Portland is facing a lot of the same challenges as Seattle. But as a smaller city, it’s taking steps to head off those challenges.

Those steps come with a “hard message,” according to Portland Mayor Charlie Hales.

“Here’s the hard message for Portland and Seattle and every other city growing like this,” Hales told Seattle’s Morning News. “If the next 200,000 people come here, and we’re planning for us to be a city of 850,000 people … they’re not going to be able to bring their cars and live like we did 20 years ago.”

“In fact, most of us are going to have to drive a lot less,” he said. “The streets aren’t going to get any bigger. They are going to be walking, they are going to be riding their bikes, they are going to be riding the transit system. That’s true for all these cities (including Seattle) … there’s no more land in these cities. You are going to add a lot of people, and if they think they are going to drive like we did in the ’50s or the ’70s – think again.”

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That hard truth comes as Portland is tweaking its approach to land management, specifically when it comes to housing. Hales notes that about 1,000 people are moving to his city each month. And those numbers add up. Meanwhile, the younger Portland population is tripling up in houses with roommates.

On top of that, developers have shown a preference for tearing down homes that are considered part of the characteristic fabric of historic Portland. Every home lost is another strand gone, holding that fabric together. In their place, “McMansions” pop up, creating an eyesore amid the surrounding neighborhood.

“Portlanders are rightly upset about the loss of historic building stock and the replacement, in many cases, with something fairly generic, or in many cases something that is architecturally dissonant with the existing neighborhood,” Hales said.

It’s a series of woes that seem to echo common complaints in Seattle and KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross wonders if the Emerald City could learn something from the Rose City.

Portland Infill Project

Portland is considering a change to its zoning codes. It’s called the Portland Infill Project.

“We’re hoping we can strike a balance between creating more housing opportunity, saving more of the great old houses and preserving the character of neighborhoods that once lost, is not recoverable,” Hales said.

Hales notes that on the opposite end of the problem are younger Portland residents who aren’t seeing a housing market favorable for them.

“And yet, they see the housing market moving out of reach for them,” he said. “But if they could buy a 1,200 square foot cluster cottage project, or buy a 1,500 square foot accessory dwelling unit as their first home, they might have a shot at getting into the housing market.”

Cluster cottages and multiple-dwelling structures in the same footprint of demolished homes is among the aims of the project.

The project takes on three issues. Or as Hales puts it, “three gnarly, interrelated problems”:

• Demolition of existing houses to be replaced by giant houses that are out of scale and character with the existing neighborhood.

• Creating a variety of housing stock beyond the single-family home which is most popular in Portland.

• Historic preservation of the character of Portland.

“We’re trying to deal with those issues at once, with scale, and shrinking down the envelope with how big of a house you can build,” Hales said. “And we’re also saying, ‘That big, old 3,000 square foot house if you preserve that structure … we’re are going to liberalize your ability to create more than one unit within those walls.’ Maybe one or two accessory dwelling units. Those are some of the strategies we are trying out.”

There has been some push back to the Portland Infill Project. But Hale’s notes that is it mostly from one section of the city.

“The people who showed up to the hearings, the average age of the folks advocating for these housing choices was about 30,” he said. “And the average age of the people saying ‘don’t change my neighborhood’ was my age, about 60.”

“The question is if there going to be enough room in our city, financially and physically, for our kids to live,” Hales said. “We have to answer that with a ‘yes.’”

Portland’s city council is still considering the matter. It’s most recent hearing on the project including nearly five hours of back-and-forth public testimony on the issue.