Takeaways

• With 57 percent in favor as of last count, Seattle voters have renewed funding for the Democracy Voucher Program.
• Renewal means that people throughout the city can continue to give to campaigns, big-dollar donors won’t regain their sway in city politics, and candidates will have more reasons to reach out to city residents.
• Moving forward, the city will convene a stakeholder process to consider additional program improvements.
• Next city primary, Seattleites will benefit not only from democracy vouchers but also ranked choice voting.

With 57 percent in favor of Proposition 1 (and 150,000 ballots in; last updated August 7, 2025), Seattle voters have reaffirmed their commitment to advancing a more democratic city government. Seattle’s iconic Democracy Voucher Program will have funding for another ten years. 

This renewal means the city can continue to lead the way in the share of its population who contribute to city campaigns. Candidates will keep having more reasons to knock on doors rather than spend hours a day calling up the wealthiest people they know to fund their campaigns. And Seattle residents will get more choices in their elections and more power to express their views.  

Along with helping to design the initial policy, Sightline has documented the impressive effects from the program’s first decade:  

• The program has unlocked an “incredible explosion in participation” in campaign funding and empowered a much more representative group of people to become donors.  

• It decreased large donations and elevated small ones, and it pushed away money coming from outside the city. For example, before the program was implemented, in the 2013 election cycle, gifts of $400 or more made up almost 60 percent of campaign dollars; in 2023, those large contributions plummeted to 9 percent of funds.

• The program even helped boost voter turnout, likely because of increased personal touches from candidates.

• While it couldn’t put a damper on dark money (no one can, thanks to US Supreme Court cases including Buckley v. Valeo, Citizen United v. FEC, and McCutcheon v. FEC), the program also didn’t cause a spike in those “independent expenditures”—PAC spending is up everywhere.

• Democracy vouchers have encouraged more diverse candidates to run and given them a pathway to win. Almost all viable candidates have participated in the program since it began, including people with viewpoints across Seattle’s political spectrum.

• The program has done all that with “budget dust,” a portion of the city budget you need a magnifying glass to see in a chart.

Tuesday’s vote shows Seattleites’ confidence in the program and belief in the importance of doing everything possible to make their government representative and accountable. City residents face many daily challenges—and the stronger and more democratic our governments, the better equipped they are to understand and respond to what’s happening in people’s lives.  

What’s next: Program improvements and complementary reforms

One component of the measure that passed is a directive for the mayor, city council, and the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (the SEEC, the entity that manages the program) to convene a workgroup to explore potential improvements to the program. While the SEEC has already tweaked some elements based on ongoing feedback, the workgroup will offer a more defined process for additional recommendations, considering input from candidates, campaign staff, consultants, advocates, and the SEEC. 

Commentators have already pointed to spending caps for possible modification, particularly given the large number of PAC funds that enter city races. Others have suggested shifting the timing of voucher mailings, improving outreach, and allowing candidates into apartment buildings to meet voters. Some might look beyond the program to other ideas for making political donors more accountable, perhaps following Maine’s example (currently moving through the courts) to limit donations to super PACs.  

Future city elections will get another boost toward fairer representation: Seattle will start using ranked choice voting in city primaries in 2027, the next local primary election. Ranked choice voting offers similar voter-centric benefits as democracy vouchers: candidates benefit from knocking on more doors and talking to more voters because they seek out second-choice votes as well as first choices; more diverse candidates tend to run and win, because voters don’t have to just pick the popular option while others get squeezed out; and voters get a more nuanced way to express their political choices. Combining the power of democracy vouchers and the freedom of ranked choice voting could make Seattle an even stronger model of democracy.  

At a time when US democracy feels unstable to many, Seattle offers a bright spot of public government participation.

The post Seattleites Keep Their Model Campaign Finance Reform Program appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Vaillant’s 2023 Pulitzer finalist book Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World recounted the harrowing 2016 megafire in the Alberta oil town of Fort McMurray, weaving in the histories of the oil industry, climate science, and the very technology of fire in human history. His account not only won international praise; it also drove urgent conversations about our new age of ultra-destructive, climate-fueled wildfires—a topic Sightline has also researched. 

Below, John Vaillant shares his reflections on developments since publishing Fire Weather, answering questions from Sightline researchers. 

It’s been a little over two years since you published Fire Weather—in other words, countless wildfires later and already well into a third “fire season” in Cascadia. Which wildfire stories have you followed most closely since? Or which have followed you? 

The Los Angeles fires this past January were a signal event that forced twenty-first century wildland-urban interface fire and urban conflagration into the international consciousness with a new urgency. The size and speed of it, combined with the scale of the evacuation (about 200,000 people), the structure loss (16,000+), the cost (likely over a hundred billion dollars when all is said and done), and the death toll (30) shocked the nation.  

I happened to be in Orange Country when those fires broke out, and I did more media interviews than I’ve ever done in my life. Those fires, as intense and destructive as they were, were “out of season,” implying that there is no longer a fixed “fire season,” but rather “fire weather,” which can now occur almost any time (see the hundreds of fires that burned across the Northeast last November).  

That said, it’s summertime now, and huge, stubborn fires are wreaking havoc in the heart of Canada, and across the American West. Particularly intense fires, burning in record-breaking temperatures, have been destroying property and also causing fatalities across the eastern Mediterranean. 

The Sightline audience needs no convincing of the fact that climate change is driving increasingly deadly and destructive wildfires. But what are the key ways it’s doing so? What does this mean for how communities experience and adapt to these wildfires compared to wildfires of the past? 

Years—and in some places, decades—of prolonged drought have made many northern and western forests much more fire-prone. Milder winters, elevated summer heat, and year-round drought conditions have also enabled a variety of insects to kill or weaken vast swathes of forest, increasing flammability and transforming historic carbon sinks, like Canada’s boreal forest, into net carbon emitters. Meanwhile, as highly flammable, petrochemical-heavy modern homes push deeper into the wildland-urban interface (WUI) in search of the “neighborhood in Nature” sweet spot, more and more structures are exposed to wildfire energy and embers.  

As I’ve been learning on my now-global Fire Weather tour, communities are at very different stages of awareness and/or preparatory action, ranging from high (Hornby Island, BC; Steamboat Springs, CO) to low (Lucca, Italy; Cambridge, UK; Jaipur, India). Individuals have taken some of the messages from Fire Weather (and their own hard-won experience) to heart, abandoning synthetic (petroleum-based) clothes, gas-powered vehicles, and/or urging their town councils to build alternative routes out of their dead-end valley communities.  

Along with many analysts, we’ve been following the insurance industry as an “indicator species” of climate risks, watching as these corporations raise rates or pull out of markets altogether with disasters growing more frequent. It wasn’t a focus of your book, but are there threads to that story you’ve seen that might surprise readers? 

The biggest surprise is how fast it’s happening, and how broadly. The petroleum industry, which is still insured, is destroying what was a very lucrative twentieth-century business: if you’re an insurance company pulling coverage from vast swaths of the country, you may be reducing your exposure, but you’re not making any money from policies either. You have to wonder if the industry is connecting these dots in a meaningful way . . . 

