Central Oregon YIMBY

Land in Bend is expensive, so to make housing more affordable, home builders need to use it efficiently. You can’t build inexpensively on a large plot.

One way other cities have accomplished this is via something called a ‘detached townhome’, row house, or simply stated, an independent, freestanding house on a small lot that uses almost all of the lot’s land. This used to be a common type of home in many cities. Here are some historical and more modern examples

“Painted Ladies” in San Francisco

Detached Townhomes in Houston, Texas

Because these are independent houses that do not share walls, on separate lots, it’s possible for a local home builder to construct them one at a time without financing and planning an entire project with multiple homes. In an era with high financing costs, this means you could build them sequentially, reinvesting the profits from one to build the next, rather than taking out a large, expensive loan, as would be more likely for a larger development with more homes.

Since they do not use much land, that particular cost is lower than a house with a large yard.

The effort to legalize these in Bend was a true team effort:

• Bend’s city council wanted a few more development code updates related to affordability.
• YIMBYs in Bend saw that the small lot sizes in Houston and older cities were a great way of producing more affordable infill development.
• Bend YIMBY Members and local architects Ryan Starr and Katherine Austin spent time working with Bend’s planning department to get the idea in front of them.
• The planning department researched how these work in other places and created some potential changes in Bend’s development code.
• The changes were approved unanimously by the planning commission.
• And lastly, Bend’s city council voted unanimously to approve them!

It was really great to see everyone rowing in the same direction and several good housings option move through relatively quickly. Let’s hope that momentum continues in the future as we keep looking for ways to make it so that everyone who works in Bend can afford to live here!