Contact

Eunice Kim
Long Range Planning Manager
555 Liberty St. SE
Room 305
Salem, OR 97301

Hours

Monday - Friday
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Housing Production Strategy

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Salem needs more housing. To help meet that need, the City is creating a Housing Production Strategy (HPS) to outline how Salem plans to encourage housing development. The HPS is expected to include tools, policies, and actions that promote the production of a variety of housing types.

During the HPS project, the City will work with the community to:

Confirm Salem’s housing needs
Conduct a market study to determine the feasibility of developing housing in mixed-use areas
Develop housing production strategies

Where Are We Now?

The City is working to confirm Salem’s housing needs, and we will soon start to talk about potential strategies to encourage housing development.

Watch the Joint Work Session

The Planning Commission and City Council held a joint work session on the Housing Production Strategy on June 17, 2024. You can watch a recording of the meeting here.

Watch the June 11 Webinar

If you missed the webinar on housing needs on June 11, you can watch it on Youtube. You can also view the presentation here.

Thank you for taking our survey! We received more than 535 responses. You can read the survey responses below under "Project Documents."

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Project Documents

Background

In 2019, the State Legislature passed House Bill 2003, which requires larger cities like Salem to study their housing needs and develop strategies to encourage the production of housing. Specifically, the law requires Salem to:

Conduct a Housing Capacity Analysis (HCA) every eight years to study its future housing needs and determine if there is enough land to meet those needs
Adopt a Housing Production Strategy (HPS) that outlines the tools and actions the City plans to take to encourage the development of the housing that is needed in the community

Salem adopted its analysis of housing capacity ̶ then called a Housing Needs Analysis ̶ in 2022 at the completion of the Our Salem project. Through the Our Salem project the City redesignated and rezoned land to allow housing more broadly across Salem.

Now that there is enough land to accommodate Salem’s housing needs, the next step is to conduct the City's first HPS. The HPS project started in early 2024 and is expected to be complete by mid-2025. Throughout the project, the City will engage the community through focus groups, public meetings, interviews, and other outreach.

This project will result in a list of strategies to promote housing production, such as financial incentives or regulation changes. A consultant team, led by ECOnorthwest and funded by the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, is helping the City develop the HPS.

This project builds upon all of the work the City has and continues to do to encourage and support housing development. It also advances goals and policies in the updated Salem Area Comprehensive Plan.