Bend considers another urban growth boundary expansion

At a Bend City Council meeting Nov. 20, councilors moved one step closer to choosing if and where the city will increase its urban growth boundary.

Bend is considering applicants for developments under a newly passed state bill that would fast-track building homes in cities that have a high need for affordable housing.

City planners have said the expedited process could help cost-burdened residents before it’s too late. However, critics have said the plans lack a comprehensive growth strategy and the city should focus on infill projects first.

The Oregon Legislature passed a bill this year that would allow governments to add up to 100 residential acres to city limits while also bypassing what Bend senior planner BreAnne Gale calls “exhaustive data-intensive” studies.

The urban growth boundary is the limit of where a city can build residential homes. Senate Bill 1537, which Gov. Tina Kotek signed on April 18, is intended to make it easier to build homes in communities where housing affordability problems persist. Gale said the bill sunsets on Jan. 2, 2033.

Cities must qualify to take advantage of SB 1537 by demonstrating the need for affordable housing and the need for additional land, said Gale. The need for affordable housing is determined by having a higher percentage of severely cost-burdened households than the state average. Bend sits at 14.96%, just barely above the 14.49% statewide average, Gale added.

At the recent Bend City Council meeting, planning manager Brian Rankin said the council “wouldn’t want to drag out” deciding on an expansion, partly because Bend currently qualifies, “but we may not qualify under the original terms of the bill,” if severely cost-burdened people continue to leave the city.

Two weeks after SB 1537 went into effect on June 6, the City of Bend began work to request project applications.

In order to qualify for the expansion opportunity, a developer must build 30% affordable housing, a mix of housing types, include “public open space,” have some commercial or mixed-use space, include a “well-connected multi-modal transportation network,” and be able to service infrastructure, according to city documents.

The city only received two applications, both on the east side of Bend. One was for parcels on Caldera Ranch, owned by Daniel Goodrich, Woodside Ventures, LLC and Caldera Holdings, LLC. The other is on Jasper Ridge, owned by Hayden Watson, Te Amo Despacio, LLC, Mark L. Crandall, CTH Investments, LLC, according to city documents.

Hayden Watson owns the local development giant, Hayden Homes, where councilmember Megan Norris is employed. Watson donated $2,000 to her reelection campaign this year. Norris recused herself from the work session to narrow down a site selection, as she had done in the past for discussions involving Hayden Homes’ interests, such as Bend’s tree code. The code is currently being challenged with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals by the developer and multiple petitioners.

This isn’t the first time Bend’s urban growth boundary has increased. There have been a total of nine expansions since the UGB was created in 1981, according to Gale. Two of those were larger expansions, and the rest were smaller growths for public facilities like schools and churches, she said.

The Caldera Ranch proposal plans to build 700 housing units in southeast Bend, while the Jasper Ridge proposal plans to build 1,012 units in east Bend. Both applicants plan to build two-thirds of the units as single-family detached homes.

Jasper Ridge would build more affordable units, but Caldera Ranch would offer a higher percentage of affordable units and a wider range of affordability, city officials have found.

The city council is not required to select either applicant or even participate in the UGB expansion.

This week, the nonprofit conservation group Central Oregon LandWatch submitted a letter to city officials asking them to forgo selecting a site and not to use the state’s expedited UGB tool.

Corie Harlan, a cities and towns program director at the organization, wrote that using the tool would be a “piecemeal approach to growth.” She also encouraged the city to focus on an “infill first” approach.

She cited “innovative financing tools” to help buyers purchase homes, state infrastructure funding and deed restriction purchase programs to help people purchase existing homes within the current urban growth boundary.

Gale said by email, this expansion would be in addition to infill and redevelopment efforts inside the current boundary.

St. Louis Fed data show 320 new homes were listed last month in the Bend-Redmond area. The median listing price was $725,000. The median income in Bend and the average hourly wage in the Bend-Redmond are both insufficient to purchase or rent market-rate housing in the city, according to federal data.

If Bend moves forward with this expansion tool, it will decrease the amount of acres the city can expand by when a scheduled UGB expansion takes place. The multi-year process to expand the boundary will begin next year and the estimated need by then will be 250 to 700 acres, Gale said.

Harlan said questions about infrastructure for the proposed sites and the overall growth strategy were part of why Central Oregon LandWatch urged the city council to forgo expansion.

“When we’re talking about how we’re growing, it’s not just about housing, it’s also about employment, it’s also about our economics, it’s also about transportation,” she said, “we haven’t had a chance as a community to look at that comprehensively and really understand all of those things.”

Comments from residents neighboring the proposed sites have expressed concern about increased vehicle traffic, wildfire safety, water availability and the amount of housing projects already underway.

The city plans to hold a public hearing on Dec. 4, where they are expected to decide whether to move forward with the expansion and possibly select an applicant.