Here’s The Oregonian’s weekly look at the numbers behind the state’s economy. View past installments here.

Economists are famously equivocal, hesitant to give a definitive forecast about most things. On one matter, though, they’re nearly unanimous: the Portland region needs more housing.

Home construction nearly ground to a halt during the Great Recession but people kept moving here. The metro area hasn’t caught up with demand in the intervening years, and economists say that shortage is what’s pushing up the rising prices that created the regional housing crisis and much of the homelessness.

Christian Kaylor, workforce analyst for the Oregon Employment Department, has been following residential building permit volumes for several years to gauge the outlook for the regional housing market. And he’s seen a dramatic change.

“It really felt like the city of Portland was propping up the region coming out of the recession,” Kaylor said. Most housing – apartments, in particular – was being built in Portland.

While Portland still makes up about half of the region’s multifamily construction, Kaylor said some of the city’s suburbs and exurbs are now poised for rapid expansion.

Take Camas, the former Southwest Washington mill town, that now has the most new housing planned per capita – 27 new homes for each 1,000 current residents. Right behind it is the city of Happy Valley, with 19.5 new home permits for each 1,000 residents.

Developers in both communities plan a hearty mix of single-family homes and apartments. They’re among several suburbs building multifamily units even faster (per person) than dense urban communities like Portland.

“It’s taken a few years but finally communities other than the city of Portland have said, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s build some multifamily,’” Kaylor said.

While Portland is still building, Kaylor said suburbs simply have more places to build. Hillsboro, for example, is in the process of converting former farmland into an 8,000 home development known as South Hillsboro.

Hillsboro has the third-most residential building permits, per capita, according to Kaylor’s data, with large numbers of single- and multi-family homes on the drawing board.

Overall, Kaylor said he’s encouraged by the housing permit numbers. They suggest to him the metro area as a whole is doing more to address the chronic housing shortage. But the numbers also show some places are adding few new homes, if any.

Milwaukie is among the slowest growing, while the exclusive enclaves of West Linn and Lake Oswego barely added any homes at all – and next to none of the multifamily units in such demand.

“I think we’re doing pretty good,” Kaylor said, “but the data analysis shows there’s some communities that aren’t keeping up.”

-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699

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