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It wouldn’t be a Sightline conversation without a foray into solutions. What are some ways, large or small, that you’ve seen people respond in this new age of wildfires? Anything that can scale to the policy level? 

Fire Wise (FireSmart in Canada) is a really good local program that operates through local fire departments. I think every local solution, from yard planting choices, to external sprinklers, to alternate escape routes, to fire preparedness guides can be scaled to policy level. What makes this hard and slow is that it requires a shift in consciousness and these, like attitudes toward littering, smoking, conservation, are generational projects. 

You began your writing career as a journalist. Sightline developed a short guide to help media make the wildfire–climate connection for audiences, but is there further guidance you would offer to those reporting on wildfires today? 

I think the new generation of climate/weather/fire journos are very well educated and generally up to speed. There is so much good work, good science, and good folk out there.  

But it can be crushing, and that’s where it’s really important keep an eye on the solar, battery, and EV industries outside the US. They are proceeding at a gallop and changing the world of energy (and emissions) in the process. It appears that China is on the brink of a CO2 decline—a historic milestone for our civilization.  

In terms of self-care, make a point of spending a portion of your day in love and beauty. If those are lacking, seek them out, or create them. We live in a multi-strand, multi-dimensional reality. Heat, fire, and smoke, as intrusive as they can be, are only one part of a far bigger, more nuanced, and dynamic whole. Nature, and its impulse to flourish, will not be denied. If one path is blocked, it will find another—with or without us.

The post “If One Path Is Blocked, Nature Will Find Another” appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Takeaways

• Two new laws in Oregon legalize lot splits for starter homes, among many other changes, and allow the state to directly override local zoning to approve pre-permitted home designs. 
• With statewide model codes, state housing targets, and a string of other laws, Oregon has done more than any US state to standardize zoning rules across cities. 
• Japan, Australia, and New Zealand have all found success with similar measures. 

Over the last eight years, a bipartisan coalition of Oregon lawmakers has led North America on a new trend: state-level zoning. 

As zoning restrictions spread across the continent almost exactly 100 years ago, state and provincial governments mostly delegated to cities all decisions about where and what sorts of housing should be allowed locally. During the century that followed, that led to problems. A big one: cities and towns deployed zoning to gradually ban the rooming houses, duplexes, triplexes, and small-scale apartment buildings that had always been, until then, the places you could live when you had a small household or a tight budget. 

At first, this wasn’t an obvious problem. A city banning apartments might reason that inexpensive homes would still be legal in the next town over. Or they might observe that the next town over had offloaded its housing needs on them by banning apartments, so it was only fair that they do the same. 

It was all very rational, and contagious. And after a century of local rules upon local rules, here’s what the patchwork of zoning looked like in (for example) the state’s largest city: 

The complexity of Portland’s 779 distinct zoning categories, each one restrictive in its own ways and multiplied further across hundreds of other jurisdictions, has helped create a huge shortage of homes. That’s especially true for the smaller and less expensive sorts of homes, since those are the ones most frequently banned by zoning. That housing shortage and the rising prices it drives have spiraled across city lines and ultimately left many thousands of people sleeping on couches, in parking lots, and in the woods. 

Starting in 2017 and with rising confidence in each year since, Oregon has been responding to this endless civic buck-passing by rethinking its 100-year-old decision to leave the details of zoning mostly up to local jurisdictions. 

Instead, much of the work on this statewide issue is now returning to the place it maybe should have always remained: the state. 

Pre-approved state zoning allows a race to the top 

To see how far Oregon’s consensus has moved, read a bill Governor Tina Kotek signed today.

House Bill 2258 gives the state the power to override local zoning and allow any type of housing on standard urban lots. 

Go ahead—read that last sentence again. 

The bill passed the state House 50-2, and the Senate 28-2. Kotek, its chief advocate, held a signing ceremony Monday for it and others. 

Aurora Dziadul, a legislative and policy analyst for the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, said by email that her state agency plans to voluntarily apply “extra parameters” that narrow the scope of the program. But she said that yes, the bill does give the state the power to preemptively give zoning and building permit approval to any variety of housing project, from a backyard cottage to a skyscraper, on any lot that: 

• allows housing of at least one type 

• falls within an urban growth boundary (a border that, in Oregon, defines the frontier between suburban and rural areas) 

• is between 1,500 and 20,000 square feet 

• has no more than a 15 percent slope 

• is outside areas officially designated as environmentally sensitive, naturally hazardous, containing significant natural resources, scenic, or open 

• and is vacant, including from a recent demolition as long as it results in more homes. 

A key phrase in the bill is in Section 4(2)a, which says that on such lots, the state may pre-approve only “attached or detached housing”—in other words, all housing. (That’s one item in a list of qualifying factors that Dziadul said includes an implicit “or.”) 

It’s unlikely that the state will decide to use this power to legalize 4-story apartment buildings on every urban lot, for example. If it did, cities would have a strong incentive to look for ways to nullify the law—for example, with tight new regulations on demolition. Until any previous building on the site has been demolished, it wouldn’t qualify for the de facto state zoning code created by HB 2258. 

Another issue: the staff of the state’s Building Code Division, which is part of a separate state department, isn’t actually directed to pre-approve any particular building permits. It might choose to pre-approve building permits only for the lowest-density structures—nothing bigger than a duplex or townhouse. That’d greatly limit the scope of the law. Though the text of HB 2258 doesn’t actually limit the state’s zoning powers to cases that use one of BCD’s pre-approved building plans, the governor’s staff advertised the two as going hand in hand. (By the same token, the governor’s staff also advertised the bill as allowing more than just townhomes.) 

Localities will also retain control over engineering decisions like how the site manages stormwater and connects to existing water, sewer, and transportation networks. 

But depending on how it gets implemented, HB 2258 gives the state the power to make a deep structural change to zoning in Oregon. It essentially creates two zoning codes for a property owner to choose between: a local option and a state option. And because property owners will tend to choose whichever code allows the project they most want to build, both local and state planners would have an incentive to make their code relatively flexible. If one planner writes a tightly restrictive code, the property owner will be more likely to choose the other planner’s code, leaving the first code with no control at all. 

Some people have called for zoning to be abolished; HB 2258 doesn’t do that. Instead, it offers to set multiple zoning codes on a “race to the top” that would, over the long run, tend to let more people live where they want. 

Thanks to Lynne Oulman & Robert Johnston for supporting a sustainable Cascadia.

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Oregon required cities to approve lot splits and accessible sixplexes 

A few days after it passed HB 2258, Oregon’s legislature also approved a more direct law. That one, also signed by Gov. Kotek this morning, gave cities and counties 18 months to make their zoning codes more flexible, if they weren’t already, in a bunch of specific ways: 

• They can no longer require new homes on low-density lots to be either attached to or detached from one another. It’ll be up to Oregonians themselves whether or not they want to share a wall with their neighbors. 

