Four floors and corner stores would make Portland’s inner neighborhoods even better.

Our vision is simple: it should be legal for any residential lot from roughly 12th to 60th, Fremont to Powell, to contribute to a thriving, mixed-income, mixed-use fabric of urban neighborhoods by allowing street-scale apartment buildings.

This heart of Portland, our Inner Eastside, can become a more equitable version of the Northwest Alphabet District: a dynamic, walkable, mixed-income neighborhood with a mix of mid-sized apartment buildings, single-family homes, and every type in between, well-served by transit, and with commercial centers, corner stores, and shared neighborhood spaces.

Allowing this natural step in the evolution of our city would be good for economic growth, housing affordability, city budgets, social integration, climate action, clean air, and protecting forests, farms, and natural resources.

Mixing low- to mid-rise apartment buildings into tree-lined streets with nearby public transportation was once perfectly legal, as anyone who’s been to Kerns, Buckman, or Goose Hollow can see today. But as documented by Portland’s own planning bureau, in 1981 the city council banned apartment buildings from almost everywhere in inner Southeast Portland except along a few busy streets. This decision helped pave the way to terrible housing shortages and rent hikes, both here and elsewhere in the city, in the 1990s and 2010s.

Even today, Portland’s inner neighborhoods are home to about half the city’s “unregulated affordable” homes, almost all of which sit on lots that are already zoned for apartment buildings. If the future brings high demand for living in this area, then those tens of thousands of unregulated affordable homes will sit directly in the path of gentrification and displacement. People with more money will be eager to live in those old buildings, so their landlords will have the power to raise the rents and sale prices until no one else can afford to live there.

But it doesn’t have to play out like this. The city could take rent pressure off those older apartment buildings (and lower-priced homes everywhere in the region) by lifting its ban on new apartment buildings in most of its close-in areas. And we’d all be better for it.

A rich intermingling of cultures, incomes, ages and abilities in these areas is central to our vision.

Allowing these inner areas to gradually add apartment buildings would open up many more land opportunities for both privately and publicly financed homes. A fully funded inclusionary housing program in these areas would also accelerate production of subsidized homes as part of new mixed-income buildings. Meanwhile, building code reform underway at the state level would allow light-filled, barrier-free, family-size condos and apartments stacked on east-side lots.

Portland is overdue to reconsider our 30-year-old mistake and take our wonderful inner neighborhoods to the next level. Want to help? We’re gonna need it. Email our equitable zoning team lead, Jennifer Shuch, at jmshuch@gmail.com, and consider becoming a member of Portland: Neighbors Welcome, just like the rest of us.

What people are saying

Make Inner Eastside Residential Neighborhoods Three Stories Tall (Willamette Week, “Big Ideas to Save Portland,” January 2023)

Portland Should Allow Denser Multifamily Buildings through Inner Eastside, Housing Groups Say (Portland Tribune, October 2023)

“P:NW’s vision is to create more walkable neighborhoods with a mix of housing types (including some single-family homes) that are well-served by transit lines and bikeways where you can find bustling commercial centers, corner stores, and public spaces.” (BikePortland.org, November 2023)

This kind of win-win planning creates more opportunities for people of all incomes and also reduces climate pollution. Neighborhoods with four floors and corner stores are the ones with the shortest trips; the ridership and political support for abundant transit; and the affordable housing that opens these benefits to people of all incomes.

- Jacqui Treiger, climate and transportation campaign manager, Oregon Environmental Council

When zoning gives local residents and businesses the flexibility to invest in the neighborhoods they know best, communities and economies thrive. Re-legalizing four floors and corner stores would let Portland's unique inner neighborhoods incrementally grow and evolve gracefully based on the needs of the community.

- Victoria Via, architect and advocate for Strong Towns PDX

These are places where people can meet all their daily needs with good sidewalks and access to transit, all within walkable distances. Re-legalizing four floors and corner stores would be great for walking, great for the community, great for the environment, and, most importantly, great for people.

- Zachary Lauritzen, interim executive director, Oregon Walks