This Portland lot could fit seven small homes — if only that weren’t illegal
An underused slice of Cully shows why allowing two ADUs per lot is smart and overdue.
by Philip Longenecker | Aug. 1, 2017
Sitting on one side of a grassy third of an acre in Northeast Portland is a single house.
Kristin Slavin’s home has a lot of vacant land. Too much land, she thinks — land she’d prefer to have neighbors living on.
Slavin is excited for proposed changes to Portland’s zoning codes that will, among other things, allow some homeowners to install two small homes, or “accessory dwelling units,” on their property.
One of the new ADUs would have to be attached, the other detached, and the total size of any new buildings would be capped:
But even if those changes get final approval in the coming months — and opposition from people who oppose physical changes to their neighborhoods remains fierce—their geographic scope might be scaled back so they don’t apply to many thousands of lots around the city, maybe including Slavin’s.
The proposed policy changes are Portland leaders’ answer to the fact that 20 percent of the 123,000 new households expected in Portland by 2035 are projected to move into what are today lower-density residential zones. Unfortunately, low-density zones effectively exclude many lower-income and middle-income Portlanders, because they force the rising price of land to be borne by just one household.
When Slavin bought her home less than a year ago, she could afford it only by converting some rooms into an internal ADU and using the rent money to fund the purchase. As of now, that’s the extent to which her 15,000-square-foot lot can be developed.
However, if the city’s new proposals are passed and she subdivides the lot, she’d be able to triple the number of housing units on her property: three more ADUs and another new, small house.
Until then, the large lot will remain vacant except for the one building. For a city that needs more housing, it’s spacious lots like Slavin’s that are missed opportunities for more homes — especially small ones like ADUs.
ADUs : Making neighborhood prosperity more inclusive
Portland’s population growth will keep putting pressure on lower-density residential zones to develop more densely. ADUs offer a creative, though only partial, solution. Converting existing spaces — like basements, attics or garages — gently adds more homes to desirable neighborhoods.
Lucas Gray is a designer and partner at Propel Studio, which specializes in public interest design work and has also carved out a niche in Portland’s fast-growing ADU market. He’s also Slavin’s boyfriend, and helping on her project.
Gray says ADUs are on the rise for multiple reasons: “People are having less kids. People are having kids later. Young professionals or younger millennials can’t afford houses like previous generations could. So this kind of creative use of existing housing stock can help you pay your mortgage and help you afford something. It allows more people to get into the real estate market.”
ADUs come in all shapes and sizes — and it’s because of this variety that they have so much potential. They can be slipped into single family zones with minimal disturbance to allow more density and diversity of middle housing options in lower-density neighborhoods.
Today’s zoning code: Lots of space, few options
Walking across Slavin’s grassy lot, the couple talked me through the vision they had for it. “It changes every day,” Slavin said, laughing. But because the land is zoned R7, Gray explained — lots can be no smaller than 7,000 square feet — they can only divide the land once, and build one more house with an ADU, for a total of four units.
The property is within walking distance of the corner of NE Killingsworth and NE Cully, a vibrant center that could benefit from nearby density increases.
Gray doesn’t have a problem with zoning restricting the size or shape of new buildings, but he thinks zoning hurts communities when it effectively caps the population of a given area.
“Zoning should not dictate unit counts, it should just dictate form,” he said. “There’s no reason to have R7 or higher in the urban growth boundary. [If this were R5] we could house nine families, but now we can only house two. … It’s ridiculous.”
Hurdles remain for the ADU solution
Gray said that despite the pro-ADU changes in the zoning code proposed as part of the city’s residential infill project, there are still considerable barriers to using ADUs to help meet Portland’s housing needs.
For instance, Portland’s current zoning code still places special restrictions on their design: detached ADUs must visually match the primary residence in nearly all aspects: exterior finish, siding, roof pitch, trim, window orientation and eaves.
Gray argues those aesthetic regulations are too restrictive. After all, they apply whether or not anyone considers the primary residence attractive.
“I think that there’s a huge problem with restricting style,” Gray says. “People have a wide variety of tastes and lifestyles and needs and our zoning code prohibits people from doing what they want. The fact that the city is dictating style and not safety is absurd.”
He says that what is really needed is a better financing model, pointing out that the cost of developing an ADU doesn’t really change with size: “We’ve found that almost every ADU costs somewhere between $150,000 to $200,000. Whether you’re building 400 square feet or 800 square feet, you’re building a bathroom, a kitchen, getting a foundation, plumbing, electrical — and getting those things started is the main upfront cost that is not going to change.”
Gray goes on to explain that in order to pay for an ADU, you either have to have cash on hand or have equity in your home to leverage a loan, otherwise banks won’t finance a second mortgage for an ADU because the mortgage on the primary residence has precedence over the second in the case of a default. Gray says that if the industry can make funding easier to obtain, more people will benefit, particularly those who can’t afford the upfront cost out of pocket.
Two-ADU rule won’t apply to everybody
The proposed changes to the city’s zoning codes would be a step in the right direction, but some argue they don’t go far enough. For example, the two-ADU rule will only apply in select single-family zones, not city-wide.
The area that the zoning changes will affect (known to local wonks as the “housing opportunity overlay zone”) isn’t yet determined. But it will undoubtedly leave out many residents who wish to install an additional ADU on their property, lessening the number of housing units in single-family zones the city could bring online. For an established housing type that is widely accepted across the spectrum, limiting the areas where they can be built doesn’t make sense.
Though Gray admitted that ADUs are only a “small drop in the bucket” when it comes to relieving the citywide housing shortage, they’re also more than just a backyard project. For people like Slavin, they represent an opportunity for homeownership. For the city in general, ADUs allow more nuanced use of land, with environmental and economic rewards.
Call them what you like — granny flats, basement apartments, backyard cottages, carriage houses — ADUs increase the density and diversity of housing options in single-family neighborhoods. That’s good for both people and the planet.
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Phil Longenecker is a contributing writer to Portland for Everyone, which supports abundant, diverse, affordable housing. This is a reported blog about how to get more of those things. You can follow it on Twitter and Facebook, or get new posts by email a few times a month.