• The owner of any low-density residential urban lot in larger cities and counties must have the option to build a duplex, triplex, fourplex, townhome, or a cluster of small cottages. (This was previously required only for the large majority of lots.) 

• They must allow each home on such lots to be subdivided onto its own smaller lot and sold independently, regardless of when each home is or was actually built. These land divisions are also protected from appeal. Together with the previous two items, this essentially allows any urban lot to be subdivided for a few freestanding homes, echoing Houston’s extremely productive legalization of residential lot splits within city limits. 

• They must count each sleeping unit in a co-living building with shared kitchens (also known as a single-room occupancy) as one-third of a home for the purposes of limits on homes per acre or required parking spaces per home. This will essentially re-legalize SROs statewide, building on a 2023 law that legalized them in all residential and mixed-use zones in the state but allowed cities to regulate them as if each bedroom is a full apartment. 

• They must keep within rules, to be defined next year by the state land use agency, that will ban specific types of “unreasonable cost or delay” to the building of accessory dwellings and SROs. 

• They must give a 50% density bonus, including both unit count and building size, to projects on low-density lots that meet a locally defined accessibility or affordability standard. By default, the bill makes six homes legal on any lot in large cities if at least one home is either affordable to a buyer earning 120 percent of the local median income or meets “type A” accessibility standards such as lower kitchen counters and large bathroom. 

State-mandated zoning reforms like these have become common in legislation across the United States and Canada in the last few years. In Oregon’s case, many of these items follow up on past bills—notably HB 2001 from 2019, SB 8 and SB 458 from 2021, and HB 3395 from 2023. Each of those laws set statewide standards for local zoning; this one adds more detail to those standards, informed by projects that were getting built in the first few years of these other laws. 

Separately, starting in 2027, the new bill will invalidate private bans on infill housing. Some property has deed restrictions or other built-in contracts that forbid future landowners from building anything other than a single home on site. In other cases, homeowners’ associations impose similar rules on their members. HB 2001 had voided such restrictions from new contracts and HOAs; now, HB 2138 will invalidate such restrictions from past contracts and HOAs. Specifically, deed restrictions won’t be able to ban duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, cottage clusters, or accessory dwellings; and HOAs will no longer be able to ban housing of any type as long as it’s consistent with public zoning. It’s plausible that this provision might be vulnerable to a constitutional challenge, though California passed a similar law, under its own state constitution, in 2019. 

Another notable thing in HB 2138: it orders the state land use agency to define, but not to mandate, a “model” schedule of development fees. These so-called “system development charges” are an important part of infrastructure funding but can be a particular barrier to smaller and less expensive homes. A state-defined fee schedule would be able to set lower fees for smaller homes, and since such fee schedules typically require costly studies to justify, cities might find it appealing to voluntarily adopt the state’s version. 

This is part of a sequence of laws and rules shifting zoning powers to the state 

Let’s step back and look at Oregon’s recent trajectory: 

• In 2017, Oregon legalized ADUs on almost all urban lots and required cities to use only “clear and objective” standards when reviewing almost all new homes (SB 1051) 

• In 2019, Oregon became the first state to legalize fourplexes and cottage clusters on almost all urban lots. (HB 2001) 

• In 2021, Oregon created statewide density bonuses for affordable housing projects (SB 8) and allowed newly built duplexes, fourplexes, and cottages to be sold to individual homeowners using fee-simple lot splits. (SB 458) 

• In 2022, Oregon all but required cities within larger metro areas to end mandatory car parking, and required such cities outside the Portland metro to designate “climate-friendly areas” that allow up to four stories of housing. (Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities rules) 

• In 2023, Oregon’s legislature rejected a proposal to repeal the new climate rules (HB 2659), required all residential and mixed-use zones to allow SROs in some form (HB 3395), and gave the state authority to override zoning and other housing policies in cities underperforming their housing production targets (HB 2001). 

• In 2024, Oregon ordered up a set of statewide model codes for various housing types, from detached homes to mid-rise apartment buildings (SB 1564), and created a new office to enforce state housing laws. (SB 1537) 

This summer, in addition to the two new bills described earlier in this article, Oregon has released draft proposals for how cities can comply with 2023’s HB 2001 (see pages 30-32 of this memo) and a draft set of model codes for 2024’s HB 1564 that would, for any multifamily zones they apply to, fully legalize three-story apartment and condo buildings. (See pages 45-48 of this draft.) Under the model code, projects meeting affordability and/or accessibility standards could go to four stories or more. 

If the state follows through by explicitly requiring cities to meet the standards set by the model codes, it will all add up to a revolution in Oregon’s urban land use. The benefits wouldn’t arrive immediately; it takes time for private companies to figure out how to use new zoning, time for buildings to be built, and then a few more years for those buildings to affect market prices. 

But over time, if localities implement the laws well and complement them with their own efforts, the benefits to Oregon would be profound. 

That’s exactly what Kotek called for in 2022, when the then-candidate for governor told a housing conference that Oregonians’ urgent desire to reduce homelessness was a chance to make long-term, structural changes that not only make homelessness less visible but also lower home prices: 

People are going to be like “I just want to have the tent off my sidewalk.” Well, that is a bigger conversation than about just a shelter. That is a conversation about supply; that is a conversation about housing options; that is a conversation about income and wealth inequality. I’m an optimistic sort. Right now, the timing is right to say “I have a solution that’s not just a short-term one but a long-term one.” 

Oregon is following good examples from other places 

Oregon hasn’t gone quite as far as its Cascadian neighbors Washington and British Columbia to directly change local zoning with legislation, and its laws have been less sophisticated than the fine-grained sandstorm of pro-housing bills that has been systematically sweeping away California’s countless restrictions on building homes.  

But thanks largely to its 50-year history of state oversight over land use, Oregon has probably done more than any other US state to systematically shift zoning powers from the local to the state level.  

As it does so, Oregon is following the successful habits of more distant governments. Most notable, maybe, is Japan, where even fast-growing Tokyo has been able to keep home prices stable thanks to some of the fastest homebuilding among the world’s rich countries. Among Japan’s various oddities: its local governments sort their land use into just 12 nationally-defined zones, much like Oregon’s new model codes could.  

Then there’s Australia’s booming state of New South Wales, whose program of “state significant projects” essentially creates an alternative state-level path for land use approval, similar to Oregon’s new HB 2258. Gabriel Metcalf, former CEO of the think tank Committee for Sydney, said this path has accounted for about 75 percent of new homes in Greater Sydney in this century.  

Or take Auckland, New Zealand, where rents have plummeted amid a building boom that began with a broad local and, subsequently, national legalization of multifamily housing that resembles both of Oregon’s House Bills 2001 (2019 and 2023).  

Oregon’s actions are still new or recent, and there’s no guarantee that even with time they’ll lead to outcomes like Tokyo’s or Auckland’s. Some factors are beyond any state’s control, like inflation-driven interest rates and tariff-inflated materials costs. 

