Robert Liberty is an ADU owner, advocate for ADUs in various capacities including elected official, university sustainability program administrator and advocate for zoning reform to increase housing choice as staff attorney and director of 1000 Friends of Oregon.
Interview Questions
Let’s start off by talking about the history of the urban growth boundary, also referred to as the "UGB”. Every city in Oregon, has one regardless of size. The regulation of housing is also a part of the Oregon land use program; can you tell us something about that?
Is Oregon's experience relevant to other states? And if it is relevant, is it politically feasible today?
What are some fall out benefits that have occurred as a result of the UGB culturally?
For several years, you orchestrated a sustainability institute housed within Portland State University and focused the institute’s efforts on ADU production. Tell us about the initial goals of that program and whether it was successful.
In hindsight, what projects would you recommend for other University departments to help push the ball forward in terms of ADU research and policy locally?
Can you tell us about some highlights from the survey that ISS conducted? Focus in on how many ADUs were built for family members and their rental price point
You went on to build an ADU yourself. We’ll talk about the ADU itself, but let’s start by talking about whether and how going through that development process yourself, changed your understanding of the ADU market.
Tell us about the ADU development process, and what you’re learning about providing an affordable ADU rental as a homeowner?
How do you see ADUs playing a role in affordability and equity?
What role do you see ADUs and middle housing playing in terms of meeting housing production goals?
In a previous life, you were an elected official for Metro. So, you have some political chops. What are some strategies that you’d recommend for advocates and electeds that are confronting common concerns about the impact of off-street parking.
Kol Peterson: [00:02:02] it's the man of the hour. I'm just going to quickly introduce Robert Liberty a colleague and friend and we've been working and strategizing on ADU stuff together for a long time. More closely in the last few years. Robert was the head of the Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions and he focused that Institute's efforts on ADU related activities, which we'll be talking about momentarily.
More recently Robert built an ADU in his house, so we're going to be talking about that, too. And also some of his previous experiences related to land use legislation or land use law in Oregon, which is a really fascinating topic in its own right. We'll be talking a little bit about the connection between the urban growth boundary policies.
He's also a former elected official with Metro. So welcome Robert any opening remarks before we launch into some questions?
Robert Liberty: [00:02:54] No, launch!.
Kol Peterson: [00:02:56] All right. So we're going to start off by talking about the history of the urban [00:03:00] growth boundary a little bit, which I just alluded to. It's referred to colloquially locally as the UGB. So we'll, that's what we'll call it.
A lot of people on the call might know what the UGB is, but in essence, every city in Oregon regardless of size has a urban growth boundary. And we're going to show off what that looks like in practice, but the regulation of housing is also part of the Oregon land use program. Can you tell us something about that, Robert?
Robert Liberty: [00:03:24] Yeah, I think people don't know about the program other than we have urban growth boundaries, limit growth, somehow think that was going to limit the amount of housing production, but from the very beginning, one of the problems that was tackled by these laws starting 40 years ago was the zoning that limited housing choice to single family homes on large lots and often big homes.
So right from the beginning, there was an understanding that if you're going to be more compact in your growth patterns you should also increase housing choices. And the supply of land was much less of a factor in the cost of housing than the regulations of [00:04:00] housing. So the same time urban growth boundaries were drawn starting at the state level, we went through every city and every urban part of every County and said look, "you've got a rezone land for apartments, for smaller lots, for duplexes, for townhomes, and that was accomplished largely in the 1980s. And it's made a huge difference.
Kol Peterson: [00:04:17] So given that no other state in the nation has an urban growth boundary, does this concept even matter in this conversation about infill housing? Or is it kind of pointless to even talk about it because no other state has anything like it.
Robert Liberty: [00:04:32] Well, actually, it's not true that no other state has anything like it. The state of Washington has urban growth areas and scattered across the country in places as varied as South Dakota and Kentucky, in Colorado, you find urban growth boundaries, even though a little town and township in Michigan called Frankenmuth. And Lexington, Kentucky, and they won't call it this, but Sioux Falls, South Dakota has virtually the same thing. Ventura County Northern California. So there's, I don't [00:05:00] know, maybe 15 million people living in communities with urban growth boundaries. What I've found is all of them end up having the same elements and one of them is to change the regulation and zoning to allow more housing to be produced.
