PORTLAND, Oregon — The city of Portland will soon be making changes to its residential and commercial permitting process. A new bureau, Portland Permitting and Development, is intended to make the process easier and more streamlined.
Preston Korst, director of governmental affairs with the Home Building Association of Greater Portland, said that the former system had been a headache for builders for years.
"It required builders to navigate a really complex web of seven bureaus just to get a single permit approved. It was cumbersome, disjointed and overall lacked the efficiency that the marketplace really needed," Korst said.
The new bureau brings together staff from the old Bureau of Development Services — which will be phased out — with teams from the Parks & Recreation, Transportation, and Water and Environmental Services bureaus. It will employ about 350 people.
The Bureau of Development Services had cut multiple positions last year as construction tapered off city-wide. Unlike other city departments, the Bureau of Development Services relies on permitting fees to sustain itself: 98% of the bureau’s revenue comes from permitting, land-use review fees and other fees.
Thus, with little new construction city-wide, Ken Ray, spokesperson for the Bureau of Development Services, told KGW that the department was quickly losing money — and without cuts, the department would run out of funds in 2024.
In February, the Portland City Council approved a set of new policies intended to lower the cost of building new homes, including a tax break expansion for new apartment buildings subject to inclusionary housing requirements. The council also approved a “regulatory relief” package that relaxes and puts on hold several zoning and permitting requirements for developers to build housing.
Korst hopes the changes, in addition to tax incentives that the city has put in place over the past few months, will make Portland a more attractive market for developers.
“We hope that those development incentives combined with the permitting system that we hope will improve, will help nudge the market and nudge developers to take Portland seriously again (and) help flow more capital across the country and the world into the city of Portland," Korst said.