Breaking ground: New ideas for housing

To live in Lane County is to accept a compromise.

You get unparalleled access to natural beauty. Open spaces and environmental protections. A growing urban core in Eugene and Springfield that still maintains a small-town feel.

And you pay more for all of it. Starting with your house or apartment.

Rent or mortgage payments feel out of reach for many Americans these days, especially in Western states. So it’s tempting to lump Lane County’s affordability woes in with the rest.

But consider this: In 1990, the median price of a single-family house sold in the Eugene-Springfield metropolitan statistical area (which covers all of Lane County) was 2.6 times the area’s median household income.

Last year, the median-priced home sold for 6.1 times the median income. Of the nearly 200 U.S. metro areas with 250,000 or more residents, that ratio rose more in only nine of them over the same period.

How did we dig ourselves into this hole? The answer is clear: We haven’t built enough homes. 

For every 1,000 households in Lane County, builders started an average of 8.4 new homes a year between 2016 and 2025, according to data compiled by Moody’s Analytics and published by The New York Times, which makes apples-to-apples comparisons of homebuilding activity in different metro areas possible.

That’s the slowest pace of Oregon’s five major metros, and slower than just about every similar-sized metro area in the western United States outside of California.

The Lookout Eugene-Springfield Editorial Board spent the past three months speaking to more than 20 real estate developers, contractors, city planners, elected officials, and government and nonprofit housing advocates. The vast majority of them live and work in Lane County.

We wanted their candid thoughts about what could be done locally and at the state level to, if not solve our region’s housing challenges, at least dig out of the massive hole we’re in.

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What do you think should be done to build more housing in Lane County? If you could implement a single idea to deal with the housing crisis, what would it be? We want to hear from you. Send your op-eds — up to 350 words for a letter to the editor, or 800 words for a guest column — to lte@lookoutlocal.com.

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In this first of a five-part series, we imagine what it could look like to have a Eugene-Springfield metro area that is closer to meeting its housing needs.

We’re not endorsing these local policy prescriptions. For now, we’re exploring possibilities — each bringing its own trade-offs. With this series, we’re setting the table for further exploration of housing issues in 2027, as the community grapples with the impacts of low supply and high prices. These five parts will run daily between today and Friday.

• Part 1: Envisioning more housing production
• Part 2: Oregon’s land-use legacy 50 years on
• Part 3: University of Oregon’s impact on Eugene’s housing market
• Part 4: The housing-and-jobs connection
• Part 5: Lookout Eugene-Springfield Editorial Board’s recommendations

Part 1: Envisioning more housing production

How do homes get built in Eugene and Springfield? 

If you want to build a typical single-family house on land zoned for residential use, it’s as straightforward as most places in the country. Hire contractors. Apply for a building permit. Build the house.

But what if a property owner wants to tear down a house and replace it with four small cottages? What if a developer wants to construct an apartment building, or plat a new subdivision? And what if the developer wants the city’s help bridging a funding gap by providing flexibility on construction fees or tax payments?

The bigger the project, the more one city’s development codes and incentives vary. It helps explain why, for instance, 20 acres of residential land might yield a 50-lot subdivision in one city and 75 in another, or why an apartment building can rise seven stories in one city but only five in another. 

Since nearly two-thirds of Lane County’s 380,000 residents and 175,000 housing units — single-family homes, apartment units, condos, etc. — are in Eugene and Springfield, that’s where we’ll focus.

Editor’s note: Graphics were created with assistance from Artificial Intelligence tools. All data were manually compiled and reviewed, and no AI was used in the reporting or writing process.

Roughly 950 units of housing are built in Eugene during a typical year. But the city needs 1,600 units per year over the next decade, and a total of 26,000 over the next 20 years to make up for the shortfall and meet long-term demand, according to the most recent state housing needs analysis, released in January. The latest forecasts project Eugene to add about 26,000 new residents by 2046.

Springfield averaged about 230 new housing units each year between 2018 and 2024. But it needs about 470 a year over the next decade to meet demand (from 2022 to 2024, it averaged about 360 units).  

