we get Jacky Lee and we get Mary Kyle, both from 1000 Friends of Oregon. 5 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:31.000 Yeah. 6 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:52.000 If you've been in any conversation around housing in Oregon, you have heard of 1000 Friends and the work that they do, especially protecting farm and forest land. And I am really excited. I bring this up probably every podcast episode: environmental, how that impacts our housing, as well as my favorite bucket, legislative. 7 00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:05.000 Always your favorite bucket. Yes, yes. My special interest. I'd like to challenge you one time not to bring up legislative. We'll see if she... whatever happens. Who would I be? You would be transformed and new. Yeah, yeah. 8 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 But would I be me? I don't know. 9 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:27.000 You could be. But we could see. But today we're back at it with 1000 Friends, and we're going to talk to them about infill in rural Oregon as well as in cities. We had Michael Andersen on before, who really talked to us about how important 1000 Friends is to the infill discussion. 10 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:28.000 Yeah. 11 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:30.000 Urban growth boundary. Let's do it. 12 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.000 Let's do it. Welcome back to Housing Voices. 13 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.000 From the porches and shelters, streets and the room. [VERIFY: theme lyric] 14 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:53.000 If the houses have voices, the truth could break through. [VERIFY: theme lyric] Bre: Okay. And we are back at Housing Voices. I'm Bre. 15 00:01:53.000 --> 00:02:01.000 And I am Marty. And today we have the honor and privilege (words sometimes are hard for me) to have Mary Kay and Jacky with us. 16 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Mary Kyle. 17 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:16.000 Mary Kyle. When I say Kay, I mean Kyle. I apologize. I'm just a little bit starstruck with her bio after reading. So we're really, we're really excited to talk to you, and thank you for joining us. 18 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:38.000 And Mary Kyle and Jacky, if you could both go into a little bit about yourselves, your background. I think a lot of people have heard about 1000 Friends across the state and the work that you do in a variety of different topics, but specifically with the focus on housing, which is obviously why we're here. 19 00:02:38.000 --> 00:04:04.000 Well, I think having Jacky and me on your program is great. We're sort of bookends on the housing in the organization. I mean, the organization's been involved with housing since before I joined it, but I joined in 1990 as a staff attorney on urban issues, meaning housing, transportation. It's come to mean climate, walkable communities. And Jacky has been with us a year and a half now. Jacky, has it been...? Yeah, on housing. So it demonstrates a consistency and continuity of 1000 Friends' commitment to housing. And the Oregon Land Use Planning Program has 19 statewide goals, each of them on a different topic, one of which is Goal 10, Housing. And 1000 Friends has been engaged in it since the beginning, helping Oregon to meet that promise of Goal 10: housing for everyone in every community. So I've been the policy wonk and an attorney at this for a long time, and Jacky and another one of our colleagues are bringing a power that we have mostly not had, which is getting out on the ground and organizing and talking to people in their communities, because great policies don't mean anything if they're not implemented well at the local level. So, Jacky, you might want to talk a little bit about what you're doing. 20 00:04:04.000 --> 00:05:05.000 Yeah, for sure. So before I was on staff at 1000 Friends, I did the Land Use Leadership Initiative program about three or four years before I got hired. And it's a really cool program. Teaches you everything you ever want to know about land use. And I think I remember being just really blown away by the power that land use has. I remember feeling like... because my kind of background and interest was in environmental policy, and I remember having this, like, light bulb moment where I connected the idea that, you know, you can... Development and environmentalism are not opposed to each other. You can actually have, like, good land use policy that results in... Or you can have... Sorry, I'm getting flustered by the fact I'm in an interview. 21 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:06.000 Pressure. 22 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.000 You're doing a great job, by the way. I'm already taking notes on you guys. 23 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:51.000 Yeah, you can have good policy that results in meeting everyone's needs, meeting everyone's housing needs, while not sacrificing your environmental priorities. And the idea that you can do both of those at once was a really big game changer for me. And so when I got hired at 1000 Friends, I feel really strongly that I want to share this message that we can meet people's housing needs without sacrificing other priorities, especially priorities related to the environment or to the economy. 