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Oregon housing is so unaffordable because of its powerful land use laws that essentially prohibit farmland from (1) being built upon (2) being subdivided at all.

Then, the environmentalists have successfully locked out development of woodlands and other land for conservation reasons.
And, the construction industry in Oregon is subject to extreme construction laws - like requiring a barn, shop, house, and yes, even those prebuilt portable storage sheds, to be not only permitted, but inspected and structurally engineered. (Yes, O.J, a structural engineered wet stamp for one of those mini barns. Can you imagine?) These all add considerably cost to construction.

And all contractors must be licensed and insured and bonded, and they do mean that. This isn’t something that is on the books, but is functionally ignored.

The building permit for a house, which would include utility connection fees, will be about $20,000 for each new house.

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 12:21 pm Oregon housing is so unaffordable because of its powerful land use laws that essentially prohibit farmland from (1) being built upon (2) being subdivided at all.

Then, the environmentalists have successfully locked out development of woodlands and other land for conservation reasons.
And, the construction industry in Oregon is subject to extreme construction laws - like requiring a barn, shop, house, and yes, even those prebuilt portable storage sheds, to be not only permitted, but inspected and structurally engineered. (Yes, O.J, a structural engineered wet stamp for one of those mini barns. Can you imagine?) These all add considerably cost to construction.

And all contractors must be licensed and insured and bonded, and they do mean that. This isn’t something that is on the books, but is functionally ignored.

The building permit for a house, which would include utility connection fees, will be about $20,000 for each new house.

Yes, that's part of it. But there are also vast parts of existing urban areas where the same restrictions on subdivision and multi-family housing prevent any increases in density that would accommodate more housing as well. East Portland, for example, is a wasteland of pretty crummy aging 1950s era ranch houses on single family lots and much of it is prevented from being redeveloped into townhouses, apartments, condos, or anything more dense due to zoning regulations. People in Portland and Seattle (many of them wealthy liberals) go to extraordinary efforts to prevent increases in housing in their own neighborhoods.

Also, the property laws make it way too easy for investors to just buy up land and sit on it, doing nothing with it but letting it decline. The tax laws should be changed to encourage development rather than discourage it. As long as we make it much more expensive to develop land into housing rather than just sit on it and let it decline, then people will do just that. We are in a housing emergency but no one in power seems to actually want to do anything sensible about it. Or they advocate the most absolutely stupid policies rather than sensible ones. Such as trying to dump hundreds of millions of tax dollars into building low income housing rather than just relaxing restrictions that are preventing housing from being built in the first place. The former costs billions of tax dollars and accomplishes little to nothing. The latter gives you lots of new housing without spending any tax dollars at all.

I have a cousin who just moved from Oregon to the suburbs of Phoenix. I just spoke with him recently because they were back for a funeral. Their reasons for moving had nothing to do with crime. The Phoenix metro has a higher violent crime rate than the Portland metro. They moved because of weather and because they could cash in their modest home in the Portland suburbs for a bigger newer one in the Phoenix suburbs. Another big reason (probably the biggest one) is that their daughter went to college in Los Angeles, married a guy from Arizona, and they settled in Tempe where he works in some tech job and she works in healthcare so they have grandkids there.

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 12:21 pm Oregon housing is so unaffordable because of its powerful land use laws that essentially prohibit farmland from (1) being built upon (2) being subdivided at all.

Then, the environmentalists have successfully locked out development of woodlands and other land for conservation reasons.
And, the construction industry in Oregon is subject to extreme construction laws - like requiring a barn, shop, house, and yes, even those prebuilt portable storage sheds, to be not only permitted, but inspected and structurally engineered. (Yes, O.J, a structural engineered wet stamp for one of those mini barns. Can you imagine?) These all add considerably cost to construction.

And all contractors must be licensed and insured and bonded, and they do mean that. This isn’t something that is on the books, but is functionally ignored.

The building permit for a house, which would include utility connection fees, will be about $20,000 for each new house.

If my structural guy runs low on work, I'll have him check out the mini-barn market.

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 12:21 pm Oregon housing is so unaffordable because of its powerful land use laws that essentially prohibit farmland from (1) being built upon (2) being subdivided at all.

Then, the environmentalists have successfully locked out development of woodlands and other land for conservation reasons.
And, the construction industry in Oregon is subject to extreme construction laws - like requiring a barn, shop, house, and yes, even those prebuilt portable storage sheds, to be not only permitted, but inspected and structurally engineered. (Yes, O.J, a structural engineered wet stamp for one of those mini barns. Can you imagine?) These all add considerably cost to construction.

And all contractors must be licensed and insured and bonded, and they do mean that. This isn’t something that is on the books, but is functionally ignored.

The building permit for a house, which would include utility connection fees, will be about $20,000 for each new house.

You can always move south to the tablelands of Klamath County. That is a libertarian paradise where no one will fuss about what kind of mini-barn you build. https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-cou ... ns-murder/

Meanwhile, in Portland...



I also like watching "Portlandia" on YouTube, absolutely hilarious.