Kol Peterson: [00:05:15] So it has some political relevance, at least in those areas.
Robert Liberty: [00:05:20] Well, it has political relevance and I think there's real concern now and understanding about what housing regulations done to limited people's housing choices.
And I think that can be a starting point for talking about, "well, how do we grow generally?" And how does this connect to climate change? And maybe we can talk about that later. So it's a different political world than it was in the 1980s. We all know that, it's a different world than it was 20 years ago, but there may be an opportunity for change accelerated by the pandemic actually.
Kol Peterson: [00:05:48] Yeah, actually, I'm going to do a quick thing here and share two slides that show and what an urban growth boundary looks like just as a really quick illustration of [00:06:00] what the urban growth boundary does. Robert can you just briefly talk about these two slides here.
Robert Liberty: [00:06:04] Yeah. These are what are called figure grounds which are actually the black is the structure.
And they were done by the New York times. They weren't done by anyone here in Oregon and this shows Portland metropolitan region. And the urban growth boundary is really obvious in this. It's not drawn in. It just shows how development has been made contiguous and more efficient.
If you go to the next slide, this is the same kind of map from Charlotte, North Carolina, which is virtually identical metropolitan population, and a very similar growth rate. So you can see there's a huge difference. And this makes a big difference to the economy, to society, and to greenhouse gases and yes, it does connect accessory dwelling units. And we'll talk about that.
Kol Peterson: [00:06:49] Great. Thanks. So one of the things that I've observed as a resident of Portland for roughly a decade is that my perception [00:07:00] is that there's kind of a cultural, I want to actually have you check me on this, but my perception is there's this cultural acceptance towards infill housing and density as a result in part of the influence of the UGB, which was established in '73, and that's kind of inculcated itself into the culture and the ethos of Portlanders at least.
Is that accurate? Do you think, do you think that's accurate in terms of understanding the mentality of acceptance towards infill housing?
Robert Liberty: [00:07:28] I think it is part of it because the arguments have been made for 40 years. We've had seven ballot measures at the state level dealing with the planning program, for and against, and by and large, the public has reinforced it.
And I want to clarify something because people get confused to hear about urban growth boundary for Portland. It's not an urban boundary for Portland is for the entire metropolitan region for 24 cities. And every city in Oregon has one. Antelope has a population of 50, it has an urban growth boundary. So this is widely understood as a basic strategy [00:08:00] of saving lands we need for farm and forest production and natural resources and being more efficient with taxpayer dollars as well. So yes, it has become, you know, I've back in the day when I took taxis home from the airport, I'm not making this up, taxi driver brought up urban growth boundary. So yes, it is part of the thinking, but I think the other part of that thinking is.
There's some benefits about growing efficiently and using the structures and land we have that have nothing to do with saving farm and forest land, that are good in themselves. If our landscape looked like the moon, there would still be good reasons to do what we've done and to make it easier for people to have housing choices and reduce regulations.
So, yes, I think there is a culture, but this is what I utterly reject, because I often do presentations and I show a picture of Oz and the characters from Oz and the background is Portland under these green towers. [00:09:00] So this is just wrong. We were so much like every other state in 1973. I mean, we were basically, Columbus, Ohio with fruit trees and bracket fungus or sagebrush, depending what part of the state.
And we became different by working on it. And it was very contentious, Kol, as you know, it's still very contentious in Portland. It wasn't easy and it's actually the fight over these things that helps people understand them. So other places say, "Oh, we couldn't do that it'd be too controversial." The answer is, "Yes, you can do it, yes it will be controversial and overcoming the controversy is part of the education process." So for those interested in ADU design so far, this. It was a bomb. So we get into the ADUs more, but you and I are both interested in the big policy setting for ADUs.
Kol Peterson: [00:09:50] That's largely what I wanted to talk about with you is these policy aspects. You bring a lot to the table with these policy discussions. You have a rarefied set of skills and experience, [00:10:00] so we're going to focus on that. For several years you orchestrated a Sustainability Institute housed within PSU and focusing the institutes efforts on ADU production.
Can you tell us about the initial goals of that program and whether it was successful?
