Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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welcome to the may 26 2026 eugene planning commission meeting i'd like to call this meeting to order my name is diane bailing and i am the vice chair of the eugene planning commission we'll be chairing the meeting this evening to begin i'd like to call on commissioner isaacson for the city's land acknowledgement statement

Thank you. Since time immemorial, the Kalapuya people have been the indigenous stewards of our region, building dynamic communities, maintaining balance of wildlife, and enacting sustainable land practices. This land acknowledgment is a way of resisting the erasure of indigenous histories and to honor native communities by inviting truth and reconciliation. Following treaties between 1851 and 1855, Kalapuya people were dispossessed of their indigenous homeland by the United States government. and forcibly removed from the coast reservation in Western Oregon. As we consider the impacts of colonization, we also acknowledge the strength and resiliency of displaced indigenous people. The city of Eugene is built within the traditional homelands of the Kalapulia Ilihi. Kalapulia Ilihi descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Sluts Indians of Oregon. They continue to make contributions to our communities here and across our lands. We express our respect for the inherent political sovereignty of all federalized recognized tribal commissions and indigenous people who live within the state of Oregon and across our nation. Therefore, the Planning Commission recognizes that what we do today will affect many generations who will come after us.

Thank you, Commissioner Isakson, and thank you to everyone joining us in this virtual meeting format. Today, our meeting will begin with public comment followed by a work session on urban growth strategies. Anyone wishing to join the meeting online can do so by following the instructions listed on the agenda for this meeting. Planning Commission meetings can also be viewed by watching the live stream available on our website or the broadcast on Comcast Channel 21. For those who join the meeting via computer, device or phone, your microphone, webcam, and phone are automatically muted when you enter the meeting as an attendee. If you wish to participate during the public comment portion of the meeting and haven't already done so, please raise your virtual hand now to join the speaker's queue in one of two ways. For those viewing the meeting on a computer, laptop, or other device, click once on the hand icon. For those listening to the meeting on a phone, press star 9. Public comment is an opportunity for individuals to speak to the Planning Commission on any topics except for items scheduled for public hearing or public hearing items for which the record has already closed. As a reminder, your hand must be raised to be in the queue for public comment. Elena, do we have anyone in the queue?

We do have one individual in the queue to speak. Hi, everyone. My name is Elena Domingo. The Planning Commission has allotted a maximum of 10 minutes for public comment this evening to ensure that anyone wishing to speak has adequate opportunity. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes. Sounds like, sorry, I'm just, this is if we have a long queue, some direction, but it looks like we only have one in the queue at the moment. And so I will enable the allow to speak function, which will allow you to unmute, but will not allow for video. Please do not unmute until it is your turn for public comment. I will let you know when you have 30 seconds remaining in your allotted time. When your public comment is concluded, your microphone will be muted. Please note that use of profanity is prohibited and any instances of profanity will result in immediate termination of speaking privileges. With these instructions, I will go ahead and allow Greg Bryant to be our first public comment tonight.

I have unmuted. Can you hear me?

We can.

All right. Excellent. Hello, everyone. Thanks for allowing me. Wow, I have three minutes. That's amazing. So I'm Greg Bryant. I moved to Eugene in 1973. I'm on the board of, at the moment, I'm on the board of the South University Neighborhood Association. And our neighborhood has been very concerned for a year and a half and very disturbed and frustrated and hurt for a year and a half because of some additional height that has been additional height and lot coverage that was allowed in R1 neighborhoods and has really damaged lots of things in our community. We are going to issue a statement about this, but I want to say also that the primary market rate rental construction that was clearly intended to crack open our neighborhood and turn it into a rental neighborhood is at 22nd and Alder. And the planning staff, intentionally or not, I don't know, showed you a picture of this building on 22nd and Alder and said that they hadn't really heard any complaints about it. If you had panned to the left of that photograph you would have seen signs hanging on houses basically cursing out the developers of the property. for having destabilized all the houses around it, for creating a height that looks down into the gardens and windows of the neighboring houses, and which blocks out the sun for basically on three sides of the building, and for gardens and city trees and all kinds of things, but also has no permeable surfaces. has stormwater problems already. This is really not, it's really predatory development. These people have come with outside of town investment in order to push as much as possible on the lot. And instead of a 30-foot building, we have a 37-foot building because with just a tiny incline in the top of their roof, They made it 37 feet tall, and it blocks the sun everywhere. And it's just, it's permanently, it permanently hurts all the houses around it. So we're asking you not to raise the R1 middle housing height to 35 feet, because that would allow a three-story building to be 42 feet tall. And actually, we'd like to remove the seven-foot roof bonus that the developers get. So that other neighborhoods and other owners are not similarly disturbed unnecessarily by expensive market rate rental housing that is basically chasing out owners from neighborhoods in the same way that it did from the Western University neighborhood. That's all.

Thank you, Craig. We do not have any other speakers in the queue tonight.

Thank you for your comments. As always, feel free to contact staff if there are comments you are not able to provide or wish to get to us in a different manner. I will now close public comment. Do any members of the commission want to respond to public comment? Moving on to our next agenda item, I'd like to turn it over to Rebecca Gershow to begin the staff presentation. Following the staff presentation, the commission will have opportunity to ask questions.

Thank you, planning commissioners. I hope everyone can hear me. We are actually going to break up the presentation, so we'll have a couple of different times for questions. My name, again, is Rebecca Goschow. I'm a principal planner here, and I'm joined by my colleagues here who will introduce themselves. We're sharing our presentation tonight. I'm just going to provide the quick overview refresher on UGS and our housing need, and then we'll dig into the proposed code amendments. And one reminder is that tonight we're not deliberating. That'll come in a couple of meetings. We're just interested in clarifying questions, making sure that you understand these concepts as we're presenting them. And so just wanted to remind folks about that. A bunch of these slides you've seen already, but I think that it bears repeating, and it's good for public if there are folks who haven't turned in before.

