You got that right. WWP's neighborhood is all 25-foot lots, and as you can imagine, the rapacious developers drool regularly at our doorsteps with fancy offers of "urban improvement," but rarely with enough cash to erase the mortgages that most of us possess. It's the others, and the financially vulnerable they prey upon, often all too successfully.

Here's a word to our friend, Commissioner Randy: If he really likes these houses, may he blessed with them on his every side, and his neighbors'.

How could he not know that these New York exported Brownstones not rob the urban poor and middle class of the one and very single thing they have always hoped for: a single-family home in a single-family neighborhood. It's Portland's shame, and Commissioner Randy's too, that Portland has abandoned the regular taxpayer's life dream in exchange for a Metro-induced hallucination that covets a high-rise condominium next to every dwindling and suddenly out-of-fashion single-family dwelling.

A pox on you all.

All of this is proof to the now-well-proved accusation: In Portland, property rights belong to those who know the mayor -- or the chair of the Portland un-Development Commission.

I'm not a fan of these either, but I'm confused about WWP's comment. These are single-family homes, aren't they?

The 49 designs you saw were only those picked by a panel of architects. It is their choice of the 300 plus submissions that they considered to be the best design. These are their picks only and do not portend what will actually be built in neighborhoods. For the most part they would defeat the purpose of narrow houses because they are too expensive to build for the types of neighborhoods skinny houses go into.

We are now having a panel of citizens pick more practical designs that will fit the character of each neighborhood they are built in. I have seen those other designs and I will go out on a limb and predict you will be impressed by them...I was. They had names like "The Woodlawn", "The Kenton", etc. The names of those neighborhoods that describe the plans accurately reflect the old Portland character of each of those neighborhoods.

This entire effort will culminate in a pre-approved book of about 30 designs that will be houses that will be practical and efficient to build, yet will have a design that will meet or exceed the current character of the neighborhood it will be built in.

I have been criticized for not engaging in enough "process" when developing these kinds of initiatives. This is my attempt to make sure everyone who has an opinion on the subject of skinny houses gets their day and say. In the end, however, only functional, practical and attractive designs that fit the character of each individual neighborhood will be allowed in the design book at BDS.

Hard to see a how a 15-foot-wide house can "fit the character" of most older Portland neighborhoods I know. I don't care how it's dolled up.

I would listen to Jack's complaints if he ever offered a solution of his own.

My hats off to you Randy. At least someone on the City Council is trying to solve the problem of affordable housing in Portland.

Don't mind Jack, when it comes to housing he's a bit of a snob. This old timer (lived in Portland for 26 years) likes these homes. They allow my brothers, sisters and friends to purchase property in Portland, without going completely broke.

I'm neither for or against them but they seem a better idea then all the apartments they are putting in around Gresham.
At least they are single family homes.

Yes, b!X, of course they are single-family homes.

But then so are mobile homes in trailer parks.

They possess precisely the same charm, no matter how they are (as our host here puts it) "dolled up."

East coast represent, yo.

I wish that Portland had the foresight to protect/preserve the character of older neighborhoods. When I owned a lovely 1922 bungalow in North Carolina, I couldn't even paint it without approval from the Historic District Commission. Some people were angered by that, but it made for a truly beautiful neighborhood. There were a lot of great colors in the 20s.

My 1927 Spanish Mission in Portland is next to a 1970 brown piece of crap box that replaced a house that 'mysteriously' burned down.

I have a vision of the 1970 getting razed one day. I'll move an old beautiful home onto the property and restore it. Or maybe I'll make a garden, but please, no more INFILL.

