Oregon needs to build 29,500 more homes each year to get out of shortage, chief economist says

By JULIA SHUMWAY/Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon needs to build about 29,500 more homes each year, mostly in the Portland region and Willamette Valley, to emerge from a housing shortage years in the making, the state’s chief economist told lawmakers Monday.

The state’s Office of Economic Analysis recently released its first annual housing needs analysis report, with homebuilding targets for the state and individual cities to meet. It’s the result of a sweeping 2023 law that sought to give the state more power to set housing goals and hold cities accountable for reaching them.

The 29,522 total is lower than Gov. Tina Kotek’s goal of building 36,000 homes per year, but still well above construction in recent years. Builders pulled just more than 20,000 residential permits in 2022, less than 18,000 in 2023 and barely more than 13,000 by November of 2024, the most recent month data is available.

Lagging construction comes as more Oregonians struggle to find affordable homes to buy or rent. Chief Economist Carl Riccadonna said housing affordability comes down to three macroeconomic conditions: the actual home or rent price, household income and interest rates.

“When we look at this nationally, housing affordability is as poor as it has been going all the way back to the 1980s, when we had double-digit mortgage rates,” he said.

The state’s analysis includes five factors contributing to housing needs:

• Years of underproduction. Building permits peaked in 2005, when developers pulled permits for more than 31,000 homes, then plummeted with the 2008 housing crash and recession. About 7,000 homes were built statewide in 2009, and while homebuilding slowly increased heading out of the recession before falling with the COVID pandemic, it hasn’t returned to 1990s levels. Simultaneously, Oregon’s population grew by nearly 11% between 2010 and 2020 — outpacing all but 10 other states and netting Oregon an extra seat in Congress. More than 400,000 additional people live in Oregon now than in 2010, but communities haven’t built enough homes to keep pace with that growth. To make up for those years of underproduction, the analysis says Oregon will need to build 50,300 homes statewide over the next 20 years, with about two-thirds of those at prices affordable to families who earn less than 60% of the median income in their area.
• Rehousing homeless people. The 2024 Point in Time count, a federal count of how many people are homeless on a given day in January, tallied 22,875 Oregonians living in shelters or on the streets. Homeless advocates describe that measure as an incomplete picture of homelessness, as it doesn’t include people without homes of their own who are staying with friends, in motels or other less-visible places. The housing needs analysis estimates Oregon will need another 45,637 homes for people experiencing homelessness within the next 20 years.
• Population growth. Newcomers to Oregon will need homes, and they make up almost half of the estimated need over the next 20 years with 242,081 homes split among all income levels.
• Demographic change. More people are living alone or with a partner, led by baby boomers aging and adults waiting longer than earlier generations to marry or start families. That means smaller household sizes, which means more homes are needed to house the same number of individuals. State analysts estimate 139,185 homes are needed to account for this.
• Making up for homes lost as short-term rentals or vacation homes. Each second home or short-term rental does nothing to help with permanent housing availability, and that problem is particularly acute in tourist areas like the coast. The analysis estimates Oregon needs to build another 17,300 homes to offset losses to short-term rentals and second homes.

The analysis also includes goals for how many homes each city should build each year, and during the next 20 years. Some are minute — the tiny town of Mitchell next to the Painted Hills unit of the John Day Fossil Beds, for instance, is expected to build a single home this year and just 22 homes in the next 20 years. Portland is expected to add 2,851 homes in one year and more than 57,000 in the next 20 years.