Turned in? Turned on? Tuned in. Tuned in.

That's it. So Urban Growth Strategies, what is it? Urban Growth Strategies is identifying the tools, actions, policies, and land that's needed for the next 20 years to support living wage jobs and housing that everyone can afford. We're building off the years of planning and community engagement undertaken already, and Urban Growth Strategies is evaluating the land needed for housing, jobs, parks, infrastructure, and schools, and identifying tools that can help Eugene grow more efficiently. So as a reminder, we have four phases of this project, community engagement, policy development, housing and jobs actions, and our land supply studies, and tonight we're focusing on our very first set of housing and jobs actions that we're bringing forward for decision making. We also shared this information with city council last Monday evening. Why are we doing this work? You have seen this slide. It shows the new Oregon Housing Needs Analysis numbers. This new law significantly changes how cities plan for housing needs within our urban growth boundaries. Rather than planning only for population growth, we now have to plan for decades of housing under production, housing for people experiencing homelessness and other factors. Using the 2026 ONA numbers, we know that Eugene will need to support the production of almost 26,000 new dwellings over the next 20 years. That means 70% more housing will need to be produced annually. We also expect our challenging market environment to continue with rising cost, interest rates, shifting demands, which makes this an even steeper hill to climb. So here's another way of looking at this. Over the last decade, Eugene saw an average of 950 new dwelling units per year. Of those, about 100 were subsidized affordable housing. And to meet our new housing need, each year we will need to produce 1,600 new dwelling units, including 700 that are affordable to households with the lowest incomes. The ONA also segments our housing need by affordability, and this chart breaks down those 26,000 new dwelling units into different affordability bins based on area median income, or AMI. The bars in green are the units needed for households making less than 80% AMI, typically a level of affordability that can only be provided through subsidized affordable housing. Next is moderate income housing for households earning between 80 and 120 percent AMI. And finally, our need for market rate housing, which serves households earning more than 120 percent AMI. We have an immense need for housing, especially that is affordable to households with the lowest incomes. While simultaneously we're seeing declining federal resources for affordable housing, and the funding we do have is not going far enough. In response to this housing need and as part of our state-directed planning work, the Planning Commission will be recommending at least four different packages of proposed actions over the next four years, and they're summarized here. Tonight's focus is on the first of our two 2026 packages. This first one primarily focuses on the housing and jobs actions with end-of-year deadlines. Leah and Heather and Elena will get into those details in a few minutes. They're also included in your attachments A, B, and C. More details there. The second package you'll be considering later this year will start in the fall, and that process will include Lane County, so there will be additional meetings and joint public hearings on those amendments. In 2027, we will be bringing forward to both the city and the county another large package to consider for adoption by the end of next year. The adoption of our land supply studies in 2027 is a state deadline, and it'll allow us to move into analyzing potential UGB expansion areas with adoption of a new UGB or urban growth boundary if needed by 2030. We also have included all of our proposed 2026 and 2027 actions in your packet as attachment D. It's a summary of what we're working on. While the focus tonight is on the very first package, I just wanted to focus on the different priority areas that overall we are focusing on. increasing our capacity for housing, reducing regulatory barriers for both housing and job development, and encouraging compact development for both jobs and housing in and around mixed-use centers. So I'm now going to pass it off to Leah, and she's going to talk about our first package of actions.

Great. Thanks, Rebecca. Good evening, commissioners. Again, my name is Leah Rausch. I'm a senior planner in the community planning and design team. So I'm going to talk about the first, one of the first items in this first adoption package, which is made up of a series of land use code changes to create new development standards for micro village housing and single room occupancies or SROs. We've brought microvillage housing to you in the past, so I'll keep my comments there pretty high level tonight. And you, as Rebecca said, you can review the code concepts in a little bit more detail in attachment B of your agenda packet. But to kind of lay the groundwork here, both single room occupancies and micro village housing would allow very small units to be built together on a shared lot with amenities provided in a shared building. The two types of housing are similar with some key differences that I'll talk about tonight. And both housing types can respond to our housing needs in Eugene, especially for lower cost options and smaller units. So micro village housing responds to a need we've heard from affordable housing developers and shelter providers to create housing that's affordable by design and centers community living. It's modeled on an approach that has already been successful in a shelter setting like Everyone Village in Eugene, but also village style and community-minded middle housing and multi-unit housing developments. Micro village housing as a new housing type in our land use code would allow very small dwelling units with an in-unit bathroom at under 400 square feet with a size bonus for accessible units or affordable units. Common buildings would provide shared kitchen and eating facilities for residents, and other services could be offered based on the needs of the residents, such as laundry, storage, daycare, and more. The hope is that these dwellings would be less expensive to develop and could reach a deep level of affordability without much or any subsidy. We've also heard through community engagement that the village setting can provide both independence and And detached units in particular can offer a sense of safety and comfort for residents who may have previously lived unhoused. In addition to micro village housing as a new housing type, we're proposing development standards for a housing type that already exists, which is single room occupancies or SROs. These standards respond to recent changes in state law to allow SROs as detached or attached units, as well as to allow SROs in more places. Single room occupancies are made up of at least four attached or detached units that provide living and sleeping space and that are independently rented. Each unit must share either a bathroom or kitchen facilities with other units. And under state law, up to six SRO units are allowed in low density areas and then anywhere that multi-unit housing is allowed. While there are many similarities between the two housing types, we're recommending adding micro village housing as a new housing type as kind of a Eugene specific solution that we think is more flexible and meet some of our more specific needs. Some key items just to highlight between the two. So we're proposing that both SROs and micro village housing use the same approach to calculating density. This is something that currently exists in our code for SROs. So, for every four SRO units or microvillage dwellings, that would equal one dwelling for the purposes of calculating maximum density. So, for example, 12 SRO units would be treated as three dwellings. This density ratio would only apply to SROs in zones other than R1, where only four to six SRO units would be allowed, and that's in alignment with state law. While SROs must be independently rented, microvillages could be built as a community land trust, which would allow for affordable home ownership or cooperative options. SROs must share either a bathroom or a kitchen, while a microvillage allows for shared kitchens, but each unit could be built as a complete dwelling. And we're also proposing to allow a limited set of neighborhood commercial uses within a micro village. This could provide workforce development opportunities for residents or provide needed on-site services. I've included an image here on the screen of Market Garden at Everyone Village where residents grow food to sell to local vendors. Everyone Village also has a clinic on its site right now, which could be allowed at future micro village developments. While a mixture of residential and commercial uses would be allowed outright for any micro village development in a commercial zone, it would require a conditional use permit in residential zones. Finally, we've envisioned micro village sites as larger developments, so a minimum of eight dwelling units and at least one community building. So as I mentioned, we talked about this already back in the fall. Staff presented on micro village housing as one of our proposed actions. We also presented this similar concepts to city council in November and then as Rebecca said, went back to them last week. Based on those conversations as well as feedback from staff and potential developers, we've refined the proposed development standards a little bit further. So I wanted to specifically call out a couple of things that have changed since we talked to you in October. First, while we're retaining the 400-square-foot maximum size, we've added a size bonus of up to 200 additional feet, so 600 square feet in total, for accessible dwellings or for dwellings that are affordable to a household earning less than 80% of the area median income. Additionally, we increased the minimum number of units on a site from seven to eight, and have proposed requiring at least one common building for every 20 micro village dwellings. So at least one common building on each site. And these minimums will replace a minimum density threshold for micro village developments, although the maximum density would still apply at that four to one ratio I described. We've also clarified further that micro village housing could be developed as a community land trust, again offering an opportunity for home ownership. With that, the rest of the presentation I'll hand off to Heather and Elena, but we wanted to stop here and see what questions you had about micro village housing or single room occupancies.

