NEWS: Oregon Banned Single-Family Housing

Oregon is on the way to major changes on its housing regulations. The new bill approved by the Oregon State House will allow construction of “missing-middle housing” such as duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in residential zones intended for single families i.e. single-family zoning will be banned (Cortright, 2019)

77% of houses in one of the biggest cities of Oregon, Portland, are designed for one family. According to the new bill, Oregon is expected to increase the density in several zones by including zoning amendments. The cities which have over 10,000 inhabitants will allow the building of duplexes and cities with 25,000 inhabitants will permit triplexes, row houses (houses which are in the same line with other houses and joined with each other), cottage clusters (a group of small houses that are joined together and have a common yard). (Grabar, 2019)

Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek explained that construction of various house types instead of single-family houses will offer people different options and affordable housing. (Short, 2019)

The Oregon State House gives three years to its cities and counties to revise their plans and correspond to its regulation. It will also provide financial support for realizing the law and technical assistance. (Cortright, 2019)

Due to the housing crisis that faces every large city in the US, the idea of building clustered houses seems an advantage. For instance, Minneapolis banned the building of single-family houses and allowed the construction of more duplexes and triplexes last December. California also wants to build quadplexes in single-family zones, offer more affordable housing and finally eliminate construction of single-family houses. But this bill will be considered for a vote only in 2020. (Britschgi, 2019)

Recent studies of New York times shows that most cities of the US are zoned as single-family areas. Though many experts as well as The White House think that it makes the housing prices unaffordable. Thus, in the end of June, President Donald Trump created a new council that will work on finding state and federal restrictive regulations and increase a number of affordable housing. (Dalrymple, 2019)

Single-family housing is in the past and America needs to do big changes in order to offer affordable housing and more choices to its citizens i.e to help people to make their “American Dream” come true.

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