24 00:05:51.000 --> 00:06:48.000 I'm really glad that you brought that up, actually, Jacky, because so often in a lot of our housing conversations, our environmental priorities are, in a way, put at odds with our development and our growth priorities. And in some conversations, the, you know, expanding the urban growth boundary and growing our cities has been something that people have brought up as a way to address our housing problems. And then there are folks saying, no, we need to support, you know, protect our farm, our forest land, and the beautiful environment that so many people move to our state for and love about our state. And it's kind of tricky to navigate that conversation, especially because it has gotten to such a tricky and, I think, really stressful point in our housing conversation, like we have to do something. And then this layer on top of it is making it really complicated. 25 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:49.000 Yeah. 26 00:06:49.000 --> 00:07:02.000 So I have a couple questions for you, if I may. Oh, did I interrupt you, Jacky? What made you decide to go to this land use initiative program before you even became a part of 1000 Friends? 27 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:03.000 Sounds like something I want to do. 28 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:50.000 Actually, you probably do want to do it. So the Land Use Leadership Initiative is a program that 1000 Friends puts on that trains, like, leaders, clergy, policymakers, kind of people who are contributing in some way to their community around land use policy or planning. And so it's meant for people who are not already trained in it. And, you know, for example, there were, like, a couple city councilors on there. There's often, like, planning commissioners, there's often students, people who are like up-and-coming professionals. And yeah, it was just a really interesting experience. But Mary Kyle can share more about it. 29 00:07:50.000 --> 00:09:15.000 We've been running our LULI program, as we call it, for about a dozen years now, I think, and we've generally taken one cohort of 20 to 25 people a year through what's about a four- to six-month-long program, meeting once, maybe twice a week. It's evolved as we've, you know, learned what works and what doesn't work. COVID made us realize we can do some things online too. So it's a mixture of, say, online talking heads and field trips, but like four to six months exposing folks to the full range of land use issues. And then in most cohorts, there's also been, like, a deep dive into something. I don't know if there was one for Jacky's cohort. It also depends on where it is. So we've done several in the Metro area. We've done three or four in the Rogue Valley. Jacky, I assume yours was in the southern Willamette Valley, Corvallis area. We've done a few in Central Oregon, so there's often an emphasis on an issue in that particular region. But again, I think we once did two a year and that was a lot, but one cohort a year. So there's been several hundred folks that have now gone through this program. 30 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:54.000 And my question: where was this born out of? What caused this to be created? Because when I think... as I was a former staffer for Senator Wyden, and I've worked with a lot of electeds across the state, and especially on the city and county levels, there are a lot of folks that don't have professional backgrounds in a lot of these issues that they're tasked with addressing, specifically around housing and land use. Was this born out of a realization that maybe there were some things to learn for policymakers? 31 00:09:54.000 --> 00:11:26.000 A prior executive director thought this up, and I'm not exactly sure what prompted him, except I know he was looking at things like the American Leadership Forum, if you're familiar with that, which is a much more extensive, long, professionally led... I think you have to pay for it. This you don't have to pay for. Let me just make that clear. In fact, we try to make it easy for people to participate, especially those who might have childcare or transportation needs. And so programs like that were a model, but I'd have to go back and ask that former executive director if he had anything in particular. But he announced it at one of our annual, you know, dinner events. And then a former colleague at 1000 Friends started it, ran the first two cohorts. And then different colleagues have run it since then. And we've refined it, as I mentioned, over the years in terms of what works best. And I think we've got a pretty well-oiled engine now, and we try to partner with organizations in the areas in which we are holding the cohort. So we've partnered with AARP on several of these. The Soil and Water Conservation District. I'm not sure who the other organizations were in your group, Jacky. Rogue Advocates and Rogue Climate were ones. Anyway, so. 32 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:49.000 So what brought you... I'm just going to take a step back here. From Chicago, right? You then went to Stanford, and then you went to law school at UC Davis. Thank you. I knew it was a UC something, but I couldn't remember which one. And then what brought you to Portland and 1000 Friends? What's the history? 