I have a question. Yes, please. I didn't exactly understand what you said about the four to one density ratio equating to three units. Tell me more about that, please.

Yeah. Yes. So for the purposes, this exists in our code today for single room occupancies. So for most zones, we have often a minimum density, always a maximum density for our residential zones. And so for calculating if a development site fits in that range for the particular zone. That's dwellings per net acre. For SROs, because of their size, theoretically, they're being smaller footprint or having shared facilities with other units. Right now they're calculated at a different ratio. So for every four SRO units, that equals one dwelling for the purposes of calculating density. So if you had 12 SRO units on an acre, That would equate to three dwellings per acre for that density range and so it would need to be Dense enough to get to that minimum if there is one but not so dense that it exceeds the maximum and that's different for every zone And so we're not proposing to change that that's what's in our code today and we are proposing to align micro village with that same ratio Thank you Commissioner Beeson

This is a detailed question in the spirit of clarification. It's page 14 of the AIS under micro village dwellings about halfway down. It talks about shared facilities. I've been staring at those two bullets a bit where it says allow private kitchen and bathroom complete dwelling with the option for shared facilities and then under that it says require bathrooms in unit. Does that mean that if you took the option for shared facilities you could have shared kitchen? It seems to me when I read those two you can't have shared bathrooms.

That's correct, for microvillage. So yeah, those are written kind of in a confusing way. So thank you for the feedback. But yes, the proposal is that they must have a bathroom in every microvillage dwelling. There's no shared bathrooms as proposed. But they could... have their own kitchen, kitchenette, and be kind of a complete dwelling, more like a traditional tiny house where everything's in the unit. They also could opt to not provide kitchens in the unit and do shared facilities, but they either way would need their own bathroom.

Thank you.

Commissioner Isakson. I think Commissioner Yang is in the queue, which is why.

Commissioner. I'm sorry, I have two quick questions. One is that, do we have any survey data or whatnot of the demand for home ownership with the micro village units?

Not specific to microvillage, no. I would say that we have some comparable developments that have come online in the last decade in Eugene. So thinking about like village style housing where they built as multi-unit developments, but they... share a lot of these features, right, of like common facilities. They have kind of turned inward in a village kind of layout. And those have been the ones I'm thinking about have been built as cooperatives where there's a homeownership opportunity through a community land trust. So the model exists locally, but I would say it's a new enough and emerging enough model that we don't have lots of examples. Certainly, we've heard through community engagement a desire for more homeownership opportunities and specifically more affordable starter home style homeownership, but not necessarily intersected with the micro village model.

I see. My second question, if I may, is that of the 700 affordable units that's much needed going forward, what fraction, what proportion do we envision should be the SRO versus the micro village that can fulfill that need?

I don't have a specific number for you. We will, as a part of our kind of 20-year housing planning work that we're doing right now, that's one of the questions we'll kind of need to wrestle with is breaking out our 20-year need by housing types. And that would include all types of housing, single unit, middle housing, multi-unit, SROs, and microvillage if we move forward with that. There's a little bit of this like kind of 80-20. We're going to make some assumptions built into that based on trend data for the most part and what we know from market analysis, affordability analysis, fair housing issues, right? So that's one of the things we'll be kind of embarking on over the next year. Um, we have, all we have right now is to say, you know, from community engagement, we think there's a need and a desire for this, um, slightly different path from single room occupancies, which do exist in our code today. Um, and we're just proposing to, um, allow those a little bit more broadly, um, and adding some specific development standards to them.

I have many questions. I think the first one's actually for Rebecca. Going back to the very, very beginning, sorry, I'm losing my voice. Where we're talking about needing 25,944 units. I remember when we first started it was 18,000 units and we had gone ten years into a 20 year study and we had done 9,000, so right on the mark. However, when you dig deeper, almost all that was market rate. And so we've done a really good job for getting market rate, but everything else kind of was in the lurch. And we've heard from the community a lot of times that we don't like the density options that are coming into place. And so this is kind of a little bit of a rhetorical, but I think it's good for the audience to know it. Is there any pathway to hit that 25,000 without adding density into our existing? In other words, building out instead of up.

