The Most Important Housing Bill You've Never Heard Of

Why Oregon's HB 2258 could be a model for solving the housing crisis

Perhaps the most common aesthetic criticism of the modern American apartment building is its sameness. A 5-over-1 is a 5-over-1 whether it’s in Plano, Tempe, San Diego, Philly, or Tampa, giving these cities a sense of placelessness, a generic modern American urbanism.

But despite this perception of cookie-cutter similarity, a major driver of uncertainty and cost in housing development is each project’s bespoke design and review process. Aesthetic similarity notwithstanding, each 5-over-1 is designed from scratch and subject to a lengthy approval gauntlet as if it were an entirely novel concept.

This rigamarole has the dual effect of raising the cost of building housing as well as discouraging new developers from entering the fray—after all, capital invested before a project is approved typically comes out of the developer’s pocket and is wholly lost if the project is not approved, a risk that prevents many architects and contractors from making the leap to development.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if states forced cities to come up with a list of building designs that must be ministerially approved—and not just aesthetically-aligned single family homes, but whole apartment buildings?

That’s exactly what Oregon’s HB 2258 does, and it’s why it might be the biggest housing bill of the year.