Eugene councilors push to continue work on proposal to help renters buy their home

A majority of Eugene city councilors on Monday, Nov. 9, voiced interest in advancing an initiative that would give renters an opportunity to purchase their home before it goes on the market — pushing back on City Manager Jenny Haruyama’s recommendation to drop it.

After discussing the proposal for 40 minutes at a work session, the council ran out of its allotted time and tabled talks on the proposal, known as the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA.

Haruyama had advised councilors that existing affordable housing programs and waiting for state lawmakers to consider bolder steps were better options at this time.

City spokesperson Elle O’Casey on Tuesday said the council hasn’t yet set a date for its next meeting about TOPA.

Broadly speaking, “opportunity to purchase” policies give renters the chance to buy their home before the owner sells it on the open market, with the goal of expanding homeownership and preserving housing affordability and neighborhood stability. 

Jurisdictions across the country have adopted different approaches to the policy over decades, including Washington D.C., San Francisco, Philadelphia and, in the case of manufactured home parks, the state of Oregon itself.

The council asked the city to explore a TOPA policy in February. But city staff that came back to the council on Monday were skeptical of the policy’s impact compared to other initiatives, making a case it was a less efficient use of limited local funds.

Advocates of the policy told city staff that a TOPA program would need about $50,000 in city subsidy for each housing unit, city Rental Housing Analyst Amy Cameron said. Eugene spends about $17,000 per unit to preserve existing affordable rental housing and about $8,000 per unit to build new affordable rental and shared-equity housing, she said.

“TOPA is one policy tool that, when matched with sufficient funding, can improve housing affordability and stability,” Cameron said. “However, given the limited city resources, our exploration indicates that existing programs are the most reliable, consistent way to accomplish the goals of rehabilitating and increasing production of affordable housing for low- to moderate-income households.”

Local affordable housing providers are worried about the policy “diverting scarce local resources away” from their portfolios, and instead voiced interest in additional incentives, not “adding regulatory policies,” Cameron said. 

But a few councilors raised eyebrows at the presentation, appearing to imply they were being nudged to shelve the proposal.

Councilor Alan Zelenka said city staff included a “lengthy list of problems” on TOPA in the council’s meeting materials and less on the “benefits and the great outcomes” associated with the policy. 

Councilor Jennifer Yeh asked why staff didn’t mention ways to advance the policy as part of their presentation, calling the choice “odd.” 

“I’m not aware of any legislator that is taking this forward,” Yeh said, referring to Haruyama’s suggestion to wait for the state Legislature. “Maybe there is one, but as far as I know, we don’t have any evidence that that’s happening. So waiting for Salem is not a neutral (position). That’s choosing to do nothing, right? I don’t think that’s the values we have here.”

Councilors would need to choose a TOPA policy path to pursue if they wanted to move it forward, choosing whether to focus on apartments, low-density housing or affordable housing.

The city would also need to hire a consultant to research and develop a proposal for an estimated cost between $75,000 and $100,000. The process would take six to eight months. The city expects it would take another six to eight months for councilors to hash out the proposal, and another year or year and a half for it to be implemented.

Councilors asked if staff could scale back some of those expected costs, including by researching smaller ways to remove renter barriers to homeownership instead of a sweeping policy proposal. 

“I kind of feel like we need to think about what are the sort of more experimental steps we can take, and not not move forward with something because doing it perfectly, doing it the best possible way, makes it financially prohibitive,” Councilor Eliza Kashinsky said.

Councilor Lyndsie Leech added: “Our motions moving forward [are] either to not move forward at all, or do a very big built-out $100,000 consultant to create a full program. I think we can land somewhere else, and I’d like to explore what that might look like.”

Councilors Randy Groves and Mike Clark were more apprehensive about advancing a TOPA initiative. 

“I’m torn,” Groves said. “I love the idea of taking some kind of an action that moves us forward, but I want to make sure with limited resources we are cognizant of the downstream effects if we start pulling money from programs that are actually proven to produce good work.”