So part of what we're required to do is to look inward first. We can't just expand. We... We are doing things a little bit out of order in that we're bringing to you actions before we tell you how much of a housing need that we have or how much of a land supply need, rather, because we know we have this immense need. And we know that first we need to look inside our urban growth boundary efficiency measures and ways that we can intensify the use of the land that already exists inside the urban growth boundary. Once we have made proposals that both you and the City Council agree are the right level of of proposals of changes inside the urban growth boundary and that meets the requirements of the ONA, then we can see how much land we can expand. I mean, that's a super simplified version, but basically we don't have a land supply number yet, so we don't know for sure that we're going to need to expand, but there's a good chance that we're going to need to do both of those things.

Got it. Over to micro villages, I think you hit the nail on the head and I appreciate asking that question, so I'll skip over that. What tier does micro village fit into between 0 to 30, 30 to 60, 60 to 80? Is it all across the whole spectrum of that identified need that isn't being addressed or is it specific to one particular tier?

We started this work and this proposal with that deep, deep affordability in mind. So zero to 30% AMI folks who might be transitioning out of homelessness and just cannot find rental housing that is accessible. Um, and able to leave those shelter units into permanent housing, period. That's where we started in framing this. The development standards themselves don't say this must be affordable to X income level. We added a few features that I think encourage it to be built by affordable housing developers or someone who's interested in affordability. So requiring slightly larger sites. So it's not just kind of a few units, but it is larger, more intentional site development. The size bonus for affordable and accessible units, so you can build a little bit larger, are some examples of that. But there's no requirement in the proposed standards to limit it to development at a certain affordability level. Outside of the land use code, we are working really closely with our partners in the housing and homelessness teams. And they have other tools at their disposal around what development sites the city would fund or provide tax exemptions to or other incentives. And that would be based on an affordability metric. And I don't think they've gotten to like only zero to 30 or only zero to 60, but most of our affordable housing tools are like that zero to 80% of median income.

The last two questions. One, is ownership a possibility? Are these only for rentals? And then two would be, do you have any cost comparisons per square foot? I mean, I know this is a new program, but do you have a rough idea of how much it is to build one of these versus a traditional?

Mm-hmm. So this is feasible as a home ownership opportunity like through a community land trust or a cooperative. So similar to what we've seen like square one villages do at a few different sites. You could the developer could own the land and then the houses are owned as a part of a cooperative or just more generally a part of a community land trust. So that would be the most likely home ownership path because of the shared facilities and resources on the site. But we wanted to intentionally create that or allow for that path. Your second question is about... Repeat it for me. I lost it.

Cost comparisons.

Oh, yes. Thank you. I don't have specific cost comparisons. We have been talking with a couple of folks who are interested in this, but they are kind of working on modular housing options and... how they would produce at scale. And so those costs look quite different than kind of a stick-built option. In theory, if you are sharing some facilities and building smaller units and you have something that's flexible enough to build on lots of different types of land, you could get costs down, but, you know, it comes down to what property you can find and lots of other factors beyond our control. But, yeah. Thank you.

I have another question. Do you have an idea of how many of these units of either type we have presently?

Yeah. Thanks for sending your question in advance so I could prepare. We don't know exactly how many SROs we have on the ground right now. We have been tracking that through growth monitoring. So we know that since 2012 when that program started, We've seen 44 net new SRO units, so not a ton. And SROs historically have only been allowed as an attached form. So like a small apartment building or a house that gets turned into six or ten. distinct SRO units or rooms. So it's with these new development standards based on changes to state law, there's more flexibility in what SROs could look like moving forward. We don't allow micro village housing right now as a permanent housing type. So we've seen iterations of the model that look and feel similar. So at a shelter site where you have transitional housing, non-permanent housing, where they're sharing bathrooms and kitchen facilities in a common building, that might look and feel the same way, but it's still shelter. It's not permanent housing. So a lot of our shelter sites use a similar model to that. And then we have more Multi-unit housing or middle housing that's built in kind of a village style So again like the square one villages model where they might have a common building But they were built as multi-unit housing or permitted as multi-unit housing. So we have Some development sites like that, but nothing that's quite micro village house Thank you.

And are we comfortable that we Will have or do have enough incentives to draw developers in to address this need?