Robert Liberty: [00:10:13] Yeah. The Institute for Sustainable Solutions work on a variety of topics, but this was one and we picked it because it had a high profile. Thanks, in large part, to the work of you and colleagues of yours, like Eli Spevak and making this a big issue, even though ADUs had been authorized in Portland for 30 years, actually, and regionally for 30 years, not much production.
So the idea was, can we look at all the barriers to production other than regulation and what can we do about cost financing, permit processing, site suitability designs and so on. So we commissioned some work and one set of projects were five standard designs for ADUs to serve different markets from smaller to larger.
In fact, the center for Public Interest Design at Portland [00:11:00] State had a studio on that. And one of the designs is likely to be built now. That was one project, another was a survey of hundreds of ADU owners and tenants, and all the prior surveys that we were aware of interviewed only the owners and not the tenants.
Another was some research into site suitability in the city of Portland, and then we convened people in finance to talk about how to increase access to financing for people that didn't have a lot of equity and savings. We talked about a wide variety of topics.
How successful? Well, this is part of a conversation you and I have been here having for while, which is people want this to go to scale, but so far, except in a few places, scale has been pretty modest. And why is that? And can you do this at scale and what is the role of government? But I would say that we don't know yet. It's a little too soon to tell what the results might be. Some of the work is clearly helpful. Some of it has not been helpful.
[00:12:00] Kol Peterson: [00:12:00] Yeah. I have a general mentality of urgency around ADU production. I'm tired of dilly dallying, and I want to see success. I want to highlight programs that have worked as opposed to spending political capital and money and effort on things that might work, but haven't proven to work. And so that's kind of the underlying skepticism I have around some of these really good sounding programs that I see a lot of municipalities and institutions trying to promote.
And I'll give an example of this, standardized plans. Obviously that sounds like an easy win. It sounds like a good idea. A lot of jurisdictions are putting effort into design contests, have standardized plans, but we've seen a standardized set of plans in Santa Cruz in 2003 and those were not used even once, ever. And now we see that same thing happening in Seattle and San Diego, and a lot of other jurisdictions are trying to [00:13:00] standardize plans. And that doesn't have any impact, or at least hasn't, now it could potentially, but I don't want to have, I don't want to see governments spinning their wheels on things that haven't proven to be successful.
I'd rather have them focus on things that we know can actually help.
Robert Liberty: [00:13:16] Well, I think that this particular topic is an interesting one because when we started our work, you were very polite in our big collaborative meetings. By the way, I do recommend those, bringing all these different people together to talk about it generated a lot of activity and interest. But you were very skeptical, and so was Eli. I remember going up to Vancouver and talking to Jake, who you had on your program, I think on Wednesday and on his wall, he had a series of very beautiful renderings of different designs, and I think he mentioned them briefly. I said, how many of those have you built? And he said, "none".
So, that's very important but one of the things that I have questions about is, is it because we're talking a very early [00:14:00] pioneering market in the limited place.
So the house I'm in is a 1945 house. It's 1100 square feet, including the attic. And it was one of about 40 built in our neighborhood all at once. So those were standardized designs and those were middle-class homes. So it may be that the people who build ADU is now tend to be more affluent, have disposable income care, more about design, and maybe people who earn $60,000 dollars a year and have a big backyard say, "Well, fine, Model B with the brown countertops is fine."
So I don't know, yet, but this is part of the bigger question, too. The idea of standardized designs was to reduce the time required to do it, and maybe the cost. I think the cost issue is a big one and the design part is not necessarily a big part of the cost.
You know, it might be 10%. So I would say, if we want to have large scale production, then we ought to be looking at settings where this might work and markets where [00:15:00] that might work and you have to have the financing and the outreach, and then standardized designs.
The percentage of Americans who live in single-family homes designed by architects must be a fraction of a percent. Most of them are some variation of standardized design.
So as I recall, and I'm going to send this question back to you. One of the issues though, that's for detached units is the backyards have too many variations in them. And that's one reason, but how do you feel about why standardized designs don't work?
Kol Peterson: [00:15:31] I'm asked this question a lot by every pre-fab company in the world that wants to start doing standardized designs. And I always like to caveat my response with it could work. In fact, there's three companies in the whole United States where it is working, but there's a hundred companies for whom it's not working and they go out of business.