Won't someone think of the CHILDREN?

once again, going after the housing changes in portland. i do agree a little - these aren't the same as what is currently there, but i would rather have a few 25ft lots with 15ft NEW homes with NEW owners than the horrible drug infested dog fight promoting crackden section 8 apartments accross the street. new homes - let me rephrase- new anything will attract and keep people who are willing to keep a neighborhood nice. old crappy stuff just gets older and crappier. when i lived accross from the famous Humbolt Elementary (the only grade school at the time with 18' fences) a new principal came in and repainted everything. as a result,the whole next year, there were only 2 incidences of vandelism.

i like portland and love what it is doing trying to re-vitalize neighborhoods. i ventured out to gresham the other day and was sickened by the amount of open space that was now taken up by apartments- places where I used to play in the forest as a child. i would rather see planned communities of HOMES than vast apartment fields.

Hey now WWP, don't go getting all snippy. The reason I asked, mostly rhetorically, was because you said this: "How could he not know that these New York exported Brownstones not rob the urban poor and middle class of the one and very single thing they have always hoped for: a single-family home in a single-family neighborhood."

Which sort of distorted away the fact that these are single-family homes.

I believe the dog fighting is happening at Blazer homes in Lake O.

Come on, Jack. Same old song and dance. Lots of whine, no cheese. What would YOU do? Other than roadblocks on I-5, of course, to keep people from moving to Portland. First you don't like condo towers of any type or location, now the single-family homes are too small and in the wrong place. Yikes.

I have one suggestion - the 15 foot wide houses are due to the 5-foot minimum setbacks on each lot. Why not make the setback on one side of the lot zero? They are called "zero lot-line houses," and were quite popular in the 1970's and 1980's. The part of the house on the lot line had no windows to break into the privacy of the neighboring lot. It usually was only one story too, so that the wall on the edge of the neighbor's property wasn't too tall. If two homes were being built together, then they could both have their zero lot lines butting up against each other, looking like a paired set of row houses. What's wrong with that?

The City could get a lot more design creativity if they jettisoned the five-foot setback requirement. Nonetheless, thank you Randy Leonard, for trying to make our city a place where single-family homes are welcomed in addition to condo towers. Don't listen to the doomsayers including, unfortunately, our host.

BDS should be commended for an innovative design competition. Few people nowadays can afford to buy a 10000sf lot with an old house anywhere in portland. Narrow lot design is a great alternative to rowhouses. Seriously, it unifies Portland with its beautiful sister pacific-rim cities like Tokyo, where narrow lots and small houses are typical. Randy Leonard should be commended for working to Tokyoize Portland's real estate, and also for working to bring research dollars to OHSU to reclone Mothra. Hopefully, the recloned Mothra will similarly help reduce urban sprawl ... to rubble.

"Baaaaaaaaaa," say all the sheep. "Let's let Randy Graaaaaaaaaaagg decide."

We could accommodate growth (to extent it deserves to be accommodated) and preserve the character of our neighborhoods by building nice but modest two- or three-story apartment buildings on neighborhood commercial streets such as Belmont, Morrison, Hawthorne, Division, and Fremont. We could also have created entire new neighborhoods of such buildings in places like the Pearl and North Macadam. Leave our beautiful neighborhoods with nice-sized lots alone.

Instead, we went for "luxury" condo towers, and now we're giving out awards for crowding junk into the old neighborhoods until every block feels cramped.

I don't think you're doing anybody a favor by selling them one of these crackerboxes (with no windows on one side, did you say?) for $150,000 and up.

The other thing that needs to be done is to make clear to California's lower middle class what residents and businesses who are here already know -- that this is one of the most expensive places in the country to live, and there's not much new decent-paying work here right now.

People will still come, but if we can't accommodate them without destroying what we have, at least we can say we warned them.

Did the growth that accommodated you, Jack, deserve to be accommodated? I don't know where one draws the line. Tom McCall tried and utterly failed to draw it some years back. I have watched this same "circle the wagons" attitude develop -- strongly -- among newcomers in Ashland and Bend. It seems clear that growth will continue in Portland, so it is a question of how, now whether. As far as the "how" goes, rant or carry on; but as far as the "whether," that's a lost and losing if not ironic cause.