33 00:11:49.000 --> 00:13:10.000 Right. I grew up outside of Chicago. We had always traveled west. I was much more westward focused. So going west was not unusual. And I worked for four years after college before going to law school. And I worked for an environmental organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, for the Sierra Club, and followed a college boyfriend to Oregon. But there was a job opening. I mean, there's nothing more to it than that. There was a job opening at 1000 Friends of Oregon that friends of friends had said, you should look at that organization and apply to. I was already working in the environmental field, and as Jacky described, I had this light bulb moment where I thought, wow, this really puts it all together for me, consistent with what I've done as an undergraduate and things like that. So the you-can-have-it-all: environment and housing. And so I worked for a couple of years doing public relations at 1000 Friends, but really wanted to be in that policymaking role. And so I went to law school with a focus on environmental policy and came back to Oregon because I love Oregon. I mean, I really love it. 34 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:15.000 So not that boyfriend necessarily, but the state. 35 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:22.000 He's back in California. So yeah. 36 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:33.000 So how have you watched the legislative and your policymaking grow since you started there 30 years ago, something like that? 37 00:13:33.000 --> 00:16:17.000 Well, when I started, I was doing more things that look like being an attorney. You know, we had litigation. I was involved with litigation over, again, how cities were accommodating growth. Well, how towns and cities were accommodating the people who currently live there and will be living there, whether it's actually growing in population or not, because those are different questions. How you accommodate everyone who is living in a community, working in a community, recreating, and all that. And so not over all those years... Oregon was not necessarily growing during all those years, but for most of them it has been. So I have seen that the broad strokes of the Oregon Land Use Planning Program have been embraced by Oregonians, by elected officials for the most part, over all those years. Things like the importance of protecting farm and forest land, having compact towns and cities, having housing for all, having walkable communities are things that people generally value. And particularly that sense of place that we have here in Oregon as a result of that. Not everybody can tell you, oh, that's because of urban growth boundaries. But when they go to other states and they come back, they realize we have a backdrop to our lives, which might be mountains, coast, high desert, that we all feel are very special, that this is a special place. And the Oregon Land Use Planning Program has a huge part to do with that, with making really livable towns and cities and protecting that sense of place, whether it's iconic wilderness areas, working farms and forests, the park in your city that you can go to, and having, like, neighborhoods and a sense of community, no matter the size of your town or city. So I think those are highly valued. That doesn't mean every specific of it is, or that we've really lived up to the goals of our land use planning program. But they're valued. I mean, protecting the coast. Everyone thinks of the beaches as theirs, right? And Mount Hood as theirs. And that they can readily get to those places. And when they go to other states, they realize it's just sprawl and it all kind of looks the same, cookie cutters. So anyway, I think those are unchanged. 38 00:16:17.000 --> 00:17:20.000 And I wanted to follow up a little bit on planning for the growth for these cities, because there seems to be a little bit, as somebody on the ground that hasn't been part of the active planning for this... There seems to be a little bit of a disconnect, I think, statewide in planning for the future in a lot of these cities. Because just take, for example, Corvallis: very high housing prices. And I hear all the time, we don't have enough buildable land, et cetera. And there were a lot of population projections for this area that put us at, in some cases, 30,000 more people than the current population for Corvallis. And where was that? When did that disconnect happen? I know this is a huge question here, but how did we get here, when we all can agree on those ideals that you listed: walkable communities, you know, connected communities, etc.? 39 00:17:20.000 --> 00:19:17.000 I'll give some, like, wonky answers. And Jacky can talk about some of the towns and cities they've been working in. So the Oregon Land Use Planning Program requires every city to designate an urban growth boundary that is supposed to hold approximately 20 years' worth of land for urban uses. Housing, employment, hospitals, parks, roads, everything. And cities did that. And some have updated those over the years. But you asked me how have things changed? We've become much more sophisticated, with much better analytical abilities as the years have gone on, and realized that it's not enough just to draw a boundary. It really matters what goes on inside it and how we plan and zone