Concordia home demolition.JPG

Crews tore down a house on Northeast 29th Avenue and replaced it with a much larger house. After that replacement, crews tore down the neighboring house, too.

(Casey Parks/The Oregonian)

Portland development officials will start handing out door-hangers with demolition permits, an effort to have developers give neighbors a heads up when a nearby house is coming down.

A notice that a nearby house is slated for demolition.

The program, conceived by an advisory committee of developers, is voluntary and offers

for who should be notified and when. But it may help alleviate some tensions that have come up in Portland's

.

"This is attempt mostly to just be a good neighbor," said Jeff Fish, and infill developer and chairman of the city's Development Review Advisory Committee. "If it's working, if it's doing what we intend and the neighborhoods like it, we could make it mandatory."

The Bureau of Development Services will start handing out the door hangers on July 1, along with guidelines that suggest leaving them at three homes to the rear of the house to be demolished, two neighbors on either side of the property and the three neighbors across the street.

The guidelines also recommend distributing the notices at least 10 days before the demolition is planned. In cases where one house is being demolished and replaced with one other house, city code doesn't require any waiting period between receiving a permit and demolishing a house.

In those cases, residents have complained they've been caught off-guard by the sudden demolition of a nearby home.

The city had previously granted the same exemption for houses being replaced with two houses, but earlier this year said it would end that practice.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees the bureau, said the notices are another way it is making "changes with the context of existing code to address community concerns."

-- Elliot Njus