Guest Column

When Oregon established the Land Conservation and Development Commission in 1973 one of the rules it was charged with was to “encourage the availability of adequate numbers of needed housing units at price ranges and rent levels (affordable to) Oregon households.” Anyone looking for housing in Bend today knows that we have fallen far short of that reality.

The commission is attempting to correct course after a two-year process to develop a suite of new planning rules called Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities. These changes will lay the groundwork for Bend to add more housing in a way that reduces carbon pollution in the decades to come.

While the commission adopted these rules temporarily until they are finalized in July, there will be opportunities to shape how exactly they will look locally.

Some of these changes have to do with decades old and arbitrarily established parking requirements, which dictate the number of parking spots needed for all types of homes and businesses. These laws have ended up forcing new buildings further apart by dedicating land—regardless of current need or demand—to housing cars instead of our neighbors. Today in Bend, our zoning rules require nearly all new homes to build at least one or two off-street parking spaces, even though half of households who rent only own one or zero cars. Those extra spots that go unused aren’t just a waste of space, they also add building costs to already high rents.

Housing availability and affordability (and the lack of housing entirely) is forefront on Bend’s issues. These new rules should help lower costs of housing particularly in small multifamily, cottage cluster, accessory dwelling units and ‘plex developments where replacing a couple parking spots with an extra home can make a big impact on affordability. This sort of housing, sometimes called missing middle or workforce housing, is critical for our future as it allows options at lower price points for those people providing needed services for our city but struggle with rising rents.

These rules will not stop construction of new parking spaces. Nor will it force people to eliminate existing ones. Far from it. It will, with some guidelines, allow new buildings to have as much or as little parking as they need, rather than dictating a one-size-fits-all requirement from on high.

The city has already charged committees with identifying areas of impact and how the city code changes can be implemented to comply with the new standards. The discussions in these groups suggest that most large scale developers will continue to provide the parking spaces their residents want. But they also may be amenable to de-coupling parking from rents. That would mean for every 1 in 10 renter households in Bend that don’t own a car, they would finally be able to pay just for their apartment, and not the parking lot they don’t use.

While this rule-making and code changing may seem head-spinningly wonkish to some, land use laws already underpin every aspect of why our city looks how it does, who can afford to live here and even if the nearest store to buy milk is a mile or two away or just a block. Bend certainly has had and will continue to have challenges of how to accommodate new neighbors without displacing people already here. We can all have a hand in ensuring Bend becomes more equitable and affordable than today.

Do you have a point you’d like to make or an issue you feel strongly about? Submit a letter to the editor or a guest column.