those lands. So while land was zoned for residential use, over 70% of the land, and therefore the housing, in Oregon in every town and city of any size is for single detached housing on a lot of 5,000 square feet or more, for the most part. That is the most expensive and land-extensive housing option. And it's not what a lot of people are looking for, either for their family size, their needs, their age, or their income. And we have not historically provided a lot of other options. Even in Portland, it's kind of like a high-rise or a single detached house, and not as much of that missing middle housing that you've probably heard about, in terms of duplexes, fourplexes, small apartment buildings, that sort of thing. Most of those were outlawed around the country, including in Oregon, from the 1950s on, as a way of economic segregation and exclusionary zoning. 40 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:19.000 Redlining. 41 00:19:19.000 --> 00:21:36.000 And redlining started much earlier, overt redlining. And then when the Supreme Court said you can't have covenants that are racially discriminatory, then we just went to exclusionary zoning. We found another way. Yes. So we see the remnants. More than remnants, we see that reflected in our neighborhoods today, and even in much more recent subdivisions. They often are economically exclusionary. So we have land, but we haven't provided the diversity of housing people need on that land. That has been changing over the last decade, as the Oregon Legislature has said, you know, if we're really going to live up to Goal 10 and we're really going to make sure we have housing for all, we need to ensure that every city uses all the zoning tools to set the table, to provide that opportunity for that to happen. Zoning is not the only tool that's needed. Obviously, there's funding, there's capital, there's labor force, there's infrastructure costs. There's a lot of other things that go into that, but we have to get the underlying zoning right, and we're doing a much better job of that. We didn't get to this place overnight, and we're not going to change it overnight. There are some things we can do to make it happen faster, but... So that's kind of how we got to where we are, where you see a disconnect: there's land in Corvallis, there's land inside a lot of urban growth boundaries available for housing, but until recently, it's just been single detached housing. And then the other issue is infrastructure. Over the years, the state and federal government picked up a lot of the tab for pipes and roads. That's not happening anymore. And if you're running for city council, you know about the impacts of the property tax measures on the ability of cities to finance that infrastructure. Or the inability. So it's a real conundrum for cities. But Jacky's been working in towns and cities around the state where this isn't just, like, a Portland thing. It's Yachats, Astoria, Baker City, where Jacky's been in recent months. 42 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:44.000 Jacky, what are you seeing, and what are some of the actions that you're helping communities take? 43 00:21:44.000 --> 00:23:04.000 Yeah, so a big thing that we're working on is the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. So kind of what Mary Kyle was alluding to is that the state has really transformed the way that cities are required to plan for Goal 10. The Oregon Housing Needs Analysis basically is a comprehensive program for having cities analyze and plan for their housing needs and actually take more actionable steps to make sure that those needs get met. And so this year, the first kind of cohort of cities is actually implementing that Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. So they're doing that work. We call it OHNA for short. But yeah, they're doing that work. And because we worked so hard, Mary Kyle worked so hard, and other people worked so hard to get that passed at the legislature and make sure the rules were right, we also wanted to make sure that we were following through with ensuring the implementation was really strong. So my work is more focused on the smaller towns and rural areas. So, for example, in, like... Well, I don't want to give a lot of examples because we're still actively working. 44 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:05.000 Yeah, absolutely. 45 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:20.000 And you don't want to give away the keys to the kingdom and let people know what's coming down the road. But when you're doing this, how is it being received? What are some of the constraints that you're running into, some of the hiccups that are happening? 46 00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:29.000 Are you talking to people directly, like Oregonians directly, and asking them, so what do you want to see in your city, in your community? 47 00:23:29.000 --> 00:24:19.000 So the first step that most of the cities are working on right now is this part that's called the contextualized housing need, which is basically where cities try and figure out exactly what are the housing needs in their community. And especially for people who are most vulnerable, what is their housing need? And so that's where cities are statutorily required to look at racial groups that have been historically disadvantaged, disabled folks, older folks, families, people with lower incomes. Basically, cities are required to analyze in a way that is centering the most vulnerable people. And because of that, that can be difficult. And sometimes groups of people don't have trust with their local cities, for... 48 00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:20.000 For good reason. 