But as of mid-2025, one thing is clear: Oregon has picked a strategy to fix its housing shortage and is relentlessly pursuing it. 

The post Oregon Decides It Was a Mistake to Let Cities Ban Homes appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Takeaways

• In municipal elections across British Columbia, voters are stuck using bloc voting or ward voting, methods that can overrepresent one party or ideology at the expense of all others. 
• If not for a few lines of provincial law, local governments could adopt single transferable vote, a gold-standard form of proportional representation. 
• A simple majority in the Legislative Assembly is all it would take to pass amendments giving cities, villages, towns, and districts the ability to upgrade their elections.

You made it! The last contestant standing on an old-school game show. “Behind Door Number One,” your charming host reveals, “a pile of rocks!” Behind Door Two, he grins, “a slightly larger pile of rocks!” And, gesturing to the last door with a glimmer of gold pouring out from beneath, “or will our lucky winner pick the million-dollar mystery prize?” It’s a no-brainer. But as you reach for the knob, the host grabs your wrist. “What are you doing?” he hisses. “You’re only allowed to pick between the first two doors!” 

Hardly seems fair, does it? But municipalities in British Columbia get the same treatment when it comes to their local governments. The province strong-arms cities, towns, villages, and districts into using bloc voting to elect their councils, a poor fit for representation in local elections. Ward (or “district”) voting, the only current alternative, appears a bit more generous but has its own weighty problems: spoiled elections and two-party dominance. 

This year, as a special provincial committee studies election reform, might it finally come to pass that local governments get a glimpse behind that third door? Gold-standard elections, using the new best-in-class model now operational in Portland, Oregon, are so close to being in reach: only a few lines of provincial law stand between municipal governments and better representation. 

Local councils: Caught between a bloc and a ward place 

British Columbia’s standing election laws simply don’t give local councils a fair shot at better elections. Bloc voting and ward voting—the only two choices municipalities are allowed—are hardly ideal for representing voters.  

Bloc voting: Multiple winners, lopsided rules 

Also known as plurality at-large voting, bloc voting is BC’s default voting method for local councils.¹ If 10 seats on the body are up for a bloc vote election, voters get to pick 10 candidates. The 10 winners are the ones with the most votes. 

The problem? In partisan contests, bloc voting often means the most popular party will win outsized representation on the council. Take the Vancouver City Council election of 1996, for example. The Non-Partisan Association (a center-right party, despite the name) won slightly more than 50 percent of the total vote… but took 100 percent of the seats.

By contrast, if voters had the same preferences under a proportional model, the Non-Partisan Association likely would have wound up with half of the seats, roughly equal to their vote share. Other parties—including the Coalition of Progressive Electors, Vancouver Organized Independent Civic Electors, and others—would have split the remaining five seats, giving their communities a voice in local government.  

With turnout perpetually low in BC municipal elections, it’s not out of the question that an extreme faction could seize control of most or all seats in a single election. As authors for Fair Vote Canada wrote in 2022, the winner-takes-all nature of council elections causes sudden and extreme policy swings, which can be expensive for taxpayers and create uncertainty for the individuals, communities, and businesses that local policies impact. 

BC offers local governments only one alternative to bloc voting, which might provide slightly more accurate representation on a council but creates headaches of its own. 

One-winner wards: Geographically accurate, but far from fair 

Municipalities also have the option to elect councillors partially or entirely in districts, also known as wards.² Wards that elect a single councillor operate under simple plurality rules (most votes wins), while multi-winner wards must use bloc voting. So far, only the District of Lake Country has adopted wards, but larger cities—including Burnaby, Surrey, and Vancouver—have debated or proposed converting to ward voting.  

While wards guarantee geographic areas will have representation on a council, they create concerns for fairness and representation. First off, if wards split neighborhoods or communities between districts, those communities might not win representation at all, so local governments must take precautions to draw maps impartially and fairly.³ (The act of drawing district lines for political gain, or partisan gerrymandering, is a pervasive problem in the United States.)  

Candidates and parties in one-winner wards might also split a base of voters and send a candidate to the council with a plurality (less than 50 percent) of the vote. The same is true of other one-winner elections, like the Vancouver mayoral election of 2018, in which 71 percent of voters cast ballots for someone other than the ultimate winner.

As BC voters witnessed in 2024, vote splitting is also a frequent concern in hotly contested, district-based legislative assembly elections. Look to divided results in the ridings of Columbia River-Revelstoke, Richmond-Stevenson, and West Vancouver-Capilano for just a handful of cases where the winner didn’t reflect the preferences of most voters.  

Viewer discretion advised: US districts as a warning against ward voting 

District-based winner-take-all elections are a primary source of polarization and dysfunction in the United States. Voters feel they have little choice but to pick between Democrats or Republicans to avoid “spoiling” a contest, cementing two-party dominance. That doesn’t stop activists from surreptitiously boosting minor parties, sneakily siphoning votes away from one major party to the advantage of the other. What’s more, amid a widespread housing shortage and resulting high home prices and rents, it’s noteworthy that US cities that switched to single-winner wards saw their housing shortages worsen, rather than get better.  

Though BC and several of its cities have a rich history of multi-party elections, similar issues could plague municipalities that switch to one-winner wards, even in nonpartisan contests. If local governments seek better representation, consider single-member wards in the US experience a case of “If I were going there, I wouldn’t start from here.” 

In short, wards with one winner could easily divide voters and misrepresent their interests, with other unwanted side effects. And wards with more than one winner would just use bloc voting, which isn’t any better for representation.  

So what’s the answer? For $200: “This electoral method gives all groups their fair share of seats on a government body.” 

Thanks to Al Johnson for supporting a sustainable Cascadia.

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What is proportional representation, Alex? 

Proportional representation defines multi-seat elections in which, if half of aligned voters support a party, that party will win about half of the seats up for grabs—not zero, as can be the case under bloc or ward voting.  

The concept should be familiar to British Columbians, who weighed in on provincial-level proportional methods in 2005, 2009, and 2018. Unfortunately, despite drawing more than majority support in 2005 and featuring homegrown models on the ballot in 2018, proportional representation never took off at the provincial level.  

However, well before BC’s constrictive local bloc voting policy, the Assembly let cities use a proven, stable, and proportional method: single transferable vote. It’s the model of choice in Ireland, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and (most recently) Portland, Oregon, where it’s produced promising results for representation and public opinion.  

How does single transferable vote work?  

In a single transferable vote election, voters rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third, and so on. Once a candidate hits a threshold of support (which depends on how many seats there are to fill), they win a spot on the council, and extra votes they receive beyond the threshold transfer to voters’ next choices. If no one meets the quota right away, officials eliminate the candidate with the fewest votes, and those votes “transfer” to other candidates based on voters’ next preferences.

How single transferable vote works in Portland, Oregon.