The Bay Area still grows and is vastly overpriced. The economic differentials will still push people toward Portland, even though its affordability (housing vis-a-vis income) may actually be less.

Income differentials between the sectors (as divided into fifths) also increases, and more in Oregon than most other places, according to relatively recent studies.

All that said, I hated what city government has done to Portland in the last decade and what the immigration has brought and wrought. I left, and my family was from there at least dating to the early part of last century.

Professor Bogdanski,

I agree that we need to warn lower middle class Californians about the impending destruction of Portland. Might I add that spreading the word about Randy Leonard's efforts to unleash a recloned Mothra on Portland may also help discourage lower middle class Californians from migrating to Portland?

I live in NE PDX, but unlike Jack B. I live north of Fremont. That means when these narrow homes and rowhomes are built in my neighborhood, they fill lots that were vacant and littered with trash and drug debris, or replace decrepit, unrestorable houses. The effect, when these homes go in, is that (a) they immediately raise the property values of the older homes around them, and (b) young couples buy them, live in them, raise their kids in them, and start being better neighbors than were there before. This is the positive side of gentrification, one that really doesn't affect people who live in Irvington proper.

It's true that a poorly-done rowhouse is ugly, but a well-done rowhouse is a thing of beauty that fits and enhances the neighborhood. For the first type, see the RH development between Grand and 7th on the north side of Fremont; for the second, see the development on the south side of Skidmore between 11th and 12th. The first project surely doesn't hurt a blighted Fremont, the latter is a great enhancement built by an aesthetically sound and envronmentally responsible developer.

With all due respect, Jack, these are the only houses in these neighborhoods that are available at their price point, with the exception of a few 1970s monstrosities that beg for the wrecking ball. Why, again, are they objectively bad? It's understandable to react against change, but not in neighborhood that have needed change for decades.

These aren't rowhouses, Matt. They're skinny houses that turn a 75-foot lot into a 50- and a 25-. Or a 50- into two 25-s. We can do better, even in neighborhoods with blight.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't the city council reject the idea of tying an affordability requirement into the creation of these new skinny lots?

Good post, Matt. The last house I lived in in Portland was in north Portland. I started hating the city when I found out we were paying ten times higher property taxes than the nouveau riche in the Pearl. That, and Erik Sten's water bills.

These houses don't sound neaaaaaaaaaaar as bad as other things the city has done. 'Course, I live in a 17' wide house now (elsewhere), but it is on a 50' lot. It's a great house. One unit wide; three units deep; two stories. Built about 1900.

Portland really does have to choose between building up & closer together, or out.

(PS .... when did the problem become "lower middle-class" Californians? Maybe I'm stupid. Most looked relatively well off to me.)

The sad, sad thing is - Portlanders will have smaller houses than the Japanese do. The new 'houses' are technically larger...but not by much. Welcome to Tokyo...er, Portland!

To put it another way, Portland is scrambling to build a non-movable version of a mobile home. "You know you're a redneck when...."

i agree with a couple of the posts - MattW - excellent post. Jack - what can we do better if not build homes? got any suggestions? you don't like the PDC, you don't like redevelopment. what do you want?

Don't fix things that aren't broke. And do some sensible things with land use, like reasonable height restrictions and minimum lot sizes. Thirty-story towers and 2000-square-foot lots are not what made Portland great. But that's what we're all about now.

Also, people need to realize that the "growth is inevitable, so let's be smart about it" mantra was cooked up by the developers and construction companies that year after year live off local taxpayer corporate welfare. At some point, Portland will have enough housing; it seems to me that Washington County is already overbuilt, and there are lots of relatively cheap vacancies out 185th way. But it will never be enough for these guys. They and their children will need to keep "developing" Portland until it's indistinguishable from Seattle, except for the lack of a decent economic base.

As for the PDC, to me they're all back room wheeler dealers, just like their patron saint, Neil G. I don't mind redevelopment, if it's not crooked.