So I don't want to say it can't work, but I will say that the only companies that for whom it has worked are coming in at really inexpensive price points, that seems to be the common theme [00:16:00] amongst them, and they are standardized plans. So it can theoretically work based on those few examples, but for most companies it doesn't seem to be working.
And there's a whole bunch of reasons why not the least of which is, "Hey, I'm spending at least a $100,000, if not $200,000 on this unit. I want to have some say over some architectural aspects of how it's gonna look and how it's gonna lay out on my property and what the orientation of the doors and windows and electrical and utility connections from the primary house will be in my particular property."
So I think that's a reasonable thing for any homeowner to anticipate being able to have some control over.
PrefabADU.Com is the most successful in terms of market rate adoption they've built several hundred ADUs in the U S, most of which are prefab, predesigned, standardized plans.
Robert Liberty: [00:16:43] And obviously in an expensive market. So even compared to the regular homes here are quite affordable.
The other thing I would say is that the idea that you can have a design that fits all the backyards for detached units, that isn't the point. The point is that [00:17:00] maybe out of a hundred thousand sites or 200,000 sites, maybe there's 5% that would fit one of the designs. That's what I think is the opportunity. A flat site without a bunch of trees , maybe an alley, or on a corner, or something. If we could map those and say, "Look, your site actually has a low cost potential."
I made a reference to an internal standardized unit, that was something that the Center for Public Interest Design did. You can see some of these components already exist, the kitchen and bathroom and the wall, and have that so that you can slide in and connect up, and that might save a chunk of money. So that's a standalone possibility it could be used in new houses too.
Kol Peterson: [00:17:39] I want to talk a little bit about the Institute for Sustainable Solutions survey that was done, and just share some of the highlights from that survey.
Robert Liberty: [00:17:44] So this was a survey done in 2017, 18, I think, and it was a good database, there were hundreds of people interviewed. We paid $10 for every response, and we got a good response. The numbers don't look very [00:18:00] impressive here, but high quality.
The main point of this is that things really took off in 2013. These are all Portland city only.
I think the waiver, the $15,000 benefit of not paying system development charges had a lot to do with it, but this also was ,concurrent with Portland, becoming a tourist destination we had never been before, around food.
And a lot of the ADUs are built to the neighborhoods where food tourism is pretty prominent and it also coincides with a massive run-up in home costs and rental costs. So the returns on building an ADU, or renting out part of your existing house as a short-term rental, changed dramatically right as we came out of the recession, as well as regulatory reforms and the SDC waiver.
So I think, Kol, maybe you can comment on what you see nationally, but I think this distribution had changed a little bit from the prior case. But you can see it's detached new structure is 40%, [00:19:00] but garage and basement renovations together are 43%.
And my impression is that's continuing 'cause I can see a lot of them being built. There is a big difference, potentially, I should say there's a big difference in cost, especially in the basement renovation. What's not in there, by the way, and you've comment on this, is attic renovations.
Kol Peterson: [00:19:23] Yeah, attic renovations represent I think 2% of all permitted ADUs in Portland, so it's really marginal. Another weird thing, Robert, this is kind of a fascinating side point here, but if you look at the actual data of real life permits that have been issued in Portland, there's not a lot of internal carved out ADUs aside from basement conversions, just in general, whether it's at a conversions or other portions of the primary level. The reason that's important is because California has a state law now that's like junior ADUs and it's for internal carve-outs of existing structures, which is another one of these things that sounds obvious. Of course, that's a great idea, we have all these oversized [00:20:00] homes, but the data doesn't actually bear out that a lot of people are doing that aside from taking a basement and converting that, which maybe has some architectural rationale that other internal carved out ADUs do not.
Robert Liberty: [00:20:12] I think it's interesting question. One of the things I have observed, if you look at the map or accessory dwelling and it's been built in the region, not just important, but in the region, they're overwhelmingly clustered at inner neighborhoods in Portland.
Those are areas where your market return is really high, but there are also areas that have older homes and small lots. And this is why I think the opportunity in mid-century suburbs is so great because these are places which have mature trees, small often awkward home designs from 50 or a hundred years ago to adapt.
