State lawmakers are close to agreeing on the pieces to an affordable housing puzzle they’d like to solve this session. Now they’ll spending the coming week trying to agree how to put it together.

At the top of the list among Democratic lawmakers: doing away with a ban on what’s known as inclusionary zoning, a tool cities can use to require housing developers to hold rental and sale prices to rates deemed affordable to low- and middle-income Oregonians.

The ban has been in place since 1999, when homebuilders went through the Legislature to bar the practice. Oregon and Texas remain the only states with such a ban, and a coalition of cities, housing advocates and Democratic lawmakers are determined to wipe it off the books during the remaining four weeks of the legislative session.

Lawmakers are determined to enact sweeping new laws that protect renters from speedy hikes in monthly rent and no-cause evictions, inject tens of millions more in state-owned affordable housing and end the ban on inclusionary zoning.

If legislators can agree on the details and pass a bill, it will be up to local governments throughout Oregon to choose whether they want to pass ordinances that require a portion of developments to be sold at below-market prices.

“The inclusionary zoning discussion is important. It’s really a local control issue, frankly,” said Tom Kemper, executive director of Housing Works in Redmond, the region’s housing authority.

In Bend, a 4-3 majority of the City Council voted Wednesday to support legislative efforts to remove the ban on inclusionary zoning, though it’s not clear the council would use such a policy if it became available.

Councilor Nathan Boddie, one of the more vocal advocates for lifting the ban, described inclusionary zoning “as just one more tool we could consider using.”

“It doesn’t mean we would or we should do it, it just means there would no longer be a prohibition on it at the state level, which just doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “I think it could be useful, but not in every single case, but it’s something where we could work with a developer to see where it might be applied. It seems it could make particular sense in areas of the city where the (urban growth boundary) is expanding.”

Boddie characterized opposition to the lifting of the ban as “a knee-jerk reaction” motivated by “special interest and greed.”

“The very people who generally complain about land use laws are the ones who want the state involved on this issue,” he said, referencing criticism by developers directed toward state rules intended to limit sprawl and encourage density.

Councilor Victor Chudowsky, who along with Councilors Doug Knight and Casey Roats oppose lifting the ban, said he is hesitant to support the policy because of its potential effect on housing prices.

When the topic first came up, Chudowsky said he looked for peer-reviewed academic studies on the policy, which left him suspicious of the policy’s impact on housing markets.

“The articles I found showed there are two bad side effects to inclusionary zoning,” Chudowsky said. “One is that it had the effect of slightly decreasing the overall supply of homes. The second one was there was an overall uptick in prices of homes for people who did not qualify for subsidized housing.

“I can’t say I’m dead set against it, but that’s what I found,” Chudowsky said.

Chudowsky emphasized his opposition is not driven by a desire to protect the bottom line of developers, saying, “Those guys are smart, they will find a way to make money one way or another.”

“The issue for me is: What effect does this have on the overall housing stock and prices?” he added. “When we talk about this, I hope we can have a conversation that’s based on real facts and not just what somebody thinks may work. It very well may have positive impacts for someone who is able to find subsidized housing, but what are the costs to everyone else?”

Some developers are concerned that if 30 percent of a new development must be kept at below-market rates, as state lawmakers are considering, the cost would be passed on to the other 70 percent of the development.

If state lawmakers lift the ban, the law probably would require cities that enact inclusionary zoning policies to offer incentives to developers to make up some of the cost lost from holding a portion of a development’s prices down.

As part of the effort to help spur more affordable housing, the state is also considering ways to give builders more time to pay system development charges, fees for water, sewer, streets and parks, rather than requiring the fees upfront.

“For multi-family in the city of Bend … it’s a lot of money,” Housing Work’s Kemper said of SDC fees, which are assessed on single- and multi-family houses and cost developers several thousand dollars.

As part of the Bend City Council’s support for lifting the ban, the body also backed imposing rules that would exempt small developments from the policy and limit the amount of a development that could be set aside as affordable.

Erik Kancler, Bend’s lobbyist in Salem, characterized the city’s stance as supporting ending the ban, “but only if accompanied by sidebars that guard against unintended consequences while maintaining sufficient local flexibility.”

Legislators are set to take up housing bills in committee early next week.

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