Housing Production Reports, City of Portland: In 2020 Housing Units PRODUCED Were 3 Times the Number of Housing Units PERMITTTED.

Oregon HB 4006 requires cities above 10,000 to submit annual housing production reports to Oregon DLCD; their related landing page is HERE. 

My prior 2019 post HERE has my compilation of these reports for 2018, a laborious slog through nearly 50 individual city reports. 

I hadn't seen the 2020 reports (reports were due in February) and contacted DLCD and got 2020 data for some cities and plan to do a full report later when all data is available. 

In the interim I took a look at 2018, 2019, and 2020 data for the City of Portland.

Quick Take:  

• Units PRODUCED substantially exceeded units PERMITTED during those years, especially in 2020.  This was particularly true of NON Regulated units.  
• In contrast, regulated unit production was lower than regulated unit permits.

Detailed observations, based on the table I compiled and pasted below. (To make the table more viewable you may want to download the image). 

ALL UNITS

1. In 2020: 6,256 ALL Total Units Produced Were 317% of 1,971 ALL Units Permitted. [Note: 1,971 reported units permitted is 10.8% higher than 1,771 reported permit count with Census/HUD; if this lower count were used than production would exceed permits by an even greater percentage] 
2. In 3 Years 2018-2020: 18,040 ALL Total Units Produced Were 128% of 14,101 ALL Units Permitted. [Note: 14,101 reported units permitted is 12.6% higher than 12,521 reported permit count with Census/HUD; if this lower count were used than production would exceed permits by an even greater percentage].

UNREGULATED UNITS

1. In 2020, 5,602 NON Regulated Units Produced Were 426% of 1,315 NON Regulated Units Permitted
2. In 3 Years, 15,684 NON Regulated Units Produced Were 147% of 10,674 NON Regulated Permitted Units

REGULATED UNITS 

1. In 2020, 654 Regulated Units Produced Were Nearly Identical to 656 Regulated Units Permitted
2. In 3 Years, 2,328 Regulated Units  Produced Were Only 69% of 3,427 Regulated Permitted Units

Bottom Line:

• The inventory of City of Portland permits that had not reached start must now be lower than in prior years.
• Looking at production vs permits in other larger cities will determine whether this is a statewide pattern.
• It's taking a long time for regulated unit count data to be available, additional transparency and a more timely process would be helpful.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog