Eugene officials unanimously pass middle housing rules after months of community feedback
Eugene officials passed middle housing rules Tuesday night after making one final change to the proposed regulations.
After voting 7-1 to reduce the maximum lot coverage, City Council unanimously passed a surgically altered version of the planning commission’s recommended ordinance to comply with House Bill 2001. That law, passed during the 2019 session, requires large cities to allow for development of diverse housing types such as duplexes and cottage clusters in historically exclusionary single-family zones.
As Eugene has worked to pass regulations complying with the law or else have a model code automatically apply, the city’s proposed ordinance has drawn both praise and ire.
Mayor Lucy Vinis commended councilors and others for doing the hard work and having hard conversations about what’s become a divisive subject.
“We have a lot of work to do with our community to bring everyone on board with the work that you’ve done,” she said. “I have hope that this ordinance will, in fact, enable us to build much more of the housing that we need in this community and that we will see progress.”
The ordinance will go into effect a month after Vinis signs it or on the state-set June 30 deadline — whichever is later.
What's required?
No later than June 30, HB 2001 requires Eugene and other cities with a population of at least 25,000 to amend land use regulations to allow:
A duplex on each lot or parcel that is located within city limits, zoned for residential use and on land where regulations allow detached single-family dwellings.
Triplexes, quadplexes, cottage clusters and townhouses in residential zones within the city that allow detached single-family dwellings. Unlike duplexes, these do not have to be required on every lot.
If cities do not pass rules meeting or exceeding minimum standards by June 30, a state-developed model code will automatically apply.
What did Eugene do?
Staff have said multiple times that the ordinance recommended by the planning commission is largely based on the model code and goes beyond it in some areas to incentivize the development of middle housing.
Details of differences:How are Eugene's proposed middle housing code changes different from a state model code?
Many of those items meant to encourage development — including taller building heights, the ability to build on more of the lot and incentives eliminating parking requirements in certain circumstances — drew ire in the past couple of months.
City Council has made some “surgical” tweaks in an effort to address some of those concerns while still keeping local control over what goes into place.
Officials voted two weeks ago to make slight tweaks to a recommendation from the city’s planning commission to:
Modify a parking reduction incentive for middle housing near transit to apply only to lots within a quarter-mile walking distance of a stop for the Emerald Express, the county's bus rapid transit system
Remove a parking reduction incentive for small middle housing units
Reduce the maximum building height from 35 feet to 30 feet for duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and townhouses. There's still an additional 7-foot allowance for steeper roofs
The council then voted last week to delay a vote on the ordinance to allow one more chance for feedback during a regularly scheduled public forum Monday night.
Community responds:Eugene officials delay vote on middle housing rules to allow another chance for feedback
On Tuesday, officials voted to reduce the maximum lot coverage from 75%. Councilor Mike Clark initially made a motion to decrease it to back to 50%, saying it’s been his preference all along to adopt the minimum standards required then schedule work sessions to talk about community concerns and make changes at a later date.
“And as we’re not doing that, I will settle for doing it this way,” he said. “But frankly, if we got through appropriate, say, tree protection in the fall, I may be willing to revisit this at 75%.”
People expressing concerns about a higher allowance for lot coverage have talked about the impact to the urban tree canopy, heat islands and solar access.
Councilor Matt Keating put forward a substitute motion to reduce maximum lot coverage to 60%, calling it a compromise and pointing out it’s consistent with what Springfield and Bend officials passed.
Though staff recently presented a table showing that it’s hard for lot coverage to reach 75%, reducing the number some acknowledges that higher percentage “has sparked fear in some folks while not giving up completely on the idea that we try to maximize lot coverage to create more housing, which is the point,” Councilor Claire Syrett said.
Clark voted against the motion to substitute, but the council unanimously supported reducing the maximum lot coverage to 60% once the alternate motion was on the table.
There was the possibility of motions to address concerns about sufficient infrastructure and impacts on the Willamette River and adjacent land, but Councilor Greg Evans ultimately decided not to put them forward while asking that council discuss both issues at a later date.
“There are concerns that people have expressed to us in the public that I think this council needs to have conversation around,” Evans said.
'This isn't the radical change'
Even as officials have been tweaking the proposed ordinance, some city residents have continued to ask the city to implement the minimum standards then come back later to make changes once there’s more detailed information about potential impacts.
Though a Monday night public forum was part of the council’s standard schedule, around 25 people used their time to testify about middle housing.
A handful spoke in favor, arguing that Eugene desperately needs new opportunities for home ownership and rentals and that the council needed to stop eroding the planning commission recommendation, which was intended to increase the diversity and affordability of the city’s housing supply.
Most, though, spoke against the recommendation, arguing much of the positive feedback the city points to came before the code proposal was available, that the city needs to be clearer on the tree canopy and affordability and that staff are trying to squeeze and rush officials.
There’s been a lot of energy and emotions on both sides, Councilor Randy Groves said.
He added he thinks while officials have been hearing a lot recently about slowing down the process, the entirety of the feedback since the city started the process has been “pretty well split.”
Announced this week:Oregon's new development rules could impact Eugene, Springfield's housing, walkability
Groves and others said they were grateful to those who spoke to council during the public forum, and he added as the council prepares to take up other difficult issues it will be “especially important that we do everything we can to listen to as many people as we can.”
Keating added he appreciates people taking the time to communicate with officials “regardless of where you’re coming from” and said he’s willing to keep working to find win-win solutions when there are concerns that might require compromise.
And though some have called the changes, even as required by the state, radical and extreme deregulation, the actions that made them necessary were more extreme, Councilor Jennifer Yeh said.
“This isn’t the radical change,” she said. “The radical change happened years ago when our community used our land-use code to ban middle housing types as an effort to control who could afford to live in our neighborhoods.”
By undoing the history of zoning being used to exclude people by allowing middle housing types, Yeh said, Eugene will “become that inclusive community that, when I talk to people, I know that’s what we all want.”
What's next?
The ordinance is now waiting on the mayor’s signature and will go into effect within a month after Vinis signs it or by June 30, whichever is later.
Unlike in Springfield, where officials passed middle housing rules earlier this month as part of a larger development code, Eugene’s ordinance does not also need approval from the Lane County Board of Commissioners.
Read more:Springfield approves middle housing rules as part of larger development code update
Contact city government watchdog Megan Banta at mbanta@registerguard.com. Follow her on Twitter @MeganBanta_1.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Eugene officials pass middle housing rules after a final tweak