The cycle continues until all seats are filled. The result? Fewer wasted votes, an incentive for candidates to campaign on shared values instead of divisions, and a council that mirrors a community’s diversity far better than bloc or ward voting ever could.  

More rewarding wards under single transferable vote 

Municipalities can use single transferable vote for a full council all at once, but multi-member wards become quite valuable in proportional elections, particularly for large cities. Just like single-winner wards, they guarantee geographic representation on the council, just with none of the winner-takes-all downsides: it’s much harder for partisans to game the system when voters win representation proportionally. But that’s not all! Wards allow candidates to focus on their neighborhoods and give voters a more focused ballot—no need to pick between all 50 or more candidates citywide. 

In Portland’s case, before single transferable vote, commissioners from just a handful of neighborhoods dominated the city’s governing body. But after its first proportional contest, all four corners of the city (now multi-winner wards) gained representation for the first time in over a century. While a similar outcome would have been possible (maybe even likely) in a city-wide proportional election, wards guarantee that residents within their boundaries will have a few contacts close to home on the council.   

And the proportional nature of the election also increased diversity on Portland’s governing body: members come from different neighborhoods and vary in race and age. Voters elected a mix of homeowners and renters, political veterans and relative newcomers. And survey says: more residents are starting to feel they finally have someone speaking for them on the council. 

Sounds great. So what’s the holdup? 

For decades, one section of the Local Government Act (and the Municipal Act before it) has stood in the way of BC municipalities choosing better elections. And while Vancouver has its own separate provincial charter that doesn’t mention bloc voting, legal experts concluded years ago that the province’s largest city can’t adopt proportional representation under current rules.⁴

In either case, it would take only a majority of MLAs in favor of passing a law to free up municipalities to upgrade their council elections. But what might be the first step? 

Start with giving Vancouver what it’s been asking for 

Like any successful quiz show contestant, Vancouver has done its research and has the answer at the ready. Commissions studying election reform in 2004 and 2016–2017 both explicitly recommended that the city council ask the Legislative Assembly to change the Vancouver charter and allow it to adopt proportional representation. The council made a formal request in 2005—to no response.  

Years later, representation problems in Vancouver are still a concern. The legislative assembly could add a provision to the Vancouver charter finally allowing the city to follow through on reform commission reports and kick off a plan to move to proportional representation, perhaps in consultation with Elections BC or, as with wards, with the approval of the lieutenant governor.  

Vancouver could be a test screening to see how proportional representation plays for a modern, BC-specific audience. It could give election officials a chance to see how voters react to new rules and to learn what their needs may be if or when proportional representation expands to cities, or even to the province—all while addressing problems with the current bloc vote model.  

For pro-reform MLAs, greenlighting a Vancouver pilot could be a low-stakes way to quell any concerns among their colleagues that a proportional model might disadvantage parties or cause uncooperative governance. And if single transferable vote were to prove successful in Vancouver, it could get picked up in other markets. 

Coming up next: More choices across the province 

Vancouver isn’t the only place that could benefit from an election upgrade. In 2022, for example, Surrey saw one party win 50 percent of council seats with only 25 percent of the vote. Fair Vote Canada has made the case that virtually all BC cities to some degree suffer from the bloc vote method and could be improved with single transferable vote.  

With a “local options” law, the Legislative Assembly could provide guidelines and guardrails for using proportional representation, much as it did with the law authorizing ward voting. No city would have to adopt a new model, but those seeking a proportional upgrade would be free to do so with support from the province.  

As for the degree of detail a local options law would require, the approach could vary. Oregon, for example, explicitly allows for proportional representation in a single paragraph in its constitution, making it unique among US states. The provision isn’t overly prescriptive but contains safeguards to ensure fairness in proportional contests.  

For the last few legislative sessions, pro-reform Washington State legislators have pitched a more hands-on approach. The Washington VOICES Act would make local reform possible and outline detailed practices that municipalities looking to adopt ranked choice voting or single transferable vote would have to follow. As the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform deliberates over its final answers this summer and fall, members might weigh how specific reform-enabling legislation would have to be.  

In any case, it doesn’t take a trivia show savant to see that BC’s local governments can do better than bloc and ward voting, the only two options the province has on offer. The former produces single-party sweeps and dizzying policy swings, while the latter splits voters and drives political gamesmanship. It’s time to stop stalling for time and let municipalities walk home with the real prize: fair, proportional representation with single transferable vote.

The post British Columbians Could Enjoy Better City Elections appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Takeaways

• Candidates across the political spectrum have used and appreciated the benefits that democracy vouchers offer, and vouchers haven’t privileged one political camp over another.  
• Democracy vouchers primarily benefit one major stakeholder: the people of Seattle.  
• Seattle voters have the chance to renew this effective, cross-political program on the August 5, 2025, primary ballot.

Pop quiz: What do Bruce Harrell and Lorena Gonzalez have in common? Hint: It’s something they also share with both Tammy Morales and Tanya Woo, as well as Ann Davison and Nichole Thomas-Kennedy, Cathy Moore and ChrisTiana ObeySumner, Dan Strauss and Heidi Wills, and many others besides. 

These candidates are mostly on opposite sides of Seattle’s political spectrum. Each pair of competitors comprises one Seattle Times editorially endorsed candidate and one from the Stranger.  

So what’s the common denominator? Democracy vouchers.  

All these candidates (plus many more) took part in the city’s innovative Democracy Voucher Program when they ran for office. Of the 42 eligible city candidates (for mayor, city council, or city attorney) who made it to the general election between 2017 and 2023, all but five used the program.¹

Only two non-democracy voucher candidates have won office over those years, and they also don’t share a lot of overlapping political space: Sara Nelson, the council’s current pro-business, anti-tax president, and prior socialist firebrand councilmember Kshama Sawant. Both Nelson and Sawant have expressed support for the program, though, and have offered varied reasons for not participating (for Nelson, concerns about doorknocking during COVID and other logistics; for Sawant, that opposing corporate PAC funds would swamp what she’d be allowed to spend as a democracy voucher candidate).  

What does this mean for Seattle politics? Democracy vouchers are position-neutral, good for all kinds of candidates, and especially powerful for the voters of Seattle.  

Seattle voters have a chance to renew this popular, fruitful, and inexpensive program on the ballot this August. In the words of Council President Nelson, it’s an “investment in democracy, the currency of your voice.”  

A bonus for candidates and voters of all leanings 

Seattle’s elections are nonpartisan, so they don’t exhibit the same type of partisan polarization that threatens to overwhelm current state and US federal elections. But the city still has political sides—moderate vs. progressive, centrist vs. lefty, preservationist vs. YIMBY.  

Endorsements from the city’s leading media outlets are a decent proxy for these lines of competition in Seattle politics. On one end is the Seattle Times, the city’s moderate, largest news source. On the other side is the Stranger, Seattle’s irreverent and unapologetically progressive alternative paper.  

