Michael Andersen
@andersem
Believer, skeptic, humanist, typist & dad. Trying to make places fairer as director of cities + towns for @Sightline.org, here in Portland OR. Views here: mine, all mine.
Never noticed something like this before, from the outer PDX suburb of Sherwood: *maximum* of two ground-floor stairwells allowed per apartment building basically banning courtyard buildings
I think many Portlanders have not, either! And it's not just Portland, though Portland's numbers are better for tenants. Oregon rents since 2015: up 27.5% after inflation Median Oregon tenant income since 2015: up 27.2% after inflation
Multiple conversations with different reporters: "why are housing prices so out of control in Oregon?" "we've got problems but actually, this is something Oregon is doing well at, here are the numbers" "huh OK well that's not a story I can tell. Nobody would care" Frustrating!
Fischer's image below highlights land along Portland's Yellow Line where even small 3-4 story apartment buildings are illegal - almsot everywhere except next to I-5. Once you realize that we based our apartment zoning on freeway proximity rather than rail proximity, it's hard to unsee
This is coming out of a law that was approved almost unanimously in 2025. Here's how Kotek's office characterized it to legislators at the time olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025r1/D...
By contrast: just yesterday I learned about this nice little project that opted *into* Portland’s funded IZ program by building 20 homes instead of 19 This great nhood will get 18 new market rate homes + 2 homes affordable at 60% of local median income www.designresearchoffice.com/division
wait, no, belay that, @markusja.bsky.social! the project pictured is actually a 12-unit stacked condo across the street from those others. link to download the big plans file if you want: docs.portlandoregon.gov/download.asp...
solved: half the project is townhomes, the other is stacked. same branding. townhomes are the ones with the heat pumps
Yeah, none of this is my favorite architectural product at least from the outside. The one I like best in this area is the left one in this photo but I couldn’t easily find its FAR info
I don’t think it does. 14 homes worth on average $214k each replaced one old home that cost $439k (2026 dollars in both cases)
What’s your take on this section of the RM codes? Could some incremental changes make it more useful without the need to shift all the way to CM?
Reading all these terrible run-on sentences The Athletic published last night had me wishing either for editors or AI, honestly
useful chart about the income distribution of millennials relative to prior generations read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
Today is the first episode of YIMBY Country, my podcast miniseries about what happened after New Zealand legalized housing. It's a conversation with @philtwyford.bsky.social, described as "the primary architect" of the country's historic nationwide upzones. I hope you'll subscribe! Links above.
When my grandpa died in 2016, we got his & my late grandma’s 2005 Chevy Malibu. We open it with a key & you can’t replace the wipers any more but it keeps going & going. I assume this privilege/cost savings is somehow the key to me being the only person I know who feels undertaxed, not sure though
Strongly recommend the Hopscotch interactive art exhibit in downtown Portland to kids from 1-92 share.google/B1bCcOad4fDO...
🫡 to the election page reporters & admins gov.oregonlive.com/election/
It makes sense to me to center the question “how many women are having fewer kids than they want?” Desired family size has been dropping gradually but not nearly as fast as actual family size.
The layers of cultural cross-reference on this sticker are Calvinic
The thing that would have let us absorb PERS obligation growth would have been more enrollees to spread it among. Some of why pps is in particular trouble is an unusually low catchment rate. Some of it is the lowest kid rate of any major US metro