Staff outlines new state housing rules, warns of tight timeline and staffing needs
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Summary
City planners briefed the council on the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (ONA) process, saying the state now provides production targets and that Springfield must complete a contextualized housing need, housing capacity analysis by 2027 and a housing production strategy by 2028; councilors raised concerns about resources and shifting rules.
City planning staff told the Springfield City Council that recent state rulemaking has changed how cities must plan for housing, shifting production-target calculations to the state and adding new analytic steps that increase staff workload and require significant community engagement.
Katie Carroll, introduced as the city’s new senior planner, said the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (ONA) rules were adopted by the Land Conservation Development Commission in December and now require cities to use state-provided production targets broken out by income level, then supplement those targets with a contextualized housing needs analysis, housing capacity analysis and a development-ready lands inventory. Carroll said the ONA process will lead to an eight-year housing production strategy with a midterm (four-year) performance evaluation by the state.
Carroll highlighted that Springfield’s last comprehensive housing analysis (2011) planned for just under 6,000 units through 2030 and that the state’s new targets ask the city to plan for nearly 1,000 additional units overall and to front-load production in the first eight years (for example, a 466-unit target referenced by staff). She warned that the lowest-income tiers (0–30% AMI) figure prominently in the state targets and will require significant subsidy and wraparound services to build and operate.
Staff said the city applied for and was awarded consultant assistance from DLCD; the consultant is ECHO Northwest and will be paid directly by DLCD. Katie Carroll and Sandy Belson (comprehensive planning manager) told councilors the DLCD grant will not be passed through to the city and the work will still require an estimated 1.5 full-time-equivalent staff from comprehensive planning plus cross-departmental support.
Councilors asked several questions about the state’s rulemaking process, consultant capacity and the magnitude of the administrative workload. Councilor Rodley said he is "not entirely convinced that this is gonna get us to more housing faster," and Councilor Buckham and others urged staff to clarify what the city would have done absent the state rules versus what the rules specifically add. Staff responded that the big-picture elements are similar to work the city would do, but the new rules are more prescriptive about documentation, community engagement and administrative detail.
Ending: Staff will return with contract timing and cost estimates and will coordinate required community engagement as the ONA process moves forward; the housing capacity analysis is due in 2027 and the housing production strategy in 2028.