So that's one of my questions is, would we see something different if we were looking at a blossoming of ADUs in a mid century ranch home suburbs?
Kol Peterson: [00:20:55] Well, I think the the form of ADUs does follow regulations, and I'll [00:21:00] speak to that in a second, but to your point, I think over time, we might see that there's different forms of ADUs that happen as a result of the year that the housing stock was developed in a given area. For example, snout house suburb subdivisions that were built in the fifties to seventies in cul-de-sacs. If, and when in California, ADUs take off in those areas, we're going to see a lot of snout house conversions.
Whereas right now that's not a really prominent form of ADU, but it's, it's obvious. It's really easy low-hanging fruit for a lot of areas within California, I would say.
Robert Liberty: [00:21:35] Projects that we didn't get done, that I'm still interested in getting done, is to look at mid century homes and which ones would be most easily, cheaply, but effectively converted to include an ADU.
So my parents moved in 1962 from inner neighborhood of Portland to what was then an outer suburb, it's not anymore, and they bought a ranch style home, with their three kids. And [00:22:00] it's got a complete daylight basement with what was a wet bar, a bathroom and separate entrance.
I look at that, I think, you know, pretty nice apartment, pretty large, basically a rec room, so it's big, and that would be a very easy conversion, I think. That home design, even though that actually was designed by an architect, it looks like a lot of other homes. And so that's kind of thing that's interesting. Plus a lot is big. So, I think there are a lot of potentials. Pioneers tend to be in the inner neighborhoods for a variety of reasons. Now we look at neighborhoods about 50 years ago for opprortunities.
Kol Peterson: [00:22:38] Let's go through a couple more of these findings from the survey.
Robert Liberty: [00:22:41] Some of this was a big change, short-term housing less than one month, 26%. This had gone up dramatically from the survey that was done several years before. And I think that's a reflection of what I mentioned before, which is a big spike in rent and tourism coming to Portland.
You can also see that [00:23:00] 16%, interestingly, it's the owner's primary residence and the ADU is currently occupied, meaning the owner is living on the property. Now that's one of the things that Portland has done is it doesn't require the owner to live in the primary residence.
And on one of your tours, we visited one of those properties. The fears that people had are completely unjustified because you can rent your house out anyway. So it's hard for me to understand the fear is about what we don't want to have the ADU as a renter, unless the owner of the home lives in the primary residence, you can already rent out the home..
Kol Peterson: [00:23:34] Robert, since you've teed up this short-term housing thing, we don't want to dwell on this. This is a big topic. I have some really strong talking points about this, but what's your talking point about the conflation of, or the concept of short-term rental opportunities, options within ADUs?
Robert Liberty: [00:23:53] Well, it's a mixed bag and I have some new information as a result of work in the Columbia [00:24:00] Gorge, is that in small markets, you can have a lot of the housing stock converted short term if you're in a resort area, that's not us, in a city is very different. And as you and others have said, a lot of the short-term rentals are in their primary residence.
So confusing an ADU with a short-term rental, it's kind of a mistake. Short-term rentals could be anything. I think the other thing is that the short-term rentals, the rapid return, is often the trigger that allows people to go ahead and build an ADU. And the survey results show that people often plan to get out of the short term rental business 'cause it's pretty taxing and go to a long-term rental after they'd paid down their debt. Also, there's an equity component during the testimony before the city council on whether to continue the waiver of system development charges, the city said, okay, we'll do it, but you have to agree not to use the accessory dwelling unit as a short-term rental, one of the people testified said, "That was going to be my retirement the only way you [00:25:00] can stay in my home." So. I wouldn't say that unlimited short-term rentals is good, particularly if you're in a resort area that you're actually changing your housing market way, that's bad for people, but I think it's a lot more nuanced and complicated and conflating ADUs with short-term rentals it's a mistake just factually. That that income stream may be essential trigger.
Kol Peterson: [00:25:24] Yeah. Well, this is really big topic and we could have a whole show on this at some point.
Robert Liberty: [00:25:29] The people were not receiving any rent are often using it themselves, living in the primary residence, or it's a relative or a friend.