I think we'll have to keep working on it. I don't think it'll be perfect right off the bat. And we're working, as I said, with the housing team who kind of manages those programs and incentives. And it's something they're actively thinking about and working on, whether that's related to SDCs or eligible for funding through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund or We have a variety of tools. And so I know that's something they're working on. Great. Thank you. OK. If there's nothing else, I will hand it over to Heather.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Heather O'Donnell. I'm also a planner in the community planning and design team. So as you know, another way the city is proposing to remove barriers to housing is by providing more support to middle housing development. As a quick refresher, middle housing types include duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses or row houses, and cottage clusters. In 2022, in response to state legislation, the city amended the Eugene Land Use Code to end decades of exclusionary zoning practices and land use regulations that made middle housing types really difficult to build. Middle housing is an important housing type for creating more housing choices in all neighborhoods throughout the entire city. It helps Eugene meet a larger variety of housing needs, such as when households grow or shrink with kids or elders, and having more housing at different levels of affordability. So since adoption of those new regulations, Eugene has seen a significant increase in middle housing development as shown on this graphic from our growth monitoring program. Since 2023, which is the first full year of data since those regulations were passed, Eugene has seen a 294% increase in middle housing permitting. which increased the annual average of new middle housing units from 26 to 102 per year. So that's just two years of data. And because of the size of our housing need that we talked about earlier, we are still looking to do more. So that's why we are working on a variety of means to further support middle housing production. So the first two bullets on this slide are about city process and communication. So as more middle housing is developed in Eugene, staff across city divisions have identified the need and have been working to improve the clarity, consistency, and efficiency of building permit plan review and communications. In coordination with partner organizations, the city is also working to strengthen communication with potential developers, homeowners, and agency partners that are interested in middle housing. And then tonight we're focusing on that last bullet, updating the land use code. So last year the state passed even more legislation related to making middle housing even easier. House Bill, that's House Bill 2138. The proposed land use code amendments are aimed at complying with this new law, generally reducing regulatory barriers and improving clarity in the land use code. So these proposed changes stem from a few specific requirements and some other resources. So again, the requirements of House Bill 2138, the city must adopt changes to our code by the end of this year to comply with those rules. To support implementation of House Bill 2138, the state also put forward a brand new model housing code for large cities, which the state defines as over 25,000 people. And we relied heavily on that new model code. Note that the new model code is somewhat different than the middle housing specific model code that was referenced during the 2022 middle housing code update and it is not a baseline requirement like the middle housing code was, but it shows at least how the state thinks House Bill 2138 could be implemented how cities can align with the state's direction and it also provided opportunity for more clarity in our code matching the language in the model code. We have also integrated state guidance on walkable design, feedback from staff and housing professionals on how to reduce procedural and regulatory barriers, and we looked for ways to provide more flexibility to further support middle housing development, such as adding some exceptions to certain standards and reviewing standards that are most requested to be adjusted to see if there's something wrong there. Also, of course, community feedback. We have heard some things are working well. We've also heard concerns as you did earlier tonight in public comment. Digging into these issues. I just want to point out that any of these changes would apply to middle housing equally across the city. So based on all these resources several middle housing code changes are proposed for the 2026 adoption package number one, but I do want to make a note here that there may be additional code refinements in subsequent adoption packages. So just to touch on some of those key concepts in this first package. First of all, there's a variety of technical fixes proposed throughout the code that I'm not going to get into tonight, but they are specifically to add clarity to existing regulations or again to align with the state's model housing code for large cities. Other changes could create additional places for people to live, like increasing the allowed building height, which again you heard about this evening during public comment, and also allowing larger cottages and cottage clusters. Whereas other changes could provide more design flexibility. So, for instance, eliminating the architectural features that are currently required for townhouses and not decreasing the maximum number of townhouse units that can be attached. And then finally, there's another set that can help reduce the impacts of some middle housing developments on surrounding neighbors. So for instance, by prohibiting trash and recycling collection areas and setbacks. In addition, there are several of the proposed changes that are specifically necessary to implement the requirements of House Bill 2138. Those include changes throughout the code to make it easier to accommodate existing single unit, accessory dwelling and duplexes that will be retained in the middle housing development. There are also new incentives for middle housing developments that choose to provide at least one accessible unit or one home ownership unit that is affordable to households earning less than 120% of the area median income, which for a household of four, that's about $110,000. So for these developments that can qualify and choose to do these bonus units, the developments can add one or two bonus units and they can get reduced development standards to accommodate those units. So again, like allowing even taller building heights, increasing the area available to develop, and allowing larger cottages with smaller courtyards than are currently allowed. So I want to talk a little bit about what's changed since the last time we spoke with you back in March. We discussed several of the key code concepts for the middle housing changes. Since then, we've continued to get feedback on middle housing code concepts and kind of flesh things out a little bit more. So I want to point out some of the key differences and I'm going to start with the code concepts we discussed last time that we're now not proposing to include in the amendments. So reducing the maximum number of townhouses that can be attached is currently 10 units can be attached and that's not proposed to change. Adding additional restrictions on townhouse driveway widths. Adding minimum porch dimensions or a minimum distance to the street for a main entrance, those are all not in the proposed code amendments. And the proposed changes also do not include reducing the front yard setback except for for bonus units. So now switching to that, some of the changes that are now proposed to be included, we are proposing for townhouse developments to be limited to one site access per structure rather than limiting the townhouse development in its entirety to just one access. The type of projects that would qualify for bonus units as required by House Bill 2138 has been narrowed to match basically what is required by House Bill 2138. So as I mentioned, meaning that projects that opt into providing at least one accessible unit or one affordable homeownership unit would qualify for being able to do the bonus units and get some reductions in in the development standards. At some time in the future though, we could revisit this to see if it makes sense to broaden this incentive to more types of projects. And then those projects that do the bonus units also get relief from some development standards. As you know, there's quite an array of development standards that we could look at, but basically we narrowed in on mimicking the model housing codes approach to this. So allowing a larger area if you're doing bonus units, if you qualify and are doing bonus units, allowing a larger area to be developed through increasing the maximum lot coverage allowed and reducing the front yard setback just for the bonus units. And then also allowing the bonus units to be larger in size. Again, that would be through increasing, allowing a higher maximum building height by 10 feet and allowing larger cottages. Uh, and let's see other things. I kind of mentioned this, but another code concept that has changed is that, um, trash and recycling collection would be prohibited and setbacks, but, um, wouldn't be required to be screened. There are also some changes that we discussed last time that we anticipate bringing forward as part of the second 2026 adoption package instead of this one because they relate to other areas of the code and they're not just specifically focused on middle housing. So for example, we talked about reducing setbacks on flag lots. So that would be part of the upcoming package. All right. And so, um, I just want to acknowledge that, um, this is a picture of 22nd Alder that was mentioned earlier. So I just wanted to point that out, um, and see if there's any clarifying questions about the information on middle housing code amendments.

Commissioner Isakson.

Thank you. Back then to the beginning part of our presentation on middle housing. Is there any data on rents for the roughly 320, 330 middle housing units that we've built since we started this process?

I do not have any information on what's the average rent of them.

I'm just wondering if that might be something we could do in terms of comparing cost per square foot in a rental for a middle housing project versus not. Is it which bucket are we ultimately falling into? Are we falling into just the far end or are we looking at some of the other ones just based on density?

So I think that will be part of our, um, housing need analysis. Um, so not necessarily part of these efficiency measure code amendments, but, um, as Leah was talking about earlier, we will have to look at, um, how we are providing for more housing units according to the different income bins or, you know, there's a bunch of different ways we have to slice and dice it, but we will have to do some matching there. We're just not at that point yet.