Portland really does have to choose between building up & closer together, or out.

Sorry, I'm not buying. At a certain point, you have to say, we've built enough.

[W]hen did the problem become "lower middle-class" Californians? Maybe I'm stupid. Most looked relatively well off to me.

I think you haven't looked hard enough. How many of the people below the poverty line in Portland have been here less than five years? Anybody know?

I don't know how many people who are below the poverty line have been in Portland less than five years. I do know that the house I grew up in at 3132 NE 8th Ave. (one house from Irving Park) would be beyond my Parents financial grasp today.

The families I grew up around in inner NE Portland were garbage haulers, railroad workers, car repairmen, etc. Those families have been priced out of that neighborhood. Portland housing in neighborhoods such as I grew up in have become the enclave of white, upper income citizens. The melting pot I grew up in has, by and large, been displaced by "gentrification".

What caused this phenomenon of spiraling housing prices to occur after generations and generations of good affordable housing stock for working class Portlander's? Adoption by the Oregon Legislature in the early 70's of Senate Bill 100. Oregon's heralded, unique land use law which adopted an “urban growth boundary” for the first time in the United States. Its idea was to draw an invisible line around urban centers within Oregon outside of which it would be prohibited to build houses or commercial structures. The idea was to preserve farm land and forests from the “strip mall” development that was beginning to ruin rural areas around the United States.

One of the inevitable consequences was that with an impenetrable boundary outside of which houses could not be built, the fixed number of houses that existed within the City of Portland became more and more valuable. This is the perfect example of the basic economic theory of supply and demand. The effect is that we have priced people such as my parents out of the housing market in Portland’s traditionally working class neighborhoods.

I promised I would work to make housing more affordable for working class Portlander’s in all of Portland’s neighborhoods. If anyone has a strategy other than better designed narrow houses on 15 foot lots that does not relegate working class Portlander’s to apartment houses on main thoroughfares, I am open to your suggestions.

In the meantime, I will continue to try and balance good design with affordability so that working Portlander’s have a chance at the American dream.

I should have said:
15 foot wide houses on 25 foot wide lots.

The "affordability" card is such of pile of BS it's sickening...things might be all peachy north of Fremont but I know for a FACT that several perfectly good, ranch-style homes in the Roseway and Rose City Park neighborhoods of NE were snatched up and demoed for 3-4 25x100 lots underneath. Developers were going door-to-door and sending out mailings looking for a fast buck on an unsuspecting homeowner. A few of these fine upstanding citizens even contributed to Mr. Leonard's re-election campaign.

So it's a pretty nice deal for the bottom-feeding...err...affordable-housing conscious (yeah, right!) developer...spend $160,000 to $170,000 on a house, demo it, and build three skinny, crappy (yet affordable!) 15-foot wide homes, sell 'em for $130,000 to $140,000 a piece. Nice little profit.

It's one thing to demo derelict houses (as defined by housing code, not some nose-in-the-air psuedo-hipster wannabe)...it's something altogether different to demo reasonably priced homes (e.g., $150,000 to $175,000) with NOTHING wrong with them so you can build three crappy ones in its place.

If that's what passes for an affordable housing (wreck one to get three) policy for this City, we are doomed.

Another example of our pitiful city leaders using the "ends justify the means" argument.

Interesting that NONE of these fine examples of affordable housing are being built in: Forest Heights, Sylvan Highlands, West Hills, Council Crest, Dunthorpe, etc...etc...

Also, for all the sheep out there...since I'm sure you are all strong advocates of the sustainability movement...what is the carrying capacity of the city? Does every square inch of the city need to be covered by asphalt and buildings? Welcome to Hong Kong....

This is a free country (well, at least it was before Ashcroft and Co. took over)...you can move where ever you please. Gosh, I'd like to live on the beach in San Diego or upstate New York on a nice idyllic farm, but I can't afford it. Too bad!

