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The YARD, in Portland, will have 284 units set aside for people making up to 60 percent of the median income.

(Kristyna Wentz-Graff/staff)

By John Tapogna, Lorelei Juntunen and Michael Wilkerson

House Speaker Tina Kotek had the attention of 1,300 elected and business leaders during December's Oregon Leadership Summit. She could have marched through any number of pressing issues -- from high school dropout rates to minimum wages to pension legacies. Instead she zeroed in on a single topic: housing affordability. In doing so, she elevated an issue that -- more than most others -- will shape the state's economic future.

The speaker has declared a crisis, and the numbers back her up. Portland's home prices registered a nation-leading 11 percent increase during 2014-15 and hit an all-time high. In Bend, house prices are up 58 percent since 2009. And Oregon's apartment rental vacancy rate is second lowest in the country.

This month's short legislative session will consider some emergency responses: rent controls, regulations around evictions and relocation allowances for displaced tenants. Meanwhile, local governments are reorganizing budgets and designing incentives to produce more affordable housing units.

As policymakers assemble just-in-time remedies, Oregonians need to step back and take a broader look into the future. The rising cost of housing is today's crisis.

But take a longer view, and it isn't a crisis. It's a choice.

We're sitting in a desirable corner of the continent. Temperate weather, a coast and mountains are population magnets. Climate change will likely make the rest of the country miserable and intensify the pull. So here's the choice. How much in-migration are we going to accommodate? Historically, we have been, at best, ambivalent about population growth. "Visit but don't stay" runs deep in our collective DNA. We like the place the way found it. Tom McCall's preservationist legacy mixed with unrelenting demand is a recipe for spiraling costs. Silicon Valley has shown how it works: Complicate zoning, slow permitting, limit land supply, and become a repellant for all but the richest. There, lower-income residents are free to move to Texas if the rent is too high. And many have.

Slow-growth policies -- in high demand regions -- generate big windfalls for incumbent property owners and have been the major driver of the expanding U.S. wealth gap. Urban economist Ed Glaeser has long recognized the problem and suggested stripping land-use powers from localities altogether. In November, Paul Krugman pointed to excess land regulation as the cause of New York City's rising prices and rapid gentrification. And that was just days after President Obama's top economist unveiled a $300 million federal incentive fund to tame local land-use laws.

If we heed the calls of Glaeser and Krugman and choose a more affordable path, the first order of business is to bring the supply of housing into line with demand. In a simplest sense, we have three supply-side options: build out, build up, or do both. Building out -- through expansions to urban growth boundaries -- is the reflexive first answer for some. The fringes of metropolitan areas could offer part of the solution and deserves evaluation. But, the cost of new infrastructure, changing consumer tastes and the public's strong desire for open spaces create their own limits. Building up -- adding density to existing neighborhoods -- would require a complete overhaul of local rules and mentalities. Localities would need to review a tangle of policies and processes: minimum lot sizes, off-street parking requirements, height and density limits, and permitting processes. For each, they'd need to sort out which serve a legitimate health, safety and environmental purposes, and which just shut down supply and build wealth for existing owners. An honest assessment would find that too much land is locked up in single-family uses. If we're serious about affordability, some bungalows will need to make way for duplexes, mid-rise and garden apartments.

Supply-side responses won't solve all the problems. A newly released report by Metro, Portland's regional planning agency, introduces a longer list of policy levers -- everything from housing trust funds to surplus public land donations and funding for infill development to strategies that mitigate gentrification. It deserves our collective consideration.

The speaker recognizes the outcomes of this short session are only first steps. The rest of the journey would require broad collaboration, innovative thinking and political profiles in courage. It would be hard work but doable.

Today, we have a crisis. But if 10 years from now we're still lamenting the inability of low- and middle-income Oregonians to secure stable housing, it will be because we chose to have a smaller region designed for the wealthy instead of a larger one of shared prosperity.

That's a choice, not a crisis.

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The authors work at ECONorthwest, a regional economic consulting firm that has operated in Oregon since 1974. The views expressed here are their own and do not represent those of their clients or colleagues.