Commentary: Oregon’s urban growth boundaries are essential for housing and economic development

Published 2:50 pm Monday, April 13, 2026

Oregon, like other states, lacks housing — especially affordable housing. We are also experiencing an economic slowdown. During these times, people look for simple solutions to complex challenges. But simply adding land to cities or removing the process of planning for our actual housing and urban industrial needs is counterproductive to the problems we face.

The tired trope that, if the state’s land use program is 50 years old, it must be obsolete, isn’t grounded in facts. For example, a recent Capital Chronicle commentary criticizing urban growth boundaries quoted three “studies,” two of which do not appear in an internet search. The third is a powerpoint with a quote taken out of context: The powerpoint’s author used the word “binding” to explain how UGBs encourage density in a helpful way, not to claim that they stifle development.

In truth, a land use program will always be useful. This includes UGBs, which are required to include a 20-year land supply for housing and industrial development. UGBs help direct limited public funding towards efficient infrastructure development and provide predictability for industries inside and outside of UGBs, including agriculture.

Cities tend to sit on top of our best agricultural lands. Yet agriculture is an industry too, and it is not only land-dependent, but soil-dependent. Poor decisions to sprawl onto agricultural land not only saddle urban areas with unnecessary infrastructure costs, but forever harm one of the state’s largest economic drivers.

Like with any state program, our land use laws are updated every legislative session. That includes the recent passage of the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis, which requires cities to meet 20-year housing goals in five income categories. Cities with populations over 10,000 must inventory buildable residential land, assess what housing types are needed, and implement strategies to address that need, including UGB expansions when necessary.

Oregon has a process for expanding UGBs based on demonstrated need. Cities first engage experts and their communities to plan for housing and economic development, including a plan for more land if needed. Once cities have completed planning, the vast majority of UGB expansion proposals pass quickly. From 2016 – March 2025 there were 50 applications to adjust a UGB. Only two were appealed, and ultimately those were also approved. So 96% of all UGB adjustment requests were approved, 84% without appeal, and 84% within 1 year.

As a result, Oregon has plenty of land for housing and industrial development inside our UGBs. The housing needs analysis will soon give us an inventory of available land for housing. We also understand from data shared by cities that there are at least 10,000 acres of available land zoned for industrial development inside UGBs, including large lots of 500 acres or more.

We do not know exactly how much industrial land is available because the state does not keep an industrial lands inventory. If the Legislature wants to incentivize economic development, it could require this inventory, not do away with the program designed to plan for long-term economic growth.

A primary limiting factor for both housing and industry is the cost of infrastructure. For example, Bend has added 2,767 acres to its UGB since 2016 for at least 8,815 homes, but only about 700 homes had been built or permitted as of 2023 — primarily because there is a $101 million funding gap for transportation infrastructure alone. If the state cannot afford to maintain our current transportation infrastructure, we should think twice before building new infrastructure on greenfields.

We also lack the ability to finance housing at income levels that need it most. Housing for those with incomes below 60% of the area median income cannot be financed by the market and requires subsidies. The state maintains a list of projects that have applied for subsidies and have everything else that they need to start construction, including land. The waitlist contains 45 projects that cannot be built without subsidies that are currently unavailable.

Like housing, infrastructure funding is the primary limiting factor for having shovel-ready industrial land. Once we have that funding, new infrastructure can plug into the relatively efficient infrastructure network that land use planning makes possible.

Sound urban planning combined with strategic state investment minimizes infrastructure costs, builds the types of housing and economic development that we want to attract, and mitigates adverse impacts on rural industries, like agriculture. Oregon is lucky to have a program that helps us plan for the future. We should use it, not discard it, to address today’s challenges.

Nellie McAdams is the founding executive director of Oregon Agricultural Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to helping producers protect and pass on their agricultural land to future generations. She is an attorney, a third-generation hazelnut farmer and long-time advocate for agricultural economic development. Nellie is dedicated to working together to keep Oregon a great place to live and work.

This article was originally published by Oregon Capital Chronicle and used with permission. Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom and can be reached at info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.