Missing middle housing debuts in 2024 Street of Dreams

Affordable missing middle housing debuts in the 2024 Street of Dreams in August with a duplex, a triplex, and a cottage cluster in Portland.

Such housing, which used to be common, largely disappeared when many cities adopted zoning policies that favored single-family neighborhoods. But as increasing home prices created an affordable housing crisis, the Oregon Legislature and Portland City Council moved to ban single-family zoning with the goal of increasing residential densities with less expensive housing styles.

Although initially tabbed for the Forest Highlands neighborhood in Lake Oswego, this year’s event will instead take place across multiple communities and feature a more varied selection of homes to peruse, including new missing middle housing in Portland.

Rachel Trice, the chief membership and marketing manager for the event organizer — the Home Building Association of Greater Portland — said that the originally planned development, Oswego Reserve, couldn’t be completed in time and so the HBA will host the Street of Dreams at that site in 2025. The 2024 iteration will instead take place in Portland, Hillsboro, Lake Oswego, Oregon City, and Sherwood. It will run at various times throughout three weekends in August: Aug. 1-4, Aug. 8-11 and Aug. 15-18.

“The on-tour model works well in other markets,” Trice said. “Part of our longer-term business plan is to be able to showcase a variety of builders. On a single site you have to have a certain type of home. On a tour it gives you a chance to showcase a variety of housing types. HBA’s mission is to talk about a wide variety of housing types, not just single-family, large construction homes.”

The Portland portion of the show includes two adjoining duplexes by Dez Development in the Portsmouth neighborhood and three detached cottages by Aker Development in North Portland. The triplex is actually a three-unit townhouse called the St. Johns Townhomes by Fish Construction.

Justin Wood, the owner and president of Fish Construction, has long championed missing middle housing. Since it became allowed in formerly single-family neighborhoods, that is all that his company is building. He believes most new owner-occupied homes being built in Portland now is some form of missing middle housing.

“Even companies building detached houses are putting additional units in the back yard,” Fish said.

The Portland portion will also feature more traditional housing, including a luxury single-family home and high-end apartments, however.

Most of the other homes included in this year’s Street of Dreams are traditional new and remodeled single-family luxury houses. Two exceptions are the Frances luxury condominiums along State Street in Lake Oswego and a converted shipping container home in Oregon City.

Trice said that the typical single-location Street of Dreams format is generally rare in the construction industry nationwide and acknowledged that attendees appreciate the convenience of this concept. However, she added that available land is harder to come by than it used to be and that finding an appropriate site each year is more challenging. In turn, she expected the Street of Dreams to evolve in the future. She noted that the HBA has included some off-site homes in recent Street of Dreams.

“I think we will definitely have tour homes in the future. But when we can bring people to a single site and be excited about that, we will do that as well. I think it will be a hybrid moving forward,” Trice said.

The event costs $27 per ticket and is a fundraiser for the HBA, which promotes residential construction regionally and has a charitable nonprofit organization that helps with building homeless shelters as well as workforce development and scholarships.

Overall, Trice hopes people will carve out some time to drive to the various sites and support local businesses in local communities.

“I think people will have a great time seeing a variety of styles and architecture. There is a little bit of everything,” she said.

As for Oswego Reserve, it occupies 7.26 acres and was slated to include nine homes along Goodall Road in the Forest Highlands neighborhood. Trice expected it to be “one of our most spectacular sites ever.”

For more information on Street of Dreams, visit streetofdreamspdx.com .