New Lake Oswego Foothills Framework Plan and Affordable Housing, Three Strikes: No Action Items, No Unit Commitment, No Financial Commitment.

LO has published HERE the draft Revised Foothills Framework Plan for review by the Foothills Citizen Advisory Commission [CAC] for a Thursday June 21st meeting.

Following a Foothills Oversight Committee meeting on June 28th, the LO City Council is scheduled to act on this plan on Tuesday July 10th.

The draft revised plan, for the first time, includes an affordable housing section; that's pretty much where the Foothills affordable housing good news ends.

The draft revised plan contains no affordable housing action items, no affordable housing unit goals, and no affordable housing financial commitment.  This is especially disappointing given that a recent front page Oregonian story pointed out that Lake Oswego (and West Linn) had virtually no affordable government assisted rentals and had long delayed implementing prior affordable housing recommendations and production targets. 

Because of these omissions and because the Foothills Plan would increase the total Lake Oswego rental housing stock by 27%, the questions I asked previously remain relevant today: 

• If not Foothills , Where? 
• If not Now, When? 

My detailed comments sent to the City for transmittal to the CAC prior to the meeting are HERE. 

In the absence of any affordable housing production goals in the Framework Plan I constructed a table on the last page of my comments. It shows an estimated number of  affordable rental units by phase at the 60% and 80% median family income levels using the current LO housing needs analysis that indicates that 35% of LO rental housing need is below 60% MFI, and 10% is between 60-80% MFI.

I am hopeful that the Foothills CAC will be as responsive to improvements as has the Lake Oswego Comp Plan CAC, and will be attending the Thursday meeting to try to assist in that process.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.