The Seattle Times and the Stranger have only endorsed the same general election candidate in one city race since 2017 (plus one other contest where the Seattle Times didn’t choose a candidate).² Every other time, they’ve supported opposite sides of the local political options. Politicos might wonder, then, whether a program like democracy vouchers benefits one side more than another.  

The answer: nope.  

Those political distinctions melt away when examining who has benefited from democracy vouchers. Seattle Times-endorsed candidates have won using the program; Stranger-endorsed candidates have won using the program. And the two candidates who gained office without the program are from opposite political camps. What’s more, vouchers fund a similar portion of candidates’ campaigns, making up 32 to 88 percent of contributions to Seattle Times candidates and 35 to 88 percent of contributions to Stranger candidates.  

In 2023, all general election candidates used democracy vouchers. Mayor Bruce Harrell and councilmembers Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, and Bob Kettle all won with Seattle Times backing; Tammy Morales and Dan Strauss with a Stranger endorsement. In prior years the breakdown was inverted, and more Stranger-endorsed candidates have won; but they and their competitors have almost always also taken part in the voucher program. Even Ann Davison, who won election as Seattle’s city attorney in 2021 while identifying as a Republican, used the program.  

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The real winner: Seattle residents 

Instead of advantaging one political group over another, the program has benefited a more important stakeholder: Seattle residents. Vouchers have helped everyday city residents get more say in who has a chance at winning, while letting candidates of all stripes better connect with voters.  

Central District voter Gina Owens told the Seattle Times in 2017 that with democracy vouchers, “It feels like I’m more a part of the system. People like me can contribute in ways that we never have before. We can participate in ways that Big Money always has.” Some voters are surprised to be approached by candidates, like 77-year-old Hoa Chau (through an interpreter): “Because I’m old and I’m very poor, I don’t have any money.”  

In 2019, one group of voters who gathered regularly to discuss politics took the voucher program as an additional incentive to swap ideas on which candidate best aligned with their political views: “We’re interested in people to the left but probably not as far to the left as Councilmember Sawant,” according to group organizer Ron Posthuma. Another group member, Columbia City resident Donna Stringer, said that her “democratic intelligence has increased considerably” as a result.  

More recently, Seattle resident Gabi Muna testified:

As a student with little disposable income, this program is essential. Democracy vouchers let me make my first ever contribution to a political campaign. I grew up thinking that political donations were only for the wealthy and that politics was a game of big money. But democracy vouchers have changed that. They pushed me to engage with local politics and pay more attention to the down-ballot races because it finally felt like I had a buy-in. Democracy vouchers empower young people like me, the future of our city, to participate in our democracy when often we feel like our voices aren’t heard. 

Seattle electeds of all politics agree: Democracy vouchers are a powerful benefit 

Candidates-turned-officeholders echo a similar appreciation. In council hearings and committee votes to send the renewal measure to the ballot, almost all Seattle councilmembers weighed in multiple times to share the value they see in the program. The renewal legislation sailed through council without opposition from any political camp.  

Mayor Bruce Harrell, who transmitted to council the legislation to put renewal on the ballot, said of them: “Democracy vouchers have allowed more people to participate in campaign financing in our city, making the political process more accessible and inclusive. Renewing this program shows Seattle’s commitment to ensuring that all voices—regardless of income or background—can help shape the future of our city.”  

Other Seattle Times-endorsed officeholders made similar points. Councilmember Bob Kettle, who championed the legislation in council, lauded the program and its goals:

We should be looking to encourage participation and civic engagement. We should be looking to encourage outreach by those seeking elections, and we should be looking to encourage dialogue that can aid understanding of the challenges we face and the policies that can address those challenges… the democracy voucher program allows Seattle to show leadership, when leadership and upholding democracy is so wanting across America.

Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth added that she “fully super wholeheartedly support[s] this [program].” She noted how “it offers regular everyday people to be able to run for office. Not just people who are seeking a political career but actually at the hyper local, where it affects people the most.” Councilmember Cathy Moore similarly declared that she is “a huge supporter of the Democracy Voucher Program… I think it does truly achieve the goals it sets out to achieve.” 

Council President Sara Nelson, the only sitting councilmember who did not use the program, also agreed—not only through words but in her actions to sponsor the legislation and shepherd it through her committee and the full council. At the final vote, she expressed that, “I fully support this program and what it represents: it represents people putting their values before money, and you are enabling the people to do the same thing.”  

The sitting Stranger-endorsed councilors shared the enthusiasm. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck was “so excited to vote on [democracy vouchers]” as “another example of Seattle being a true leader in defending democracy.” Councilmember Dan Strauss emphasized that “democracy vouchers bring democracy into every person’s home… that means candidates don’t have to be tied to special interests to win; they can just talk to everyday people.”  

Strauss shared how the program allowed him to choose to 

knock on everyday Seattleites’ doors, rather than spending time on the phone calling political donors for what is commonly known as call time. The simple impact that this program has to influence candidates to prioritize being at people’s doorsteps rather than the phone is a really big deal, and this is how it increases civic participation and empowers voters to be able to have the conversation with the candidates.

Their testimonies validate not only the power of the program but also its ability to garner support across whatever partisan lines Seattle exhibits. Democracy vouchers are popular with candidates and residents alike. Rather than privileging one political camp or another, vouchers advantage everyday Seattleites of all persuasions.  

Seattle voters have the chance to renew this effective, cross-political program on the August 5, 2025, primary ballot.

The post Seattle’s Democracy Vouchers Are Popular Across the Political Spectrum appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Takeaways

• Cascade voting (also known as block preferential or multi-pass voting) might sound like a harmless tweak to ranked choice elections, but it can produce dramatically unfair results.  
• Jurisdictions that used cascade voting in Australia, Maine, and Utah abandoned it in short order.  
• Portland-style single transferable vote is a far more accurate form of multi-winner ranked choice voting.  

There’s a reason most experience the thrill of whitewater rafting with a seasoned guide. Rivers have forks, twists, and turns, and it helps to have someone along who can navigate them. In a tumultuous time for politics in the United States, leading election reform in a place like Juneau, Alaska, can feel much the same: it’s exhilarating to be out front leading a movement, but there are certain routes you must know not to take—lest you find yourself stuck in a hole or plunging off a cliff. 

The Juneau Assembly recently shoved off on a quest to bring ranked choice voting to local elections. For one-winner races like picking a mayor or single assembly member, Juneau is sailing smoothly toward a tried-and-tested model that gives voters real choices and encourages candidates to work together. For multi-winner contests, though, which include those for school board and the occasional two-person assembly race, the Assembly has steered toward a little-known variation: cascade voting, which can be as precipitous as its name implies. 

The cascade method might look from a distance to be a shortcut to the ultimate destination: fairer, more representative elections. But Australians, Mainers, and Utahns have explored the same passage and capsized or hastily reversed course, a sign of treacherous waters ahead. Luckily for Juneau, a better route is just a few paddle strokes away: single transferable vote, also known as proportional ranked choice voting, offers a safe and charted path forward.  

Wait, what is cascade voting and what’s wrong with it? 