And actually it's significant that the percentage of people, who it's a friend, it's not a relative, it's not a child, it's a friend who needs it. Also, below market value, I think people said, "well, how would they know?" But the answer is in fact, people are pretty careful. They do check, there's lots of information online about what other people are getting for their rents. In fact, when there was a cost increase in our ADU, I said, well, I'm [00:26:00] not too concerned, but what kind of rent can I get from this relative to what this extra cost. I was so horrified, it was so high. So I certainly knew what the market rents were. And people were choosing to do this. They're choosing not to charge market rents. They're not trying to maximize their income, so they're more flexible. So I think this is pretty important.
Kol Peterson: [00:26:24] I'm going to go rapid fire through four or five more questions, Robert. So you developed an ADU. Tell us about the development process and what you've learned about providing an affordable ADU rental from a homeowner's point of view?
Robert Liberty: [00:26:40] I started the process by saying I wanted to learn about the difficulties. By the time it was done, I realized that I was wrong. And it was because I found someone, architect and developer, Nicholas Papa efthimiou an expert. I'm a land use attorney, but after a while, he really knew the ropes.
So really my job [00:27:00] was to give some advice. We talked about the design and this is a 391 square foot converted tuck under garage. It has retaining walls into a private patio, it's South facing, which is very important Portland, and we had a budget of originally $60,000, turned out to be 75,000. So I learned, it actually wasn't that hard for me. I had to make some decisions. My sweat equity was pretty modest, mostly the exterior landscaping work. And I did learn about the challenges of different interpretations of the same code by different reviewers and building codes. Some of the stuff did drive me a little nuts, but fortunately Nicholas really was write checks, give us some advice. So that's what can happen elsewhere.
Kol Peterson: [00:27:48] Now that you've had some experience with this, what roles do you see ADUs playing in terms of affordability and equity?
Robert Liberty: [00:27:56] Well, what we know from the survey is that there's an overlap between the rents [00:28:00] charge for ADUs and people earning between 60 and 80% of median household income. So market provided, small housing can be affordable people at 60 to 80%, but, one of the questions is that people in those units maybe earning 120%. That's a question about, can we, I find that people really need these rents. So I think it could be pretty significant. The other thing we could have done, or can do, in Portland is we have a $15,000 value in the waiver system development charges, the city. And I know you're not a fan of this, but the city could say, we're going to turn that into a rent reduction.
And it doesn't have to be dramatic, but we'd like you to shave off $200 a month. So I'm charging significantly below market. But because I had savings I used, my return is, this is gross, 1% a month. There's nothing, especially now, there's nothing I can get in the market, as someone who doesn't have a lot of money, like that. So, [00:29:00] I think this combination of great opportunity and need and kind of minor Incentives could do a lot. It's not going to solve the problem. There's no silver bullet, but this is a piece of silver buckshot that I think can help with that housing market.
Kol Peterson: [00:29:13] Robert, this is an important point, can you just explain that in lay terms, when you say your return is 1% a month, explain what that means, dollar value?
Robert Liberty: [00:29:22] So the rent I'm charging is $760 a month. The cost of the ADU was about $75,000-$76,000. And the $76,000 is not construction costs, it's everything. Permits everything including I think I threw in and finally the money has been a building and planter boxes and the fence and stuff. So that means I'm getting 1% back on my money.
Now, if I had borrowed that money, I wouldn't get that kind of return. But if I'd put that money into some sort of investments, I'd be getting a negative return right now. So, [00:30:00] there were a couple of things that made that possible. One is I had help. Second thing is I had a home with a tuck on her garage and I didn't have to provide parking, if I'd had to provide parking, that would make a big difference.
So this combination of regulations, existing structure, and not getting too obsessed about fancy touches, made it , I mean, there's nothing like that I could get.
Kol Peterson: [00:30:23] Yeah. Let's dive into a different topic here. Let's talk about the greenhouse gas emission reduction potential of ADUs and middle housing for cities and states that have greenhouse gas emission reduction laws or policies in place. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Robert Liberty: [00:30:39] Yeah. So since we're changing topics so dramatically, I'm going to change my tie. Greenhouse gas production, about quarter, but typically, certainly in this state, 27% is from transportation, another big share is from the structures themselves. And by having ADUs as a strategy around infill and redevelopment, you [00:31:00] reduce driving. People are closer to things, especially if they're built in neighborhoods like the ones we live in, where there are stores nearby and walk to, and the conveniences of excellent transit, bike proximity. ADUs as strategy around infill and redevelopment makes a big difference in the amount of travel.
