City of Eugene is falling short of its middle housing goals

In 2022, Eugene officials updated city land use codes in response to a new state law making it easier to build dense housing on single-family lots. The hope was to finally reach the city’s projection for how much “middle housing” would be built each year: 151 units.

Nearly three years later, the city is falling short of the mark.

Middle housing refers to dense developments like duplexes, triplexes, quads and townhouses — housing in the middle of a spectrum with single-family homes on one end and large apartment buildings on the other. A state law in 2019 essentially eliminated single-family zoning in medium and large Oregon cities like Eugene and Springfield. Eugene created its own local middle housing ordinance in 2022.

Across the city, 104 units of middle housing were permitted last year, a draft report of the city’s annual housing growth report shows. That’s essentially unchanged from the year before, when 101 units were permitted.

Eugene’s middle housing efforts actually make it one of the leaders in the state. Data compiled by the Sightline Institute research firm and reported by The Oregonian show the percentage of building activity that qualifies as middle housing has risen from 4% to 11% in Eugene since the state law took effect. Just two Oregon cities have seen higher percentage jumps.

But some builders bringing these projects onto the market say they face an arduous planning process before they can break ground, making it hard to decide if the extra work will pay off financially.

“It’s definitely more difficult than just going and building a standard single family home,” said Carter Helikson, co-owner of Helikson Homes. His company is putting the finishing touches on a project that demolished an old single family home on Kincaid Street in south Eugene to replace it with three units backing up toward an alley.

The benefit for him is clear: Three separate units means three sources of income instead of one.

Helikson said it has taken him over twice as long to develop his middle housing project than it would have taken to build a single-family home on the site.

“It definitely has potential for some upside. But the city makes it kind of tough with land use and all that sort of stuff,” he said, adding that he’s not sure if he’ll develop more middle housing after this.

Any construction project in the city has to navigate the city’s land use and permitting process. Planners review building proposals to make sure they’re developed in line with city and state statutes, which cover everything from parking standards and utility connections to which direction units face.

For middle housing, some projects can skip straight to permitting if the lot already meets city requirements. But in many cases, property owners first have to split their property into separate lots, which requires them to enter the land-use process before they get permits to build.

So far this year, 49 units of proposed middle housing have entered the land use process, but only 20 of those units have been approved. The figures don’t include projects that managed to skip the land use process, and the city updates middle housing permit data in January and July, so pinpointing the full scope of activity is challenging.

Many of the projects that get approved do so only after lengthy reviews by city planners. Records show Helikson’s project spent about six months in the land use process before he got the green light to build.

Springfield middle housing data wasn’t immediately available. 

Eugene officials say the city has to strike a balance between encouraging dense infill development — redeveloping single-family houses into duplexes, for instance, or adding an accessory dwelling unit in a home’s backyard — and avoiding negative impacts on surrounding homes by being too lax.

“We know that middle housing is not the answer to the entirety of our housing crisis,” city spokeswoman Lindsay Selser said. “It’s one tool in the toolbox. It’s an important piece, but it’s absolutely not meant to be the thing that fixes the problem on its own.”

Building advocates say the city has long been an unreliable partner in the effort to boost housing supply.

“I don’t know of anybody in this industry that’s not in favor of middle housing,”  said Dan Revell, executive director of the Western Oregon Builders Association. “If you’ve got a (housing) lot in the city and you can get three units in there, then put three units in there.”

Revell’s issue is with the city’s reluctance to expand its urban growth boundary outward, a move that would open up more land along the edges of the city to urban development. Eugene planners are considering possible expansions to address long-term housing needs, but doing so is a years-long process. Eugene last expanded its urban growth boundary in 2017.

“The city has been so reluctant to expand outward, and we’ve infilled about as much as we can infill,” Revell said.

Supporters of dense housing acknowledge the push to implement middle housing has been rocky.

“There’s so much happening that’s all so new, city staff is struggling to implement it,” said Betsy Schultz, board president of the Eugene nonprofit Better Housing Together.

But the approved projects are needed. And housing advocates like Schultz and Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson — who founded Better Housing Together nearly a decade ago — are in early talks locally and with state lawmakers about possible tweaks to middle housing rules that could make the projects easier to build, as well as financial incentives for developers and property owners to redevelop existing land.

“It’s new for everyone, but I also think some cities have a reputation for initially saying no when someone asks a question, then you have to figure out other questions to ask to get to yes, whereas other communities say, ‘Yes, let’s help get there,’” Schultz said. “Eugene has been in the former category. But with the new mayor, we may be shifting to more of a ‘how do we be proactive’ mindset.”