Cascade voting (also known as “block preferential” or “multi-pass” voting) looks like ranked choice voting. It sounds like ranked choice voting. But instead of driving better governance and incentivizing more positive campaigns like ranked choice voting, the cascade method can distort election outcomes. Voters outside the mainstream can find their voices locked out of governing entirely. And in some cases, even candidates with majority support can lose their seats.  

On the surface, cascade voting appears to be little more than a version of ranked choice voting that elects multiple candidates (like three people to fill open seats on a local school board) rather than just one (like a legislator or mayor). Just as in a regular ranked contest, voters select candidates in order of preference. Once votes are in, officials eliminate the worst performers and transfer their votes to voters’ next choices until someone wins a majority.  

But it’s after the first winner that the cascade model veers off course. To determine the winner of the second seat, election administrators count all the ballots again, ignoring rankings for the winner. Simply put, so long as they ranked their ballots, voters who elected the first-round winner get just as much weight in choosing the runner-up. The process repeats until there are enough winners to fill all of the seats up for election on the body in question. 

While it may seem like a simple procedural tweak to accommodate multi-winner contests, cascade voting can have disastrous consequences for representation. Since the same voters get to elect multiple candidates, votes tend to “trickle up” to candidates who are most like the initial winner. Take Australia, for example, which once used the cascade model for its senate. It almost always produced single-party delegation sweeps, overrepresenting the most popular party with no representation for anyone else.  

At the local level, things got even worse. In Australian cities, minority parties figured out how to manipulate the process and prevent those in the majority from winning at all. It’s no wonder, then, that one contemporary reformer called it a “blockhead system.” In 1948, the country phased out cascade voting. 

Closer to home, few, if any, would recommend following the Cascade route. For example, in Utah, the city councils of both Payson and Vineyard opted out of cascade voting in 2025 after adopting it on a trial basis six years earlier. And while Portland, Maine, used the cascade model as a one-time stopgap to elect a charter commission, residents overwhelmingly approved a fairer replacement the following year.   

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Better elections await Juneau, Alaska—with a dilemma in the details 

In 2024, residents of Juneau, Alaska, poured out in droves to save the state’s model ranked choice voting law. Voters at the capital’s doorstep saw firsthand how ranked choice voting encouraged broader governing coalitions to work together. So perhaps it was only natural that the Juneau Assembly kicked off its own venture to bring ranked choice voting home in March of 2025.  

The Alaska constitution, state statutes, and Juneau’s own charter give the assembly the power to determine procedures for local elections via ordinance. And to be clear, for mayoral contests and most assembly races, the familiar Alaska model of ranked choice voting is a natural and positive fit, just as it has been in statewide general elections for governor or state legislature.  

But, as the city’s legal department wrote in its initial review, a key detail needs ironing out. Ranked choice voting is designed to pick a single winner with majority support. The Assembly would have to find another option for elections with more than one winner, which occur every October when two or three school board seats are on the ballot. And on rare occasions, contests for the Assembly itself also have multiple winners.¹

Juneau’s current method for addressing multi-winner elections is bloc voting, a less-than-ideal model that can overrepresent majority opinions on government bodies while denying others a seat at the table. In partisan elections, this often means one party wins all the seats. 

But cascade voting, which is among the options from which assembly members could choose for multi-winner contests, isn’t any better. In fact, if history’s any indication, it could be even worse. So where might the Assembly aim its sights instead? 

Navigating around the cascades with single transferable vote 

A charter commission in Portland, Maine, once found itself facing a quandary similar to Juneau’s. The city had already adopted ranked choice voting, but didn’t have a permanent solution for what to do when multiple seats from one body came up for a vote at the same time.  

Ultimately, the commission recommended single transferable vote, also known as proportional ranked choice voting, which retains the benefits of single-winner ranked choice voting—majority support, reduced negativity, spoiler-proof elections—while ensuring fairer representation in multi-winner contests. The measure was successful, winning over 64 percent of voters in the 2022 election, and became city law. (If the Portland, Maine, story conjures up a sense of déjà vu, it’s probably because Portland, Oregon, recently started using the same model. It’s been going very well.) 

Instead of picking the top finishers one by one (as with cascade voting), winners in single transferable vote elections must cross a threshold of support. In simple terms, it means that in a three-seat contest, if about a third of aligned voters support a particular individual, that candidate is likely to win one of the seats—not zero, as can happen under cascade or bloc voting. 

While it’s slightly more complex on the back end, administrators have implemented single transferable vote without issue, and cities have created resources to help voters understand the process. Voters in cities that use this proportional model get a wide variety of choices and win more accurate representation.  

For Juneau voters specifically, who are already acquainted with Alaska’s ranked elections, single transferable vote would require little additional explanation. Voters would simply rank their candidates just as they would in any single-winner ranked election. Juneau already has the necessary infrastructure in place to implement single transferable vote for its school board and the rare two-person assembly race, and the city could uplift educational materials to ensure the experience is smooth sailing.  

Across Cascadia, where it’s an option, adopting single-winner ranked choice voting is undeniably a safe and charted path forward. But in the cases of multi-winner elections, like some school board, council, or assembly contests, history indicates that cascade voting could drop representation into troubled waters. Advocates in Juneau and elsewhere could instead build on the positives of ranked choice voting and navigate toward single transferable vote, which aligns with the north star of election reform—giving all voters a fair shot at a voice in local government. 

The post For Juneau, There’s a Better Way than Cascade Voting appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Takeaways

• At half of one-tenth of a percent (or 0.053 percent) of the city’s 2025 budget, the democracy voucher renewal levy is a bargain deal. 
• The program has changed the ecosystem of campaigning in Seattle, transforming democracy even when funded by “budget dust.” 
• For the median homeowner, the levy will cost just $13 per year—about $4 more than the current program funding rate. 

With a miniscule portion of the city’s budget, democracy vouchers deliver a whopping impact. 

The program’s funding is up for renewal this August, and it’s a great deal. The renewal budget, $4.5 million per year in property taxes, is just 0.053 percent of the city’s $8.5 billion 2025 budget. Renewal is an even smaller proportion of the budget than the original 2015 levy (which you also needed a magnifying glass to see). 

That’s a pretty amazing price for the program’s benefits. I’ve already covered how democracy vouchers 

• empower tens of thousands more residents to support local candidates they believe in; 

• cultivate a more representative donor pool; 

• reduce the flow of out-of-state and big-dollar donations; and 

• encourage more diverse candidates to run, connect with voters, and win office. 

It’s delivering real bang for the buck. The democracy voucher renewal cost can still be referred to as “budget dust,” as was the original 2015 levy. What’s more, that miniscule proportion of the total budget will continue to shrink as the city’s budget grows (which it’s done every year) and the levy rate stays constant. Over the course of its first nine years, the $3 million democracy voucher levy compressed from an already-tiny 0.059 percent of the 2016 city budget to 0.038 percent in 2024. 