So that's one part. The other part is small houses just generally don't take as much energy to heat, dramatically different. I know this from personal experience, we had an energy audit and there was a threshold of savings they had to meet and then you'd get a benefit.
Well, we couldn't really meet it and our walls are not insulated. So why is that possible? It's because the house is a appropriate size, 800 square foot main floor. We shut the doors to the attic, it's just really efficient. And so those two things, the small unit and the infill together actually have a big impact.
And California has made compact growth, a major part of its effort [00:32:00] to address climate change. And I worked on that project for a couple of years as well.
Kol Peterson: [00:32:05] We're going to close out with one question here about your experience as an elected official in Metro many moons ago. What are some strategies that you'd recommend for advocates and elected officials that are confronting common concerns around the impact of off street parking or owner-occupancy or any of the other arguments that are put out there against infill housing and residential zones?
Robert Liberty: [00:32:29] Well I think the most important thing is organized education coming from the residents themselves. We've had, I want to repeat this with very important, all the stuff we've done in Oregon, around planning and changing how we grow and develop around housing has been contentious. It always has been, but there's always been a lot of grassroots advocacy coming from individuals and organizations.
I'm amazed at the level of distributed sophistication we have [00:33:00] here from these challenges. It's something universities can contribute to. But the most important thing is, and I serve on the Columbia Gorge commission now, is to have people coming in and say, I want this in my neighborhood.
And to do that it's best if there's an organization or YIMBY, "Yes In My Back Yard" organization, but it can come from designers, it can come from faculty members, can come from people in faith communities who say, "You know, if those people were good enough to take out our garbage or teach our kids, they are good enough to live here."
So this is, again, an experience that's many places have had, but I think that's what has to happen. And then the elected officials get more comfortable. The other thing you can do is, speaking bluntly is, make someone lose an election from being on the wrong side of an issue and that will get everyone's attention immediately.
Kol Peterson: [00:33:52] Good closing piece of wisdom, throw your electeds under the bus!
Kelcy King: [00:33:59] That wraps [00:34:00] up the interview portion of this episode of the ADU hour. As a reminder, these episodes are the edited audio version of interviews that we conducted via a webinar series. Good news. You can access the full video series via Kol's website, BuildinganADU.com. Now for the second half of the show I curate questions from the audience that gives our guests the opportunity to dive deeper into a topic or address new ideas and questions.
So Jeff Barber is asking , and I'm curious about this too, about comparing the urban growth boundaries from out West to the Compact Context Areas in the Midwest. Is that something that you can address?
Robert Liberty: [00:34:44] I'm not sure I know what that is but I can guess a little bit, one thing I'd say is Urban Growth Boundary is a tool that will help supply over a big area because of separates city and country.
And if you don't limit what happens outside the boundary, it's worthless. So in [00:35:00] Oregon, about 96% of the private land is zoned for farm or forest use. And you're not necessarily entitled even build a house. So you can't just densify and allow sprawl across the countryside, you have to have a system that covers a state or a whole region. And it is also not true that encouraging density and cities are allowing that some cities will save the countryside. It doesn't work that way, you have to have something that applies across the whole landscape. Thank you.
Kelcy King: [00:35:30] What could specifically, this questions asks California, but I think anywhere, learn from Oregon in regards to land use and zoning instead of purchasing open space.
Robert Liberty: [00:35:42] Several years ago, I did a study of what all 50 States were doing to curtail sprawl. And I looked at a bunch of regions. It's an 800 page report.
I'll send a signed copy to someone if they promise to read it all. But when I was done, I had a kind of, instead of "eureka moment", a "well duh" moment. So [00:36:00] one thing is you have to change your land, use regulations in a fundamental way. You have to have oversight, you have to have enforcement.
We have actually citizen forcement in Oregon, and you have to stick with it. So, it's not just a little bit of tinkering, you'd have to really think about your entire landscape. In California actually has huge amount of planning legislation. A lot of it's not enforced and a lot of it is advisory and that just doesn't work if you mean it, you have to require it.