Springfield’s best option to add housing may be one it’s already exploring. City planning staff are working through a new housing analysis, which the state requires before a city can expand its urban growth boundary through the standard process. If Springfield can bring more land inside its boundary, it could add to the success of recent developments like the Woodland Ridge and Marcola Meadows subdivisions by providing additional space for housing.

Springfield could also consider taking advantage of a new state law that lets cities fast-track a one-time growth boundary expansion of up to 100 acres for senior housing or manufactured homes.

Neither of these could be implemented tomorrow. But they would certainly help the city chip away at its annual production gap over time.

Things get much more complicated in Eugene, which needs to raise its annual output by 650 units. That’s nearly a 70% increase over its recent pace.

Possible? Maybe not. But lowering the gap might be achievable with the right reforms.

Zoning reforms

Locals prize the feeling of open space within the city. But that feeling carries a trade-off. For years, Eugene has sacrificed more houses for open space between them. 

In Eugene’s main single-family zone, a standard lot for a detached house must be at least 4,500 square feet. That’s 50% bigger than Springfield’s 3,000-square-foot minimum. Zoning codes vary, and many cities, Eugene included, allow smaller lots in denser zones or special developments.

But Eugene’s standard minimum is also bigger in most cases than the five comparably-sized cities Eugene often benchmarks its economic performance against.

Remember that 20-acre subdivision? All other factors being similar, Eugene’s rules would leave room for fewer single-family lots in most cases.

For a real-world example, consider Juniper Springs. Most of the 54 home lots in the planned subdivision, on 12.5 acres behind Willamette Christian Center in southwest Eugene, range from 4,800 square feet to 10,000 square feet, according to the approved plan.

Say Eugene’s minimum lot size was 3,000 square feet instead of 4,500 square feet. Shrinking each could potentially create space for 27 additional lots on the same land — though street access, slopes and utilities might limit that. With smaller footprints and smaller yards, and houses placed closer together, they might sell for less.

The city could also take a fresh approach to building more housing in west Eugene. In the early 2000s, city planners designated nearly 200 acres off of Royal Avenue, adjacent to the Meadowlark Prairie and Dragonfly Bend wetland preservation areas, as a “special area zone.”

It’s one of several areas across the city with its own distinct zoning rules, meant to encourage walking and biking by orienting residential neighborhoods around schools, parks, shops and other businesses.

These zones helped guide development over the years in the Whiteaker neighborhood, on Franklin Boulevard, parts of Chambers Street and the Chase Gardens area east of Autzen Stadium. 

But all the city has gotten out of the Royal Avenue special zone is one recently approved subdivision with a few dozen houses. The builder is currently advertising seven houses, with prices from about $390,000 to $500,000. 

That $390,000 house — 1,200 square feet with two bedrooms and two bathrooms — is well below Lane County’s roughly $445,000 median sale price. How could we get more like it built across the Royal Avenue special area zone?

Changing its zoning plan (a step city staff are already considering) would be a start. Instead of focusing on walkable neighborhoods and mixed uses, the City Council could amend the code to focus on housing density and affordability. Think smaller lots, duplexes and cottages, more flexibility over how homes are laid out on the property.

The city could also incentivize developers who build housing there that’s affordable for households earning the area median income — an individual making $69,000 a year, or a family of four making $98,000. For example, it could delay, reduce or even waive System Development Charges, the fees a builder has to pay to extend streets and utilities to a site.

Growing outward

One of the hardest decisions city planners in any Oregon community make is when to bring new land into its boundaries.

It’s an exhaustive and time-intensive process, borne out of the state’s pioneering land-use management system, which lawmakers established in the 1970s to minimize urban sprawl onto rural farmland just beyond city boundaries.

Cities must plan for their growth needs 20 years into the future before bringing new land into their boundaries. Eugene’s last urban growth boundary expansion, in 2017, brought nearly 1,000 acres into the northwest edge of the city for industrial uses, a school and two parks. None of that land was designated for housing.

