Councilor Candace Avalos

District 1, Meet Your City Councilors – March 10, 2026 YouTube video by City Club of Portland

Can’t make it to today’s D1 City Club forum?

Watch a livestream here:

Can't wait to see you tonight, East Portland!

Let’s discuss our wins, losses, concerns, and hopes for the interim and next session. Hope to see you Monday, March 16, at APANO—8188 SE Division St, Portland, OR 97206. RSVP here: https://qr.link/SxrKac #orpol #orleg

See you back here tomorrow for a livethread of Wednesday’s council meeting!

I look forward to continuing this work in the new Housing and Permitting Committee – the first meeting of that committee will be on Tuesday, April 7th at 2 p.m. For continuities sake, these threads will still be labeled #LiveFromHH26.

This is our last meeting of the Homelessness and Housing Committee in its current form.

I’m interested in understanding both the longer-term housing outcomes and the fiscal impacts on our infrastructure.

So while I appreciate the early progress we’re starting to see, I want to make sure we take a careful and evidence-based approach before making any temporary administrative rules permanent or expanding the program.

I’m also mindful that SDCs fund critical infrastructure. When we waive those fees, we are creating a gap that the City still has to figure out how to backfill, and we’re having this conversation during a particularly challenging budget year.

The temporary SDC exemption runs through 2028, which gives us time to monitor the data and evaluate whether it is truly resulting in additional housing production.

Given that housing development timelines often take years, it may still be too early to draw strong conclusions about its effectiveness.

It’s helpful to start seeing some of the initial data on participation and permitting activity.

At the same time, this program has only been in place for about six months, so we’re really just beginning to see the earliest signals of how the policy might be working.

They understand the need to use all the tools we have to address the housing crisis. But East Portlanders are also still waiting for their fair share of resources and investment from the city - in our basic infrastructure and parks.

The "value" in forgone SDC funding is something I am going to bring up again and again, because this is important for East Portland. After we voted for the SDC exemption, I actually got outreach from East Portlanders who were pretty upset with me.

The other element is that the construction industry is dependent on a pipeline that has almost dried up, so this policy helps address that challenge as well.

DCA Oliviera answered that because SDCs are only realized if a development goes through, we weren’t seeing a lot of funding come through anyway.

In a year where the City is already facing a difficult budget environment, how are we balancing housing incentives with maintaining the infrastructure residents rely on?

Staff answered that nothing is really changing in the rule, it’s just an administrative update. Temporary rules generally only last for about 180 days, and data (including public comment) will inform the permanent rule.

I noticed the administrative rule is moving from temporary to permanent soon. What specifically would change by making this rule permanent today?

Given the program is still early in implementation, what would be the downside of keeping the rule temporary until we have more data?

Portlanders overwhelmingly passed charter reform because they were tired of business as usual.

To be clear: I'm committed to building a more representative, more effective Council that works for East Portland - not a few well-connected individuals used to getting their way in City Hall.

"Killian Pacific is in the early stages of proceeding on an approximately 150-unit, naturally occurring, workforce housing project, in the Sunnyside neighborhood of SE Portland. Our ability to move forward on this project is due to the layering of the following efforts by the City: • Inclusionary Housing recalibration which allows housing projects outside of the Central City to benefit from the full 10-year tax abatement on housing improvements. • SB 1537 which allows us to reduce setbacks, avoid façade modulations and breaks, and eliminate ground floor retail, all of which substantially reduce our construction costs and increase the number of housing units that we are able to deliver. • SDC exemption on housing, which reduces our cost to deliver housing." - Michi Slick, Principal, Killian Pacific

This example in particular illustrates how different policies and incentives factor into whether a development moves forward (missing: private financing, which is a major piece in a typical capital stack).

The housing developers who provided highlighted feedback called the SDC waiver a "gamechanger" and spoke about how it made previously-stalled projects pencil out.

It's still too early to say how successful this program will be.

High construction costs and interest rates continue to be major barriers for housing development. In that context, PP&D hopes by combining data from diverse sources, they can see exactly how these incentives are or are not moving the needle on housing production in Portland.

If all the units in the pipeline qualified for the SDC waiver, it would represent $32,773,500 in forgone infrastructure funding. Most of the activity so far has been in apartments and District 2 leads the City in developments applying for the waiver.

✅Complied: Permitted units that have met required milestones, resulting in the permanent exemption of SDC fees.

Program Participation Definitions:
✅Enrolled: Qualifying permits with filed paperwork awaiting permit issuance and permanent SDC exemptions.

✅Issued: Issued permits advancing toward construction but have not yet reached the milestone for permanent SDC exemptions.

There are about 34% units enrolled toward the total 5,000 unit goal. That's counting all units in the pipeline, but they sit at different stages in the development process.

Instead, they've included anecdotes that share how the SDC exemption has moved the needle in some situations.

PP&D staff explained that because of the short timeline and the myriad of factors that go into development, they were unable to quantify "observed changes in rate or timing of permit issuance and construction" in this first report.