HB 406 Update

The Tillamook County Planning Commission held a workshop on June 27, for a presentation on Oregon House Bill 406, which requires Tillamook County and its cities to greatly expand code allowances for multifamily dwelling units.

Elizabeth Decker from JET Planning gave a detailed presentation about the bill’s specifics and the process that her firm and others will use to help the county update its ordinance.

Passed in 2023 and sponsored by State Senator Suzanne Weber, HB 406 was designed as a test case for possible solutions to the state’s housing crisis, using Tillamook County to test the impacts multifamily housing zoning changes in rural areas. The bill requires that the county and cities therein update their zoning ordinances to allow duplexes wherever single-family houses are permitted and requires expansion in the allowance of triplexes, fourplexes, and cottage clusters.

Decker said that the impetus behind the bill was to remove hurdles facing developers who want to bring those types of units, often referred to as missing middle housing, to the market. With Oregon’s stringent land use laws and procedures, developers currently have to go through a complex process including public hearings to get a project approved.

The bill applies to the seven incorporated cities in the county as well as the unincorporated communities governed by the county government that are serviced by water utilities.

In addition to the ordinance updates required by 2025, the bill also mandated that the county and cities participate in an Oregon Housing Needs Analysis that will be released in 2027 and develop countywide housing production strategies to meet the needs identified in that analysis by 2028.

JET Planning is working alongside 3J Consulting to assist the county in the ordinance update and has also been retained by several cities. Though Nehalem, Rockaway Beach and Manzanita have selected other planning firms, Decker said that representatives from all involved firms were meeting monthly.

The bill provides the county and cities two options for updating their ordinances, including a model ordinance as well as minimum standards that proposed ordinances could be reviewed against. In either case, the updates will have largely the same substance, with only a few choices left to the local governments.

The most important of those will be the decision of whether to have minimum lot size requirements for triplex, fourplex and cottage cluster developments or to allow them on any lot zoned for a single-family home. Governments will also decide the maximum size of cottage clusters that will be allowed, within a range of four to 12 units.

Governments will also need to decide whether they will allow duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes to be built as detached units, and set forth parking requirements and design standards, though standards must also apply to single-family homes in the zone.

Decker said that governments were also provided with an opportunity to create a new process to allow lots with multifamily dwelling units to be subdivided for sale or they could elect to leave the code as is and have the developments function as condominiums.

With under a year until the bill’s June 31, 2025, deadline for ordinance updates, the project is now kicking into high gear.

Decker is currently auditing the county’s current code to identify all sections that will need to be changed as part of the update. She said that in the coming weeks, her firm and the others will also begin holding stakeholder interviews with groups including developers and the planning commission and that a focus group with residents impacted by housing shortages is being planned.

Following those interviews, the consultants will conduct community engagement in the fall before proposing a first draft for the code updates. The public will be given an opportunity to comment on the proposed changes late this year or early next, before a final draft is developed and delivered to the board of county commissioners for approval.

Tillamook County Community Development Director Sarah Absher said that her department is planning to have at least two meetings with each impacted community before commissioners vote on the update.