How To Remove Barriers to Good Housing Development, With Jesse Russell
Jesse Russell is a small-scale developer and Strong Towns member from Bend, Oregon. He joins Norm to discuss the ways he’s helping create more attainable homes in his hometown. He also explains how he works with the community and city officials to remove barriers to good development.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:01
Welcome to bottom up shorts. I'm Norm with strong towns, and after meeting 1000s of strong towns members, I often think I've got to tell you about this person, and that's what bottom up shorts is about, quick introductions to regular people doing exciting things. They're not superheroes. They once felt like you might unsure if they could make a difference. One such person is Jesse Russell. Jesse is a strong towns member in Bend, Oregon. He's a small scale developer and a big advocate for incremental growth. He's helping to create more attainable homes while working with the city to remove barriers to good development. Bend is showing that small scale, locally driven action can solve big challenges, and people like Jesse are leading the way in that. Having started building houses on wheels, he now builds homes of all sizes or slightly larger sizes, with fixed foundations and many other things like this, and has been a key part of Bend's contest entry in the strongest town contest this year. And so Jesse, as we start, can you describe what it is that Bend is doing in order to allow for more housing diversity, as well as to make it possible for folks like yourself and others to emerge as small scale developers in your community?
Jesse Russell 1:15
Yeah, sure. You know, Norm, it's interesting. Bend was a really small town. You know, back when I grew up here, about 19,000 people, 20,000 people, and now, you know, we're over 100,000 and we've seen such great growth. And the really nice thing about this town is, whether you've lived here all your life or you just moved here a year ago, I think we're all trying to maintain and and see this town grow in a really in a really thoughtful way, so that that's, that's what I love most about bend, and that's why I, you know, took the time to fill the application out. I started looking at some of the stuff that these other towns had done, and what strong towns talked about, you know, with cities that are that are doing the kind of things that that they recognize. And I said, Hey, man, we've been doing this and Ben for, you know, a decade now, right? You know, one of the, one of the big things for us is we were a small we were a tiny house on wheels. Builder originally, you know, 10 years ago, wanted to build four, put four tiny houses on a residential lot, and the city said, No way. You can't do that. It's not, not legal for for zoning purposes, land use purposes, a bunch of stuff. And that just started this, this journey that we had to try to try to just build some small houses in our town. And I have to say, you know, the people have been including the city, have been really supportive of that, and now we have all kinds of code that supports the types of housing that that we do and other small scale developers here in Bend.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 2:42
In sort of a rapid fire way, what are some of those changes and can you maybe describe, like, what was the community process involved in helping the the city staff just bring in fresh ordinances and have them actually see the light of day?
Jesse Russell 2:58
Yeah, so a big part of that is actually our state. You know, the Oregon State had a house bill called House Bill, 2001 and that basically said, you know, in a residential standard zone, which most of our lots in our city are you needed? They needed to allow cottages, duplexes, triplexes and quad plexes. In the past, that was not allowed. You could only build a residential house, you know. So you know when that happened. The way that works with our city politics is we get together as a stakeholder group. We were invited to be on that stakeholder group to say, Hey, how are we going to adopt this for our own city, and what's that going to look like? And we, as a group and as a city, decided to go even further than what the state was mandating. So aside from, you know, having cottage code and now allowing duplex triplex and quad Plex is on residential standard zone, we also we have what's called 3.8 development alternatives, which is written in our code. Now there's, I don't know, seven or eight different types of building units that we're allowed to do now within the city, micro apartments, small unit development code, which is a which is making these really small lots for these smaller homes. We have courtyard development. We have zero lot line. There's just been a ton of stuff in the last 10 years that that the city has adopted for us to be able to kind of densify our city and not push out into the into the wilderness and into our our forests. You know, we try to, we try to keep our city boundaries so we don't have sprawl, really.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 4:33
In terms of your community really grappling with like, hey, how do we locally address the housing needs that we have? How do we address the need for economic investment to take place. What are some of the elements around, like the removal of parking requirements, as well as I think you said, the identification of ways for irregular lot sizes and other types of things to be still built on or still adapted? How is that helping your community to meet its own needs? In a way that I think helps to build lasting prosperity where you live.
Jesse Russell 5:03
Yeah. So in Bend we we completely got rid of parking mandates. So for for example, we have in development right now a 59 unit micro apartment that only has nine parking spaces to it. It's very close to transit. It's on a bike. It's on a bike lane that goes right up to the college, and it's really just in this perfect, perfect spot. It's actually adjacent to the bend central district, which is really this what has been a real industrial part of bend, but it's right in the middle of bend, and that's we've, we've we've allowed all kinds of different code to get mixed use buildings in there and that sort of thing, to make a really walkable central part of bend, and removing the parking mandates was a big part of that. We were able to fit many more units of apartments onto the property that we had because we didn't have to have one parking space per unit or two parking spaces per unit, depending on what code you're looking at.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:00
Yeah. And can you share a little bit how you in your own particular work within the community of bend, have been not only able to attract interest to the strongest sound contest now that bend, at the time of the recording is up into the final eight, but also building a coalition of people that really are, you know, comfortable with new ideas, but also, you know, striving to find ways to make sure that it's well integrated into what the community wants.