Okay. And then the second question I had is kind of along the same lines is I'm wondering if in part of our outreach that we're doing, if there's a way to, once the hammer stops swinging and the project has been built, we're a year or two years out, if we're going back to some of the community and saying, you know, what is your evaluation of the project? Did your initial fears of building a fourplex materialize? Are there issues with parking? What are the long-term issues that we're seeing people have? And if it isn't matching up to what the concerns were at the beginning of the project, then that allows you to kind of go to other future projects and say this is what we experienced over here, and this is what they're continuing to deal with that we're working on, but this is some of the issues that we didn't see materialize that will kind of assuage people's concerns. That's my thoughts. Thank you.

Commissioner Ramey.

Thank you.

There we go, now I'm back on. So I missed the first work session that you all had and I read the material and watched that meeting. And then I also watched the city council meeting on Monday. And I have to say it's an impressively elaborate set of issues that we're grappling with and sort of a wide array of solutions. Some of them are very specific, some of them very broad. So it's really fascinating to kind of see how people process this information. And the thing that struck me that I took away from particularly the city council meeting was how good the staff was at actually, did they give you questions ahead of time, or was that, because that was very impressive. I mean, there, that was very impressive. That was just no, oh yes, and bam, bam, bam, bam, and the questions were all over the map. I mean, they were everything, very specific to very general, and so kudos to y'all. It kind of made up for the fact that I had to watch the whole meeting. I could see true artwork right there on the screen in front of me. The one thing I did of substance that I took away from that, I'm sure it's more than one, but the special area studies on whether these, how does that, how do these relate? Because I hadn't really thought about that. Because it does seem like you could create inequity across the city if you're not careful about that. But I didn't, it was just a question. I don't think you had a chance to answer it, but.

Yeah, I think the question at least at Council was about building height and whether or not the change in building height would affect special area zones and the answer at this point is that um if the special area zone points to um r1 because that's what we're talking about with building height if that special area zone points to the standards in r1 and there's no other height provisions in that special area zone then they would be subject to If the height were increased to 35, they would be subject to the 35. If there are special height restrictions, then those are not in the proposed code amendments to be amended. So, yeah, they would be different in that special area zone than they would be in areas that don't have a special area zone with special height. Or allowances, depending on what.

Okay. And beyond height, are there other issues that might come up as a result? Covered density setbacks, all that stuff.

Yeah, it's kind of the same thing in that most special area zones either refer to, I shouldn't say most, several of the special area zones refer to the similar base zone and then just have a couple of things that they're saying is um, unique to that special area zone. Um, and others, um, say you have to comply with the standards in the middle housing code section. I'm looking at Lauren, make sure I've got all this right, because it really does kind of depend on the special area zone. But I think you've got kind of two camps there.

Yeah, I think that's fair. So, Commissioner Ramey, you may remember from the original Middle Housing Code amendments, the direction from Planning Commission was to try to kind of make middle housing treated the same citywide. And so this builds upon that same structure that we built for the first middle housing code amendments when it comes to middle housing specific standards. So the special area zones all typically either point back to R1, which then points to the middle housing standards for middle housing types, or if they have their own standards, there's a carve out for middle housing that says, go look at the middle housing standards.

Okay, good. All right. So that was the thing that struck me. And honestly, at the council level, I'm like, wow, how did they get that deep? But it was pretty impressive. I had much more faith in our councillors than I did before I watched that meeting. So on page 17, just talking about housing, there's the idea that Increasing the height limit will result in affordability and choice. Another place it says we're going to improve building costs, which I hope means we're going to reduce building costs. And then there's another thing about flexibility. So I'm not a house builder or particularly an expert on any of that stuff, but I'm not sure how you get from building five feet taller to getting more housing units. there does not, at face value, there does not seem to be a direct connection between those two. What you get is a taller building or a bigger building, but you don't get more units. And so is there any way we can go back to the community that are our experts and say, oh yes, if I had three stories, then I could do a duplex or anything like that, I think would really help the conversation along. Because otherwise it just kind of seems like, well, we're just making either taller or bigger buildings but we're not actually making any more units. And I think the idea was to make more units. So I'm a little, I'm not sure, I mean I can see, I think I can see how this is gonna go, where the votes are gonna be on this one, but it might be helpful if there were some documentation that said yes, yes, yes. We think, we heard from this sector that this would make a big difference to them. So just that. Secondarily, the seven-foot thing. So in my understanding, again, I don't build houses, but my understanding was what we were trying to get was a two-and-a-half-story structure. And we were capturing that extra seven feet inside the peak of the roof. And you could have... Onyx, not onyx, those other things that come out. Dormers. Thank you, dormers, which we used to spend a lot of time talking about how big the dormers could be or couldn't be and where they could be and how far from the corner. And I think that's what I thought the seven feet was about. So you could add this sort of attic space that was, it didn't cover the whole footprint of the house, it just was up here in the attic. And I thought, okay, because then from the street you see the eaves are dropped down, so they're lower, so the bulk isn't as visible from the street. So one thing we might consider is just getting rid of the extra seven feet and just say, look, you can build 30 feet or whatever we come up with, 34.6, whatever the number is. Thou shalt not build bigger than that, period. Unless we want to get back and make the two and a half story idea really work. Because it doesn't seem, at least at 22nd and Alder, if they were allowed a bonus because they had sloped roofs. I did not know that. That is not okay with me, because that's not how I understood the thing was supposed to work. I thought it was supposed to be attic space that we were recovering. So those are my thoughts on height, and that's, in fact, all my thoughts. Thank you.

Thank you. Any responses?