With all due respect, I'm not so sure it's the growth management act that is the problem, Randy. I, too, remember Portland as largely a working people and middle-class people's town. But I grew up mostly in the southwestern corner of the state, and I watched real estate prices rocket there beginning in 1970 with the immigration of Californians (from Reagan's California) who were playing with wildly and widely different numbers. (Medford, by the way, was recently named the most unaffordable city on the West Coast, housing costs vs. income levels.)

Portland stayed saner for longer by a good bit. I won't even name the city that's left to be wholly swallowed.

But I don't know how or if one (or many) can fight that. And stopping it is no longer the impetus. The drive now is to recruit growth -- of population, at any rate.

Jack, the problem I have when I hear, "At a certain point, you have to say, we've built enough," is hearing the call for the wagons to be circled now -- by the newcomers some of us (as I have said before) didn't want. I guess it just doesn't work that way. This is what I have seen (or read of) in Ashland and Bend.

Those I saw moving in were largely better off, or with larger equity cash-outs at hand. That is what caused housing to so inflate, don't you think? I can't see it any other way. And it is still very much happening.

As to how many of newcomers are relatively poor, I do not know. When you tell me to look harder, I was looking from a relatively low point, so most of what I saw was up. I saw the kids on the street and the assortments of young people recruited to the country's new cool cultural Mecca, and I suppose a large number of them would rank in that sector, but a large number of those are educated and merely young, not really at relative disadvantage (except for getting jobs, which anyone looking was). I was last living in Sullivan's Gulch, near you geographically but I never saw a house in Irvington I understood how anyone anymore could afford.

Neighborhoods all over Portland have become expensive in the last decade, and some -- like that ghastly Pearl District horror -- are obscene. (Not "Portland," either. If that isn't some semi-$ilicon Valley fantasy, I do not what is.) I got out of Portland because I felt I would have to stay too poor to stay there. So it's personal with me.

At any rate, I don't see Portland's problems as the growth boundaries or neighborhood preservation per se, but rather the economic lines of divide that make most of those old neighborhoods unaffordable to most people.

I'd just as soon City Hall get out of housing & economic development altogether. I'm not sure it's city government business, and I'm pretty sure it isn't done cleanly or well, the best intentions of the only councillor I liked notwithstanding.

If anyone has a strategy other than better designed narrow houses on 15 foot lots that does not relegate working class Portlander’s to apartment houses on main thoroughfares, I am open to your suggestions.

Randy, I didn't know you were such a socialist!

Maybe they'll knock down your parents' old house and put up two of these beauties that you're selling. Is that what you want?

I know it's what the real estate sharpies want...

Sally-
My parents sold the house I grew up in on NE 8th in 1972 for $16,000. It was for sale this past summer for $325,000 (a bargain I was told). Incomes have not gone up the same 20 times in that same time period.

Randy: By that logic, we ought to build some houses that someone could buy for the 2004 equivalent of $16,000 in 1972 dollars. Here's an example.

"Maybe they'll knock down your parents' old house and put up two of these beauties that you're selling."

Jack-
Typically houses that have been razed and replaced by two narrow houses have been in varying states of disrepair or on vacant lots. No one would tear down a house that was viable to sell. It does not make economic sense. For an example, the house I grew up in was for sale this past summer for $325,000. A bargain I was told because the garage had been torn down and it needed updating. There is no way it would make economic sense to tear down that house and replace it with two brand new 15 foot wide houses. Notwithstanding earlier comments, this is a market driven phenomena that creates more affordable housing than what is available normally. However, a vacant lot in my old neighborhood could be an example of where two narrow houses are built. I completely agree that the kinds of boxes built prior to this effort to build better designed narrow houses would be totally unacceptable in my old 'hood. I have always understood that legitimate criticism. I do believe that the designs we will publish soon will be accepted as compliments to neighborhoods....not eye sores.

And as far as my socialist leanings go, can we just keep that our secret?

Randy, wasn't that my point? In all that verbiage did I fail to make it?