Jesse Russell 6:27
Yeah, I think, you know, and Ben, we really take our time when we make these decisions that are going to affect the whole community, and we do a good job of voicing our opinions, whether that's to city council or if it's in the local newspaper, writing to the editor, or getting together with groups like envision band, or our our yimby group, that is here, I feel like, if you want to have your voice heard here in Bend, there's many, many avenues to go right or go and talk about what you're advocating for to make the you know, To make the city a better place. We have, we have public comment periods when we do a development, and oftentimes we'll have people that don't like, you know, the the denser housing that we're doing. And I always say to them, you know, I might not be right. And this is just the, this is just the approach that I've taken to to housing. If you don't agree with it, advocate for what you believe in and go down there. And the great thing about city government is you can actually see change happen in your community with very few people behind that change.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 7:33
I love that. And can you share a little bit about your path that made you someone that is regularly engaging with city council, but also working within your community to help articulate a vision of what you are for, instead of just the things that you might be against.
Jesse Russell 7:50
Yeah, I mean, this all started just by trying to, you know, put those four houses on a residential lot. And, you know, since then, when I grew up here, I didn't know how the city government worked and how the City Council works. So, you know, it was really just educating myself when we did our first development, we have what's called system development charges here, which are basically a cost that you pay to the city every time you build a house. Those were not scaled. So the 500 square foot homes we were building, we paid the same, you know, roughly $30,000 per home that a person building a 5000 square foot house did. That was 10 years ago, and I thought we would get those SDCs scaled very quickly. It was only actually this last year that we had an STC stakeholder group, and we now have tiered STCs. So I'm happy to say, you know, a zero to 600 square foot house pays the least amount in a SDC. So, you know, we've seen things like that really work for for me in particular, you know, I would just, I had a little PowerPoint that just showed our little house, said, what percentage of our total build cost these SDCs were costing. And then I showed a big mansion, you know, out one of our fancy neighborhoods, and I said, this is the percentage of cost that this builder is having to pay for their SDCs. And I just went around and told people about it, you know, to me, it seemed like common sense, and it took a long time. And I'm not saying that I was the one that the only person that, you know, helped to make that happen, but there was, there was a few of us. And, yeah, it's been, it's been really useful as an incentive for people that are trying to do the type of housing we're doing.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 9:29
And it's is about removing those barriers to the types of housing that are are most needed within the community and most needed by a large swath of the population. And again, it's crucial to point out, you know, it's often not that you know, a 600 square foot home is what everyone desires or sees themselves living in. This can sometimes be the challenge for council members that are like, I don't live in a small home. Therefore, I don't know how anyone else would want this. And the point is, it may not always be for the individual right in front of you, and maybe for other people in your. Community who also are going to either want that lifestyle or are able to afford that lifestyle, want those types of things in their communities. And maybe as we, as we close, I mean, we've talked a bit about bend, and just, I mean, one, I would say, head over to bend. Oregon. It's an amazing community. It's lovely folks that are there. There's just so much to offer. But what is the things that offer you give give you hope in your community?
Jesse Russell 10:26
Well, again, what gives me hope is it the people that move here and the people that live here? We've, we've chosen to be here. There's a reason that we raise our kids here. You know, we have a we have a mountain, a ski mountain outside, 20 minutes, outside of bend, depending on traffic multiple rivers and lakes. And the natural beauty here is just, is just unbelievable. And we want to keep that, you know, people care about that. So when we start to, you know, think about our town and how it's going to grow, we try to be really smart about it. And that that gives me hope for the future, no matter what's going on in a national government, or even in the state government. We have a group of people here that is, you know, one. We're trying to hold on to what we have, but we're also open to make it even better. You know, we now have a in our river. There's a surf wave. You can go down and surf in the river. We have an amphitheater. I saw Bob, Dylan, Neil, young Lumineers, you name it. We didn't used to get any music here. So we see, we see positive change too. I don't think we're stuck trying to hold on to some lifestyle that's in the past. I think we're we as bendites, are we're, we're understanding of that lifestyle, but we know that, you know, we have to grow, and we have to we have to be able to support everybody that lives in Bend and try to get housing for everyone. So I think we all kind of care about that, and that's that's what gives me a lot of hope for the future.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 11:48
Yeah, I love that. And sounds like, together with you and many others in your community, you're helping to do the things that are necessary for bend to become stronger and more resilient and to be able to have a brighter future ahead, as well as continuing to provide for the needs of the people that are there at present. So with that, thank you, Jesse, for coming on bottom up shorts and all those that are listening to definitely take note. Where are the barriers in your community to things like housing, to things like small scale development, to things like investment in existing neighborhoods? Take note of those things and go talk with your council members, go share with your city staff, just taking note, and then beginning to be part of that conversation is such a key part of it with that take care and take care of your places.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Hiatus Homes (website)
Bend made it to the Final 4 in this year’s Strongest Town Contest. There are many great lessons that cities of all sizes can learn from their hard work. Click here to read more about their progress.
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