49 00:24:20.000 --> 00:25:12.000 Reasons. Yeah. And what we're trying to do is kind of help bridge that gap. We want to try and talk to people, make sure they've been in contact with their city, make sure they know how to get in contact with their city. If we can help bridge the gap in whatever way, we want to do that. It's pretty different depending on the different context of what's going on with the city. And yeah, we just try to stay flexible. In some cases we work really directly with the planner or with city councilors. In some cases we try and work more directly with people and get them plugged into the process. It just depends on whether the city wants to work with us or not, and whether or not people are interested in participating. 50 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:27.000 I have a question. I know, shocking. But are we starting with the smaller cities first or larger cities, or is it kind of an across-the-board rollout of the "owner"? Am I pronouncing that right? 51 00:25:27.000 --> 00:27:04.000 Well, OHNA. The "owner." The Oregon Housing Needs Analysis Program. It starts with the state Department of Administrative Services, which provides every city in the state, of any size, with a projection of their housing needs over the next 20 years, and over the next year, that's annually updated, in five income categories. So every city in the state gets that. They have a profile, at that level, of the housing that they need to do all they can to, you know, make sure it's produced. But only cities over 10,000 in population, as well as communities in Tillamook County, because they voluntarily became part of this, and all of the cities in Metro... only those cities, which is still, I don't know, half, maybe 40% of the cities... anyway, it's most of the population... have to do this contextualized housing need and then provide a housing production strategy where they commit to certain actions to meet that need. So Jacky's started in the more rural parts of the state, because we have a colleague who's focused on the more major urban areas of the state. But Jacky's also looking at Corvallis. But I think you're stretched from Yachats to Baker City to Astoria, and other cities in between. Redmond, where else? I mean, there's quite a few you've had some level of engagement with. 52 00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:38.000 Well, yeah, so the OHNA process has this schedule. So in 2026, there were about 10 or 15 cities that were required to start their process. And so we looked at that list and said, okay, who's starting and how do we want to organize to make sure that we're helping as many of these cities as we can? And it was just based on where we had existing connections, where we wanted to build those connections, and figuring out how we can best support different parts of the state with this process. 53 00:27:38.000 --> 00:28:29.000 I have a question, something that I talk about a lot that just really weighs heavily: climate change, and how we are addressing our housing needs, or balancing our housing needs with an increasingly changing environment. Specifically here in Oregon, wildfire. And how are we protecting our farms and our forest land, creating housing, and also protecting from wildfire, especially across the state, in the eastern parts of the state? I'm from Southern Oregon, from Grants Pass. Wildfire was a thing that we grew up with constantly, but it's different now. And how are you guys working with that from a policy angle and also with the communities as well? 54 00:28:29.000 --> 00:32:45.000 Well, I'll take a two-path stab at that, and Jacky can talk about the degree to which it's actually coming up on the ground in the communities that you've been involved with. But in Oregon, and I think this is generally true across the United States, the largest contributor to climate change is transportation. And most of the transportation contribution is from all of us driving cars and light trucks all over the place, burning, you know, carbon-based fuels. And therefore, a major way to address climate change is to provide people with options for how they can get around that don't involve driving a car, or driving it as often. Plus, we're approaching about 30% of the state that does not drive, for a variety of reasons: too old, too young, some ability or inability to drive, income, choice. So we really shouldn't have communities that isolate people in their homes or make it difficult for them to work productively or interact with their communities. So walkable, bikeable, transit where possible. Communities like that meet a whole bunch of bottom lines: environment, climate, housing, public health, etc. And owning a car is expensive. And even if it doesn't use a carbon-based fuel, producing that car has an environmental impact. So I could go on and on. So anyway, walkable communities means your housing and many of the things you need to get to, stores, school, etc., are relatively close by. And you can safely walk, ride a bike, maybe take a bus if you've got a