Cute place, Jack. See why I had to skedaddle?

OK, that's enough for one day.

Jack you are a walking contradiction. On one hand, you spit venom at anyone who makes money, has money, contributes money, receives contributions, or loses money. On the other hand, you reprimand the random leader who tries to accomodate those who have little money. I'm not saying those houses look good by any means, in fact I would say all of Commissioner Leonard's taste is in his mouth. But at least he is coming at it for the right reasons.

You on the other hand can't decide if there is anyone you like. You hate the rich, you hate the poor. Pick a team old boy!

Sally: Portland really does have to choose between building up & closer together, or out. Jack: Sorry, I'm not buying. At a certain point, you have to say, we've built enough.

Sorry, Jack, love ya, but you're wrong here. You actually don't get to choose to stop growing. The growth just appears auto-magically. Even if (even if!) we could stop all the in-migration, you'd still have to deal with all those babies growing up and turning 18 and wanting to move out of Mom and Dad's house.

You can't stop the new people, so you're left with two choices: Density or Sprawl. That's it. There are no other choices. It's simple math. Density equals Population divided by Land Area. If Population goes up, you must either increase Density - or increase Land Area.

(Side thought: Of course, you and I could get out of the higher education business - that's a huge magnetic people-attractor. That would help.)

Croix: Rich, poor, I don't care. Tasteless, ugly, and/or dishonest, I care.

Kari, sorry, I know this is what you learned, but you're wrong. You can stop some of the new people, and given the no-tax, no-public-services climate of this state, it's immoral not to try. You certainly shouldn't be encouraging folks to come here, since there's no job for them and all the costs of living (not just housing) are at or near the tops of the charts.

Until very recently, there was a no-growth group run by Andy Kerr, one of the original 1000 Friends of Oregon. But when the sound of all the "sustainable," "smart growth," blah blah blah sheep got too loud, they packed it in.

If you give up on slowing growth down by using supply and demand, you're doomed to permanent overcrowding, lousier schools, worse roads, etc. And when people get tired of the blight of condo towers and these modern equivalents of shotgun shacks, they'll move to a McMansion in the suburbs. Which I thought is what Portland was hoping to prevent.

"If you give up on slowing growth down by using supply and demand, you're doomed to permanent overcrowding, lousier schools, worse roads, etc. And when people get tired of the blight of condo towers and these modern equivalents of shotgun shacks, they'll move to a McMansion in the suburbs. Which I thought is what Portland was hoping to prevent."

Nice picture, and compelling. But you are trying to do now what those like Andy Kerr & Tom McCall and my friends & family tried to do then. See why I keep asking where & when you draw the line? I'll side with Kari now. You can't stop it, and I don't care.

(Not all the old "shotguns" were shacks, by the way. Some were Victorians. And I still think the economic and tax disparities in the state are its greatest problem now. And that the in-migrating rich are chasing out the middle & poor. And that city government hugely sides with the former and should cease economically pandering to the first and pretending to help the second. But that is a fantasy I will watch from a state away.)

What does economic viability mean to a 200 ton moth that flies at Mach 3? Nothing! Mothra's redevelopment plan for Irvington - north and south of Freemont - contemplates TOTAL DESTRUCTION. I think all will agree with Randy Leonard that such uniform treatment is fair.

I wish I got that joke. Like a lot of things about Portland, it seems an inside one.

A Goo-gle search for "Mothra" takes 0.22 seconds and generates about 82,000 results, including this nice summary. A quote:

Mothra's origin is not well known. She was the guardian of an ancient race of tiny humanoids named the Cosmos who lived on earth. The Cosmos civilization became very advanced but the Zen of Earth Lifeforce created Battra to kill Mothra and wipe out the Cosmos. Although Mothra defeated Battra, the civilization of the Cosmos still crumbled and Mothra lay dormant for many years. In 1992 she hatches from an egg when Godzilla and Battra threaten Japan.