7/19/22 Minutes

Members:  Woody Dukes, Deb Comini, Valorie Freeman

Organizations: none

 

City, County and State Representatives: Officer Dalton Bodine, City of Salem Police Department;  Virginia Stapleton, City Council Ward 1

 

Guests:  Keith Higgins, Eugene, soon to be a member of CANDO

The regular meeting of CANDO was called to order at 6:00 p.m., on Tuesday, July 19, 2022.  The meeting was conducted by Zoom video-conference.  The Chair and Secretary-Treasurer were present.  

The agenda and minutes of the June meeting were approved unanimously.

Officer Bodine, subbing for Officer Gill, touched on the upcoming National Night Out and the City’s homeless-related complaint portal.  He encouraged CANDO to report suspected "bias crimes" to police.  He reported that the recent Iron Man and HOOPLA events went well from a police perspective and that it is now Department policy not to respond to calls about noise or similar nuisance behaviors unless the circumstances indicate criminal conduct is occurring.  As an alternative for ongoing problems of that nature, he suggested the local community dispute resolution center.

Councilor Stapleton reported that: (1) in the future, non-profit groups using city park facilities will receive an automatic 20% fee waiver;  (2) the Eco Ball in Riverfront Park has been proposed for inclusion in the National Historic Register; (3) a 40-unit micro-shelter village will be installed on Center Street near 12th on vacant land across from the Safeway store; (4) Salem's new City Manager, Keith Stahley (the former Assistant City Manager for Olympia Washington) begins work in September; (5) the Our Salem plan for guiding Salem's growth and development has been approved; and (6) among the projects to be funded through the upcoming bond measure is the Union Street Bikeway and a buffered bike lane on Capitol Street between Center and Market.  

There being no further business before the board, the Chair adjourned the meeting at 6:36.

State Kills Minimum Parking Requirements

By Elliott Lapinel

 

Households in Oregon face a lot of barriers trying to find affordable housing. Decades of discriminatory zoning practices and chronic underproduction of housing have not provided enough homes at affordable rates. Oregonians eligible for housing vouchers spend years on wait lists. According to the Oregon Regional Housing Needs analysis, construction of regulated affordable housing will need to triple for the next twenty years to dig out of this hole.

Luckily, one barrier to building more affordable housing will be eliminated by the end of the year. Under a new set of state land use and transportation planning rules called Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities by the Land Conservation and Development Commission, affordable housing developments in much of the state will no longer be subject to minimum parking requirements.

Many people don’t realize that since the mid-twentieth century, all new buildings in Oregon and across North America have been required to comply with off-street parking mandates: predetermined ratios of required parking spaces per home or square feet of a store. While well-intended, these parking mandates result in an oversupply of parking spots. Vacant spots aren’t just an eyesore, they increase rents and can prevent new housing from being built at all.

Down the block from me in Salem, the results of reduced parking minimums are already in action. The Evergreen Presbyterian Church is currently being converted into 18 affordable homes, including 9 set aside for chronically homeless veterans.

This is only made possible by the fact that the site was within one-quarter mile of transit, and therefore exempt from Salem’s requirements that multi-family housing have 1.5 parking spaces per home. At that rate, the site would have needed parking spots for 28 cars, three times more than what fit after the small existing parking lot was redesigned for handicap parking.

People with lower incomes are the least likely to not own a car, and in the most dire need of this type of housing. After the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission finalizes the temporary rules in July, nearly 60 percent of Oregon’s population will live in a place where it will be legal to build affordable housing like the Evergreen Church. 

 

Learn more about these updated land use regulations at www.oregonsclimatefriendlyfuture.com,

Elliott Lapinel is a data administrator at the ARCHES project, a part of the Mid Willamette Valley Community Action Agency

Featured Photo by Krzysztof Kotkowicz on Unsplash