community with a bus, to get there. So that's a major way of addressing climate change. And there are academic studies and other studies to back that up, that actually changing our land use and transportation patterns will have a larger impact sooner than the rate at which we're converting to EVs, for example. Bre: So interesting. I didn't know that. Mary Kyle: The Rocky Mountain Institute, which I think now just goes by RMI, has done a number of studies on this, which you can look up. I found it just fascinating, the contributions of land use to climate change. And on the wildfire front, urban growth boundaries have had an impact, unforeseen at the time they were conceived, a beneficial impact, in terms of wildfire risk. Our urban growth boundaries have meant compact communities, and we have not sprawled into the wildland-urban interface at the scale that our neighboring states have. As you mentioned, growing up in Grants Pass, you know that wildfire is a natural part of Western ecosystems. We have accelerated its intensity, its frequency, its geographic scope through human-caused climate change. But by not sprawling out into the wildland-urban interface, Oregon has not experienced the loss of homes and lives to the degree that our neighboring states have. We have certainly experienced loss of homes and lives in wildfires, and we've had huge acreage lost to wildfire. This year is so far proving to be our largest year in terms of acres burned. But in any event, it wasn't foreseen that urban growth boundaries would be a benefit. But it is a benefit, definitely. And there are other things we can do within the land use planning program, like planning for evacuation and response routes, defensible space adjacent to land uses, or things like building codes, those sorts of things that we can do and are doing more of now. And you'll see, I think Grants Pass has passed some wildfire-resilient building codes; Ashland and Talent and Bend and Deschutes County certainly are. Jacky, do you hear wildfire issues coming up in your conversations locally? 55 00:32:45.000 --> 00:34:53.000 Sometimes I feel like the ones that talk most about it are the ones who have experienced it already. They often want to talk about it more after it's hit their community. But our organization worked closely, and Mary Kyle worked closely, with the Talent recovery effort and the Rogue Valley recovery effort after their wildfires in 2020. And when I've talked with their mayor, you know, you ask the question, like, what advice would you give to other cities that are considering how they should prepare for the potential of wildfire, knowing that it's always a potential? And she always says to plan your zoning and plan your codes as though you're going to have a wildfire, before it happens. Because when they had their wildfire, they actually did have really strong building codes. And they had some things that were pretty ready to go into place after that happened. And so their recovery was substantially easier and displaced fewer people, because they already had building codes that enabled denser building, more affordable building, more middle housing, things like that. And so when you go to Talent, it seems remarkably dense. Like, you're seeing this is a rural community with quite a lot of density that you don't always see in a lot of rural areas, like small towns, rural areas. I guess I shouldn't say it's a rural community; it's a small town. But where was I going with that? My point is the land use planning system allows communities to prepare better for potential disasters, because they can get things in place so that if and when that does happen, their community is more able to respond and rebuild in a way that doesn't displace as many people. Does that feel right, Mary Kyle? 56 00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:57.000 Right. That's actually... you've talked to the mayor. That's exactly what she says. 57 00:34:57.000 --> 00:35:30.000 Right. So Michael Andersen was on our podcast a little bit ago, and he said that rural ADUs, which is something we wanted to talk with him about, are a quote-unquote "perpetual Republican suggestion," and 1000 Friends says no to it. Why should a farm family not add a cottage for a parent or for children or any of that? And is Michael Andersen correct in what he said? I guess that should be the first question, huh. 58 00:35:30.000 --> 00:36:21.000 So right now there are ways that someone who's a farmer, who has a house on their farm, can add additional housing. There are eight different paths right now under statute for how you can get additional housing on farmland. That's in addition to temporary farmworker housing. But you can get permanent farmworker housing, relative farm help housing. There's something called a non-farm dwelling, which means you can get a house that has nothing to do with farming on it. All of that. There are eight different ways in which one can qualify to get an additional house on farmland. And one's called an accessory farm dwelling, actually. 59 00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:27.000 So do all of the counties in Oregon abide by all eight of those pathways? 