Oh, sorry. Yeah. I didn't necessarily hear a question. I don't know, Lauren, if you have anything. My understanding is there was a lot of work around height, which it sounds like you're familiar with back during the Middle Housing Code Amendments. So I'm not sure that, yeah, we can dig that stuff up again. We definitely have heard from folks that it would create more design flexibility, create more living space. Right, right. So that's the question, right? And so whether or not the commission wants to recommend that or not, but that is the feedback that we've heard. And to your point, we've also heard concerns about that under the,

Current code as it is now so and is it accurate now that if we increase to 35 feet? there would be allowed an additional seven feet like the Gentleman who did his comments said that would take it to 42 and

Yeah, that can be, I mean that that's an option to do what commissioner Ramey said, get rid of the seven feet, leave it as it is. I mean there are some options there. Um, right now the code amendments don't touch that provision. Um, yeah.

So I'll just add that during my recollection, and planning commissioners can tell me who are there if you recollect differently. But during the initial middle housing code adoption, planning commission did recommend an increase in building height for middle housing types up to 35 feet. At the time, the code allowed for a building height of 30 feet with the extra seven bonus if the roof was pitched at a certain pitch. Planning Commission recommended bumping that base up to 35 feet. The council decided not to do that and bumped it back down. So as the code is currently written, it's the 30 foot height limit with the seven feet if your roof is pitched at a particular angle. And what the new proposal is would be bumping the height limit up to 35 and not doing anything about the extra seven foot bonus with the angled roof. Planning Commission could make a different recommendation about that. But that is just to kind of set the context for all of them. CHRISTIE WOODARD. Thank you.

CHRISTIE WOODARD. And I just want to make sure everybody realizes that we're not just talking about middle housing, but we're talking about any housing in R1.

Commissioner Richardson?

I would echo what you're saying, Commissioner Remney. I think that, I would want to know what the apex is between our restriction in future investment. In other words, does that extra seven feet green light a project? In other words, because they're expanding the footprint of the residents, now there's more square footage they can charge more per rent that works out in economics to build a project or not build a project. Or is it just a giveaway that they would green light the project regardless of the extra seven feet and we're just giving more bang for your buck to a developer, which isn't necessarily a bad idea on its face value. But to your point, if the goal for us was to not be impeding on neighbors around us and create more density and more units. If that's not happening and all we're doing is giving a kind of a giveaway to a developer, then I'm not on that board. But if there is some value to it where a developer can come in and say, here's five projects we would not have done if we didn't have this extra height and here's the reason why, that's the information that I would want to see.

Commissioner Edwards.

Thank you. Well, my question, we've kind of touched on it, but my understanding both from talking to developers as well as this process, the first time we went through it was that there actually was additional capacity that could be gained by adding the height. And so I don't know if anyone knows the actual answer to that, but that was the understanding that I was under the impression of. So I think clarification around that would be helpful. I think the other thing that was helpful, and Leah, you did a really great job at Council explaining that what is currently allowed a lot of people are pointing to this building as kind of like, oh my gosh, this is in my neighborhood. What is currently allowed, even without changing heights, is not what we see in the built environment. So anything new that's built to its height capacity can appear shocking in a neighborhood where it was a single story, single unit home for, you know, And so I think that that was really helpful to just help people understand what's currently allowed even without the changes might look a lot different than what you would be thinking even without adjusting heights. And so that was helpful for me just to be able, as I know that articulating that during the middle housing changes was helpful. And I know that there was a lot said about the fact that you could already see this in a single unit home or single family home next door to you. The fact that it would be middle housing with the same requirement, you know, with the same height allowances was kind of, you know, was a little bit of an aha moment, I think, for people, so.

I just want to make sure to give Heather credit for that because I think that was Heather that said it, but I'm glad it resonated because that's something we talk about a lot.

In my defense, I was listening, and so, thank you.

Heather, I had a question. On the slide when you were talking about, you had three items and ways to support middle housing development. The middle one was about something about coordinating with partners and I would like to understand what that's referring to.

Yes, so I think that this is mostly happening through our building permit services staff and they're working with developers that are particularly interested in developing middle housing, trying to make sure that our materials are uh like we're developing faqs we're trying to make sure that um the community we're all saying the same thing and that we're applying the regulations consistently because this is all new and now we have detached plexes and you know all of these things that are kind of a new thing and so it has taken a while for us to um uh, deal with all of those changes at once. We have to kind of change some processes and, you know, figure out how to apply things that really didn't envision necessarily this kind of development. So, um, I, I know that, um, building permit services has been, um, held at least, uh, I think two or more, um, in-person educational presentations to give folks information about what the requirements are and parameters are for middle housing development. And I think those have been pretty successful.

Great, thank you. No more questions?

All right, I'll jump into my portion. I'm Elena Domingo, associate planner on the community planning and design team. So this first 2026 adoption package also includes several other proposed code amendments to reduce barriers to housing and jobs and to respond to recent legislation. State law, and in some cases federal law, requires cities to allow certain uses that provide care in more places throughout the city. These include allowing adult and child daycare centers and daycare homes to be permitted outright or with limited restrictions in more zones. These uses provide supervised daytime care. They do not provide room and board or other services. We know daycare is an important service to support Eugene's workforce, allowing caregivers to work, pursue education, and maintain economic stability. The proposed code would also allow residential treatment facilities and homes, residential training facilities and homes, and similar uses to be permitted outright in more zones. These uses do provide room and board in conjunction with services like physical assistance with daily living or training. Although the law allows for some nuance between where these uses are allowed, the proposal is to treat care uses providing similar services the same. So basically, Smaller daycare and residential care type homes for children and adults would be allowed in zones where single unit housing is allowed. And larger daycare centers and residential care type facilities would be allowed in zones where multi-unit housing is allowed. And some additional amendments we've already started talking about, but increasing the maximum building height in the R1 zone by 5 feet from 30 to 35 feet, which would allow for a full third floor of living space. This would allow, this would apply, sorry, I know I just want to reiterate that that would apply to all housing types in R1. But for instance, the thought is that it would make it easier to stack triplexes or fourplexes on smaller sites. This is not specifically state mandated, but aligns with the height in the state's model housing code and other Oregon cities like Springfield and Salem. Cities are required to streamline some residential land use applications, such as zone changes to higher density and planned unit developments. This will be a new expedited land use application process. And in response to the housing crisis and to support economic development, we are proposing to temporarily extend the expiration date for certain land use approvals, specifically type 2 and 3 land use approvals, such as subdivisions and zone changes, expedited land divisions, and middle housing land divisions. The council previously approved similar extensions in response to the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. And I'm going to Give it over to Rebecca to close us out.

And then we can have questions.

Oh, I'm the only one who's done that tonight. You've all been so good.

Yeah, I'll just mention our next steps, and then we can open it up for questions about the other code amendments. So June 23rd is your public hearing. We have sent out notice to the public on this already. In July, we have two meetings scheduled with you for deliberations and your recommendations on package one. Then in the fall and in the winter, we have planning commission work sessions, public hearing, deliberations, recommendations on package two. And then we also have work sessions that we are beginning in the summer and the fall on next year's package, package three. So we are hoping the goal is for this first package for council to act by the end of the year, and we're getting everything else going. So your hiatus, your meeting hiatus is officially over. And we'll just open it up for questions to see if you have any other questions about the code amendments that Elena mentioned.

Commissioner Beeson?

Are you guys expecting to have draft code language prior to the public hearing in June?

Yes. We already have draft code language, and we will send it out to you with your agenda item packet prior to the public hearing. And it is actually already available if you're really interested in starting to go through it.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Commissioner Isakson.

And talking about the 30 to 35 foot, is there a way to incentivize or rather de-incentivize not using that additional five feet to expand a second floor as opposed to actually utilize a third floor? Or roll it out in a staggered process to evaluate whether developers are actually using that five feet for our intended purpose as Commissioner Ramey was talking about. It seems like we're going down the same pathway and I'd like to know if we're actually going to have any data that's going to show that our gift, if we'll call it that, two of the additional five feet is materializing in additional dwelling units or if we're just adding a nice 15 foot vaulted ceiling onto the second story units.

You know, I think it is really going to depend on the site and the market. And, you know, so I don't know. I mean, I don't know how we would definitive intuitively. I would assume that an extra story gives you at least the ability to have another unit. But again, there's so many other things that come into play. I don't know that we would be definitively able to say, yes, we will get more units and we wouldn't have gotten them if we didn't have the increased height. I just don't know how. But I hear you all saying that. So we'll see what we have.

I'm just wondering if we issued 100 permits for it and then we come back with 100 permits and say across the space of time, five years, ten years, whatever it was, this is how many were actually developed into a third story. This is how many weren't. It's either working or it's not, but we don't have to pull the trigger on an entire citywide change if the ultimate decision is by the development community is to not maximize that for additional density. That's where I'm leading.

We do know, Elena mentioned, and I'm glad you did because I forgot about that, that 35 feet is not an unusual height. height limit and our neighbors in Springfield, Salem, Beaverton, I believe, a hand bend, other cities have implemented it. So we could reach out and see if they have data on that.

That would be great. And the only thing I was going to say is we don't thank staff enough, but from the slides, there are 340 new units of housing that have 500 people who are living in them because of decisions that you made. So thank you very much for your work.

Other questions?

I guess I'd like to just, I don't know that you're thinking about changing. We've been having a bit of discussion about the 35 feet. I guess I would just like to request, I don't know if it's open for interpretation or discussion right now, but I'd like to see you proceed. just the way we are and the way we've been talking about and put that out in front of the planning commission out in front of the community so we can have a good rich discussion about it. So I don't I don't know I'm you know as I as I I think there's a lot of different questions about it but I think a lot of that we ought to be able to talk about in deliberations and after we hear from the after we see the code language and after we hear from the community so I want to be sure you guys hang on to that. My opinion is that you hang on to that proposal and you bring it forward.

Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Beeson, for that clarification. We have submitted notice to DLCD with these proposed code amendments. We've sent public notice across the city. These recommendations are what you are going to be considering. and what the public can comment on at the public hearing. And so this will be what you will be deliberating on. And we will work to answer the questions that you have as well.

I have a, I don't know if it's a question or suggestion. One of your slides said, The increase from 30 to 35 would allow for a full three stories. And the clarification I would like on that is some actual numbers. When I worked in construction, it was all commercial. And you have an eight or nine or a ten foot height floor, and then you need that three or four or five foot plenum space between the floors to handle all your infrastructure and mechanical and everything. In residential, that doesn't always seem to be the case. So how would that five feet make a difference for residential? It seems you could have three 10 foot floors or eight foot or nine foot units with a slight separation and insulation between the floors. So I'm having trouble visualizing because I'm coming from that commercial

recollection so how does going from 30 to 35 allow three full floors that you can't do it 30 feet yeah i think it comes back to um the roof height and so i think or sorry roof angle so i think what might be helpful is to bring some images to your point because me doing this is probably not very helpful

Yes. Images would be very helpful.

But if you want more of it, my understanding is you want more of a pitched roof. Um, then that ends up digging down into the livable area because, um, to get the pitch and not exceed the maximum height. Rather than going up, you have to eat into your livable area with the roof line.

Then I'm back to that question about the seven foot in addition because that's where you could have the pitch. Right.

Yes. You could get rid of that seven foot and just do the 35 feet or many options there.

Thank you. All right, moving on to our next item. Do we have any items from commission and staff? Any items or input or share from commissioners? All right. Terry, any announcements or information from staff?

sure first a big thank you i think we all learned how to use our microphones did that thank you neil over at metro tv for this first meeting using the snow equipment my updates are really short uh rebecca already covered your next meeting and your meetings in july and those are the only ones that are on your schedule as of now Also, at the City Council, they will be appointing new planning commissioners on June 8th. So we'll have a new commissioner that will join us for those July meetings, and we'll do elections at the first one on the 14th. And I think that's it. That's all I have.

All right. Thank you. I would also like to join everyone's thanks and appreciation for all of your work. I think you guys do a phenomenal job, and it's much appreciated. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This meeting of the Planning Commission is now adjourned.