So it's politically difficult, but I think it will be essential, both for equity and sustainability.
Kol Peterson: [00:36:35] Robert, there's a couple of questions I had for you that I didn't get to ask and I'm curious if you could get into it a little bit. So what, just in general, what roles do you think ads and missing middle housing play in terms of meeting a state's housing production goals? Oregon and California, I'm sure other states have goals that they're trying to meet. Can you give us some insight into how middle housing can help those goals?
Robert Liberty: [00:36:58] Well, I
think it could help [00:37:00] significantly, but just the ADU productions we had before the pandemic. I remember talking about this and whether it was regarded as a niche with a regional government, and one of the planners there said we were looking at, I think three or 4% of the housing production going on during that high growth period was taking the form of ADUs.
That is not a niche. Three or 4%. Right. So I think we don't know what it could play. If there was a requirement that new housing that was built, something discussed in Portland and the region, had to include an ADU, then we could really talk about a significant increase in production.
So, I think the potential, even if it's one or 2%, it's significant because ADUs are unlike apartments and they're unlike single family homes, they really are in different locations or different scales, they're in opportunity areas often. So I think they can play a very important role.
I think the trick is can we get that to go from hundreds to thousands? And how do you do that? So the answer [00:38:00] is yes, it can. But we'll have to see. Oh, one other thing I should add is that when, as part of the planning effort here in the region, we wanted to encourage growth along corridors and in centers and not sprawl.
We've had an explosion of mid rise apartments along transit quarters, simply by eliminating parking requirements because it's $15,000 to $40,000 per unit extra. And all of a sudden things now work. So that has been dramatic in last five years. I think there is big potential.
Kol Peterson: [00:38:34] I always give a lot of credence to people who put their money where their mouth is. And by that, I mean people who build an ADU for themself because I think there's so much to be gained in terms of understanding the market by going through the process yourself.
So can you just talk a little bit about now that you've been through the ADU development process yourself, how has that changed your understanding of the ADU market and policy interventions [00:39:00] that are out there?
Robert Liberty: [00:39:01] Well, it's sort of a emphasis in some points I made earlier. One is there are situations like mine where the cost of the ADU can be low and the return is high.
That's a combination of the home, and the site, and the regulation, and available capital. A lot of Americans have no savings, so this doesn't work for them, but they may have value in their property.
Finding the place where there's really a high return, I think I was kind of shocked at how important this has been for my financial future. Other people know that, there's nothing particularly unique about our situation. I think sharing that can make a big difference. On the other side, I looked at the possibility of building a detached unit talking about that with Nicholas again. And I looked at that return. I was going to have to borrow some of the money and it wasn't great. It was pretty weak.
So what that shows is you have to find the right situation, the regulations, the right setting for the remodel and so on. And then I think it has big [00:40:00] potential, big potential.
Kelcy King: [00:40:01] There was one more that I think can be adapted to any city or any municipality experiencing growth.
Danny asked, "I've been asked by my local real estate investor group. What types of development does Portland need most? What do you think the best answer to this question is?
Robert Liberty: [00:40:15] Housing development or development generally?
Kelcy King: [00:40:17] I would say housing.
Robert Liberty: [00:40:20] Lower costs, and I think that is going to be a mixture of apartments, but I also think we need innovations to test markets and the work that Kol and others did actually did that and demonstrated there was a market that's actually a role for government is to test markets.
So I think there are some things around design. So for example can we get the science where people have a small backyard and some privacy, but it's part of a multifamily development. Is that a big market? What can we do with adaptive reuse of existing structures, both homes and not. So I would say we need more housing, more variety of housing we don't need more trophy housing. You [00:41:00] know, we don't need to worry about the upper end of the market except in so far as it's using up the land and the taxpayer required financing required for other people.
Kol Peterson: [00:41:09] Thanks, Robert. I noticed how you slipped adaptive reuse that was pretty slick.
All right. So thanks so much for joining us today, Robert. And we are gonna wrap up today's show thanks again so much for being our guest today.
Robert Liberty: [00:41:23] My pleasure and thank you for doing this, Kol, it's very important.