60 00:36:27.000 --> 00:38:22.000 All those are statutorily allowed. And I don't know if any of them are optional, but I will say that a couple are probably a little clunky. And also local governments, and particularly counties in rural Oregon, often have just one planner who's doing everything, right, and they may actually be the public works director, and they're trying to get the permits out. I'm sympathetic to the fact that they might not be as familiar and comfortable with how to implement different things that don't come up very often. Right. So we do know, because our state land use agency keeps track of these, that since 1994 there have been 22,000 homes approved on farmland through one of those eight ways, in addition to whatever houses were already out there as of 1994. So 22,000 new homes. That's a fair number. In that same time period, our number of farms has actually gone down by 4%. We have more houses across our lands that are zoned for exclusive farm use than we do farms. That doesn't mean that that housing is always meeting everyone's needs on that farm. But we work with farmers, for example, who lease or have purchased a neighboring farm and it comes with a house, or maybe two or three. They don't necessarily need all of them. So just because there's a certain number of houses out there doesn't mean that they're meeting everyone's needs. But I think we need to be more refined. So when I say 22,000 new houses, that's more than the number of farms we have that are commercial farms. 61 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:24.000 So. 62 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:53.000 So the paths are working. But we are in the midst of a work group right now looking at ways that we can... Can we streamline, but narrow that a bit? I mean, because some of the eight could be less clunky. Can we streamline these and maybe narrow them? So I'm not sure exactly what Michael said. I'll have to talk to him about it. I understand his meaning. I'm not sure exactly. 63 00:38:53.000 --> 00:39:00.000 I'm really hoping I didn't throw shade or draw... Yeah, I mean, I'm a little panicked inside right now. 64 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:05.000 No, I can hear... I can definitely see here. Yeah. 65 00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:36.000 Well, one thing that I think is brought up perpetually in our conversations is streamlining. Streamlining our housing processes at multiple levels. And you said already, you know, it's not an overnight fix, but do you feel that we're getting closer to more streamlined? I don't even know if there is, like, an end goal that we're working towards here, but do you feel like it's working? 66 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:42.000 Jacky's put together a whole Housing Solutions Center website that can tell you exactly how much easier it is. 67 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:45.000 Oh, very cool. Can we hear about that, please, Jacky? 68 00:39:45.000 --> 00:40:49.000 Well, yeah, I can tell you about the Housing Solutions Center. So it's a tool that we developed to help people learn about housing as a land use issue, help people understand what the potential solutions are that can be leveraged at the city level, and help people learn about opportunities to advocate in their communities around this issue. So if you go to the Housing Solutions Center, you can click on the Oregon's Housing Need tab, which will give you a nice concise summary of what the current housing needs are, the dimensions that they take, and why we would want to advocate around specific issue areas like accessible housing or infill or things like that. You could also go to the... I think it's the Local Policymaking tab, and that would give you six issue areas that are kind of solutions that local... They're like solution buckets, like buckets of solutions that we do. 69 00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:58.000 We have eight of them on our podcast. So we are quite fond of your buckets, and we're going to be checking out your website, too. But please continue. Sorry for the interruption. 70 00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:01.000 No, it's all good. I said the word buckets a lot. 71 00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:02.000 Yeah. 72 00:41:02.000 --> 00:42:34.000 There's six solution buckets that you can click on and learn more about different policies that one could implement to help in certain areas. And one of those areas is streamlining permitting. And the reason that's really important is because when a home builder is building a house or an apartment complex or whatever it is, oftentimes they might get a loan, and they get that loan approved, but then they might be waiting for, like, six months on a permit, and that loan is accruing debt, or... I guess, a lot of holding costs. Yeah. And so all of that cost is then ultimately added on to the total cost that the home is sold for or that the apartment is rented for. And that is one of many factors that is bumping up our housing costs. It's certainly not the only thing, but streamlining that process will make it easier and more affordable over time. And it makes it easier for, for example, infill developments to take place, like Mary Kyle's talking about. We want these more walkable communities. We want things that are closer to the places people live and work and go to school. And it's really hard to do that if there's, you know, 10 steps to getting it, and it's way easier just to build a subdivision on the outside of the city. Yeah, I think. 