Its next expansion could make up for it. In 2023, the city and Lane County designated about 10,000 acres outside the current boundary, including nearly 6,000 developable acres, as “urban reserves,” which could make them first in line for future expansions.

Some of those reserves sit in west Eugene, just across Green Hill Road from the Royal Avenue site. The city’s study of that area counted about 285 developable acres, enough for roughly 2,000 homes. There would be plenty of hurdles — property acquisition, working around wetlands and floodplains among them. But it could be an ideal site for some of the same zoning reforms and incentives that could be put to use in the Royal Avenue special zone. 

Combine the Royal Avenue and west Eugene reserves. Take out some land for streets, parks and other infrastructure, and imagine that zoning changes and a growth boundary expansion add about 300 acres of buildable residential land. At an average of 10 homes per acre, that’s 3,000 homes, or 150 a year for 20 years. With denser housing, the number would rise.

Subsidizing density

For years, apartment developers in Eugene have grappled with a basic problem of economics: projects targeting lower-income renters don’t generate the rental returns they need to make a profit. But the rents developers need on market-rate apartments are more than many area workers can pay.

The city tries to bridge that gap with incentives for apartment construction, like its Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption, which exempts new downtown apartment buildings from property taxes on the value of the building for up to 10 years. It also helps developers acquire and repurpose existing properties through urban renewal district funding in the downtown core and riverfront area.

These districts divert revenue from future property tax revenue growth to finance redevelopment projects in that area, boosting property values even further.

The City Council could consider expanding the geographic footprint of both incentive programs. It is already moving in that direction with the property tax exemptions. In July, the council authorized additional tax waiver-eligible areas along transit corridors like Coburg Road, 11th Avenue, Willamette and Chambers streets, as well as the Bethel area between Highway 99 and Terry Street.

But it could go a step further by sweetening other housing incentives in these new areas. Under Eugene code, rental housing affordable to households earning 60% of the area median income or less ($41,000 for an individual or $59,000 for a family of four) can qualify for an exemption from most utility and infrastructure fees.

Could raising the rental threshold to 80% ($55,000 for an individual or $79,000 for a family of four) make a difference? How about letting developers delay paying those fees for projects up to 120% of the median income, the typical ceiling for moderate-income housing assistance?

The council could also establish new urban renewal districts along busy corridors like Coburg Road and the stretch of Willamette Street south of downtown, tapping into rising property values there to help developers acquire redevelopable properties or bridge funding gaps.

What’s missing and what’s lost

To be sure, some of the biggest factors holding up new housing in Eugene are beyond the city’s control.

Years of high inflation and elevated interest rates have made everything from construction materials to bank financing more expensive. Urban growth boundary expansions are slow and come with administrative requirements cities must navigate.

And state law also sets the terms of some of the incentives Eugene offers, like the 10-year property tax waivers. In Washington, cities can offer multifamily tax breaks of eight, 12 or even 20 years, with stricter affordability requirements to unlock the longer tax breaks.

Speaking of state requirements, Oregon’s prevailing wage law is one of the main factors holding up several planned downtown Eugene apartments. The law requires project developers receiving $750,000 or more in public funds to pay construction workers significantly higher wages than a region’s median hourly wage for the same work — with some exemptions for affordable housing.

It’s good for the workers, but adds millions of dollars to a large project’s cost — $10 million or more in the case of several downtown Eugene apartments. The riverfront district’s developer blames the law for stalling the project with just two of 13 planned buildings complete.

Each of the ideas we’ve discussed involves trade-offs. Pulling west Eugene land into the urban growth boundary could mean building near wetlands and filling some in. If the city waived infrastructure fees, who would pay for the roads, sewers and parks they fund? Would more urban renewal districts revive concerns about longtime residents being priced out of their neighborhoods?

These ideas are starting points for Eugene and Springfield. Closing their housing gaps won’t be easy. It may not be possible for the two cities to build nearly 800 additional housing units each year combined. But surely there are ways to build more.

Coming tomorrow: Oregon’s land-use legacy 50 years on