By ZACH DEMARS/Oregon Capital Chronicle
BEND — The open space on Cathy and Kurt Springman’s 10 acres of land could offer a win-win — for their horses and a needy renter.
In a perfect world, they’d fill some of that space with a tiny home just big enough to house one or two people. A potential tenant could get a break on rent, and the Springmans could find someone willing to help care for their horses every now and then.
It makes sense financially, and the size of their lot means an additional tenant wouldn’t take up a huge footprint while helping stem the region’s housing crisis. But there’s a catch: The tiny home they’d want to build for that hypothetical tenant — known officially as an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU — isn’t yet legal to build.
“We’ve certainly got the space and the interest in building something. It’s just, we’re holding off on building an ADU until we can get it permitted,” Kurt Springman said. “But conceptually the idea is very attractive to us.”
The Springmans are caught in a logjam of state policy that prevents property owners from building ADUs in rural areas, leaving swaths of the state off-limits for tiny home construction amid a statewide housing crisis. Lawmakers in Salem are considering legislation this session that could clear that up.
Approval could open up thousands of potential ADU properties in Deschutes County. In land use hearings late last year, county staff estimated that around 7,300 properties could become eligible to build ADUs under the changes, depending on the specific regulations the county sets in place.
The Springmans bought their property just before the pandemic began, and moved from the Seattle area about two years ago. The couple, both in their 60s and both working remotely from their new home, had friends in Central Oregon for some time, and saw the appeal of living in a dryer environment as their kids left home.
Brand new to ranch life and the tasks that come with it — Kurt’s learned a lot about how to drive a tractor and put up fences — the Springmans have been forming a community with their neighbors. Giving younger people a space to live on their land could expand that community, Cathy Springman said.
“It fosters community,” she said. “I’ve seen it, where these young people are living with these older people. They’re helping them out. They’re bringing their friends around, and it just kind of it’s creates a community that feels a little more like a village, I guess you’d say, instead of all of our relationships being so siloed and so separate.”
Over the last six years, state legislators have been slowly loosening the rules around building ADUs on rural land — land that Oregon’s land use system is generally designed to protect from development. In 2021 and 2022, the Legislature passed bills that, with county approval, would allow ADUs to be built on residential rural lands, like where the Springmans live.
But that bill depended on the creation of a wildfire risk map by the state’s Department of Forestry and Oregon State University — a map that was released in July, 2022, before being quickly retracted after statewide public outcry about the map’s accuracy.
Without the map in place, counties have been unable to approve the regulations necessary to allow rural ADUs. Deschutes County had been in the process of making the necessary code changes to allow for them before putting a second public hearing on hold after the map was withdrawn.
A spokesperson for the Department of Forestry told The Bulletin that there’s currently no timeline for releasing an updated map, as the department is waiting to see what changes, if any, lawmakers will ask the department to make in its mapping process.
Still, map or no map, there could be a breakthrough on the horizon: A bill before the Legislature this session would functionally eliminate the condition that the state wildfire map be in place in order for counties to authorize rural ADUs.
In the absence of a finalized map, the bill would require ADUs to be constructed to certain wildfire-hardened standards.
“It’s not trying to do an end run around the fire maps as much as it’s trying to draw a shortcut with a serviceable solution,” said Morgan Greenwood, a vice president of the Central Oregon Builders Association.
Developers in the region have already expressed interest in being able to build the units on some of the eligible properties in the county, according to Greenwood.
“We do have a subset of (COBA) members who are very interested in this bill and have been really excited to get some ADU projects going,” Greenwood said.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, already passed in the senate and is scheduled for a house committee hearing Monday.
- The Oregon Capital Bureau is a collaboration of EO Media and Pamplin Media Group and provides state government and political news to their newspapers and media around Oregon, including YachatsNews.com
Yes
It seems to me that you would be providing housing to a part-time employee. The property owner would then have an employee to account for on their taxes. An employment and tax professional would have to be involved to set up the relationship. Other then those loose ends sounds like a win win to me.
This absolutely should pass. So many families could offer extended family members a home. What a way to curb both the homeless issue and excessive rent. With interest what it is so many young people and young famlies can no longer afford to buy but could afford to put a home on a relatives or friends property. Its about time the law makers realized this is a huge potential answer
Absolutely not. Too open to scams, and rural land too precious in Oregon.