73 00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:38.000 Well, that leads us right into my favorite question. Yeah, we're... 74 00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:39.000 I love this. 75 00:42:39.000 --> 00:42:42.000 Yeah, we're running up on time here, unfortunately, and I feel... 76 00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:45.000 Like we still have pages of questions for you guys, so. 77 00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:56.000 Yeah, if you think we're lying, we're not. And I would love to continue this conversation again, really, because there is a lot more I think that we can learn from both of you. 78 00:42:56.000 --> 00:43:26.000 Yeah, you guys are really cool and interesting, but now what you're gonna do is you're gonna wave your magic wand. I'd like you to provide some inspiration, some action items for people, right, about what they can do, how they can be a part of the solution. Right. But if you had full authority and you could do anything you wanted to do and you could wave your magic wand regarding this topic, of course, what would you do? What would your magic wand wish be? 79 00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:31.000 I kind of want to do multiple things. But I only get one. 80 00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:33.000 Well, if you can, we'll allow it. 81 00:43:33.000 --> 00:43:34.000 We'll allow it. 82 00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:35.000 Okay. 83 00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:35.000 We'll allow it. 84 00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:36.000 Okay. 85 00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:38.000 You get multiple. Yeah, we'll give you multiple, Jacky. 86 00:43:38.000 --> 00:43:44.000 Well, I guess a big one is ending the criminalization of unhoused people. 87 00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:45.000 Yes, thank you. 88 00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:55.000 Point blank. That's my magic wand. I think we need to build community land trusts, which we didn't get to talk about, but I wanted to. I think we need to build public housing. 89 00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:56.000 Yes. 90 00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:09.000 And I think people need to accept and celebrate dense housing in their neighborhoods. And I want to see more people accepting and celebrating that. 91 00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:21.000 No more NIMBYs, is what I'm hearing from you. Acceptance of people regardless of their economic level. We love it. All right, Mary Kyle, what have you got for us? 92 00:44:21.000 --> 00:45:44.000 Well, in addition to those, my magic wand would be providing the funding for the infrastructure needed to actually build the housing, because that is a major barrier right now that cannot be overcome by even an individual developer. Those infrastructure costs will get passed down to the renter or the homeowner. So really investing in infrastructure for housing. And I would like to see us develop more models of social housing. The land trust model is one type of it. I mean, they're all sort of a land trust model, but there are different models of social housing, which are a mix of incomes and where people can stay permanently if that's their choice. They're not kicked out if they get a little bit over whatever an income level is. I mean, there are examples of this from Vienna to Maryland, where social housing is working and building really healthy, vibrant, mixed-income, mixed-age communities. And so I'd like to see us try that, as well as investing in the places we already call home to allow more people to call them home. Yeah. 93 00:45:44.000 --> 00:46:09.000 Incredible. I really want to talk about community land trusts. I hope that we can get both of you back again. Social housing, more publicly owned housing, is something that is very much up my alley. But we have to finish here, unfortunately, because we want to be respectful of everybody's time. But thank you so much, Mary Kyle and Jacky, for sharing your knowledge and your experience with us. 94 00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:10.000 Thank you. 95 00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:10.000 It's amazing. 96 00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:17.000 Yes. Thank you for being on our podcast and for making the world a little bit better of a place. We appreciate that. 97 00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:18.000 And I'm Bre. 98 00:46:18.000 --> 00:46:22.000 And I'm Marty. And this is Housing Voices. 99 00:46:22.000 --> 00:47:08.000 Bre (outro): A special thanks to our partners MartyFulford.com and Cynit.net for supporting thoughtful dialogue around housing in our communities. Music for Housing Voices is provided by Karen DeWolfe and Adrian Kriz. Thank you for helping us set the tone. You can find us at housingvoices.com and connect with us under Housing Voices on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, TikTok, and our YouTube channel. If you found value in today's conversation, share this episode, follow the show, and help us expand the dialogue. Until next time, this is Bre. Let's keep listening, keep learning, and keep building practical housing solutions together.