Senate committee hears SB 49 housing‑production package; inclusionary zoning and local control draw debate

Senator Khan Pham, chair of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development, opened a March 5 public hearing on Senate Bill 49, a six‑part “Housing Production Accelerator” that sponsors said is intended to remove small regulatory barriers and increase housing production across Oregon.

“Making it easier to build housing has to be our North Star right now,” Senator Khan Pham said, introducing the bill and describing her perspective as both the committee chair and a small residential developer. Pham said the proposal is intended to reduce delays and uncertainty that add cost to housing projects. “Each of these six fixes in the Housing Production Accelerator Bill, SB 49, were brought to me by a developer or housing policy expert to address a specific challenge,” she said.

Michael Anderson, a researcher at the Sightline Institute, described the bill’s six components as relatively low‑cost, shovel‑ready policy changes: (1) legalizing incremental development by removing some mandatory minimum density rules for larger cities during a future planning cycle, (2) applying model zoning codes to provide a crosswalk between state model ordinances and local zones for larger cities, (3) streamlining up‑zone procedures and offering deferral options for certain planning analyses, (4) protecting council‑approved zoning by limiting design‑review processes from effectively reducing allowable density, (5) revising state guidance on mandatory inclusionary…