Gov. Kotek, Mayor Wilson announce joint effort to increase Portland housing

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — As vacant buildings and rows of tents line Portland streets, the lasting impacts of the ongoing housing crisis are visible throughout the Rose City.

To help address the lack of housing, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson held their first Multi-Family Housing Development Work Group meeting Thursday.

Co-led by Kotek and Wilson, the new team containing stakeholders, city and state leaders sat down with developers to explore ways to streamline regulations in an effort to make the city a more appealing place to build multi-family homes.

“Too many Oregonians are worried about making ends meet, and the cost of housing is front and center,” Gov. Kotek said. “We must cut the bureaucratic backlog, build more housing, and lower the cost of living. More housing is the long-term solution to our homelessness crisis.”

According to Kotek, one way to attract more private sector investors is with more efficient permitting. She argues that increasing the overall housing supply will help improve affordability.

“We’re struggling here in Portland,” Mayor Wilson said. “Our younger residents, our retirees, BIPOC and low income [residents] are being hit hard by inflation and housing costs.”

Wilson told KOIN 6 the workgroup is working to implement feedback from potential developers to greenlight larger developments to help drive down costs.

“We have developers that are ready to develop. They have land that’s ready, they have plans and permits that are ready. And what I heard is that Portland needs to be ready too,” he added. “We need to create an environment where developers are going to be able to build, build more and build faster. So, it’s not just lowering the cost, it’s making sure that we’re a desirable city to build.”

Kotek has recommended more than $1 billion in her budget to tackle the housing crisis. She also continues to support new legislation, like House Bill 2138, which would legalize more middle housing, like duplexes and triplexes — including unincorporated land in rural areas.

She also backs HB 3031, the creation of her proposed “housing infrastructure production fund.”

“What housing is out there, we got to get people in it. We’ve got to convert buildings that can be converted to residential, and we need to build new -We need all of it,” Kotek said.

But as looming tariffs and inflation threaten to raise the costs of construction materials, like lumber, the governor acknowledged the potential impact on housing goals here in Oregon and across the nation.

“What I would like to see from the Trump administration is consistency about what they talked about on the campaign trail, which was, ‘we want to help get more housing constructed across the country and make it more affordable,’” Kotek said. “I would argue the tariffs will not help, in that regard. Cuts to the Housing and Urban Development department will not help.”

“I will continue to communicate that through our congressional delegation to Cabinet Secretaries and the Trump administration that we need help. This is a bipartisan issue.”

“We’re unsure, but what we do know is that Oregon’s commitment to the federal government is clear….and we’re going to focus on our partnership, and in turn, we’re going to expect the federal government to meet and exceed their commitment to us,” Wilson said. “We can’t panic. We can’t focus on chaos. We’ve got to run our city and our state today.