The Democracy Voucher Program is at least as worthwhile as many other similarly priced items in the city’s 2025 budget. Among them, 

• three months of public golf course maintenance and programs; 

• half of the annual funds for technology investments in construction and inspections; 

• fewer than three weeks of park maintenance; 

• eight weeks of debt service payments; and 

• four months of benefits management for retired employees. 

What does the levy mean for individual property owners? The tax rate in the proposition is $2.27 per $1,000 of assessed value in the first year, representing an additional tax rate of $0.015 per $1,000 from the existing funding rate. That comes to about $13.07 per year for a median-priced house, according to the SEEC—about a $4 per year increase, or even less when accounting for inflation. 

In other words, for an annual household cost less than the price of a single movie ticket, Seattleites can continue to reshape a fundamental part of their democracy. 

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Thoughtful budgeting for an effective program 

In 2015 the Honest Elections campaign set the program funding levy at $3 million per year. That turned out to be a pretty good estimate of what it would take to launch and run democracy vouchers for Seattle, and it’s kept the program solvent for its first ten years. Spending fluctuates year to year, of course (Seattle’s elections are in odd-numbered years, so that’s when the bulk of the costs come through), and unused funds from one year roll over to support costs in the next. 

Administrators at the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC), the entity that runs the program, estimated what it will take to fund another decade of democracy vouchers and determined that the program needs a slight increase from the past rate to keep going.¹ With years of data behind them, they could better guess how to account for differing numbers of candidates and residents using the program. 

It’s true that a lot of Seattleites still don’t use their vouchers, letting them languish on a forgotten shelf. But neither the original program designers (including Sightline) nor the SEEC expect 100 percent of Seattle residents to hand in vouchers; total participation is neither the program’s success metric nor the budgeting baseline. They know that campaign finance reform is a tough nut to crack, and there will always be people who don’t engage politically in that way.  

Still, the current level of voucher dollars flowing in is impressive—enough to fund the bulk of participating candidates’ campaigns and place Seattle as having one of the top, if not the highest, contributor rates of all US cities. What’s more, most city candidates have opted into the program, just as the architects of the program hoped, which is a boon for transparency and for limiting big donor dominance. 

In short, the data shows that it’s a tiny budget item with outsized impact: democracy vouchers power more participation by “we the people” across Seattle—and all for a song.  

The post Democracy Vouchers Are a Bargain appeared first on Sightline Institute.

Takeaways

• New analysis shows that independent expenditures have increased in Seattle and other cities comparable to Seattle, whether or not they have public financing programs for local elections.  
• This data indicates that Seattle’s surge in independent spending is not an indictment of democracy vouchers, contrary to what critics often assert.  
• Instead, democracy vouchers have let more people run and compete with incumbents, in turn spurring more donations, both via vouchers and PACs. All while the program has also empowered thousands more Seattleites to participate in local campaigns and support candidates they believe in, delivering on the program’s promise in spades. 
• Seattle voters will decide whether to renew the program’s funding source this August primary election.

Critics of Seattle’s democracy vouchers often point to one trend as evidence of the program’s fallibility: a rise in local “independent expenditures”—that is, dark money campaign funding vehicles like super PACs. Despite their upsides, critics say, vouchers have simply pushed millions of big-donor dollars from official campaigns into less transparent and accountable forms, rendering the program a waste of money. 

Sightline led the design of the Democracy Voucher Program and has promoted and studied it for more than a decade. So I wanted to check this accusation—and found it unwarranted. 

Independent expenditures are up in many cities across the United States, democracy vouchers or not. And preliminary academic analysis controlling for other factors confirms the program has had no effect on this kind of outside spending. 

Instead, Seattle’s experience shows that this innovative public financing model is delivering on its promise of more people-powered elections—even if US laws hamstring the city’s options for addressing every dark money dollar. 

Critique: Vouchers push special-interest spending out of public view 

From the inception of the program, opponents raised fears of spending from outside groups—special interests not affiliated with official campaigns. The 2015 opposition statement against I-122 (the ballot initiative that created the program), for example, suggested that it “[p]ushes more money into less accountable independent expenditures, which I-122 does nothing to limit or reform.” Recent news articles continue to reference the explosion of independent expenditures as the flip side of an otherwise markedly successful endeavor. 

It’s true that the city (and its voucher program) cannot limit this type of spending, although it can and has taken some steps to curtail or highlight certain offenders, such as banning foreign-influenced corporations from political spending and strengthening transparency and disclosure laws. Independent expenditures are dollars from interest groups that are explicitly prohibited from coordinating with candidate campaigns (hence the “independent” moniker). These entities can be political action committees (PACs), super PACs, or other “dark money” groups, which all have unlimited spending but different allowances on the funding they can accept.  

The US Supreme Court prohibited limitations on such spending as far back as Buckley v. Valeo in 1976. It then kicked the door wide open for corporate spending in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, giving wealthy individuals and groups carte blanche to sway elections. And research shows that these funds do influence at least some policies.  

It’s also true that independent expenditures have risen in Seattle in recent years. But that doesn’t mean they’ve grown because of the voucher program. 

Data: Independent spending has risen throughout the US 

To test the allegation that the voucher program pushed political dollars out of official campaigns and into the “dark money” arena, Sightline turned to the leading independent US scholar of the program, Professor Jennifer Heerwig of SUNY–Stony Brook. Her research casts doubt on the claim, showing that independent expenditures have increased in many cities in recent years—some much more dramatically than in Seattle.  

Independent expenditures, increasingly from ideological super PACs, have exploded in US politics over the past decade, including infiltrating local elections in the years directly following the 2010 Citizens United decision. Contributions to super PACs grew more than 30-fold from $40.1 million in 2012 to $1.3 billion in 2024, according to one report. According to another, spending doubled from 2020 to 2024 alone. Notably, these dollars are difficult to track, and reported figures likely underestimate the growth. 

Seattle and other nearby cities are not immune to this trend, nor is Seattle uniquely vulnerable to these outside campaigns. To study whether Seattle’s independent expenditures increase bore any connection with the city’s democracy vouchers, Professor Heerwig and researcher Anna Campbell collected data on independent expenditures in large California and Washington cities (see chart below). They found fluctuation in independent spending in each city’s mayoral races; but compared to Seattle, the cities of Oakland, San Diego, and Spokane showed similar or even starker increases in these independent expenditures in recent years.¹

These trends suggest that democracy vouchers did not themselves uniquely generate a new era of outside spending in Seattle elections. Instead, this trend prevails across the US and in other comparable cities in the western US. A separate and more limited study from Common Cause California similarly found that contribution limits on their own (which are also a component of the Democracy Voucher Program) do not increase independent expenditures. 

Heerwig followed up with a preliminary regression analysis, which supports this reading as well: “Conditional on being the kind of city that has independent expenditures in local races and controlling for the effect of competition, the Democracy Voucher Program does not seem to increase the level of independent expenditures,” she told Sightline.²

In other words, if you account for the other relevant factors (like competition) that affect outside spending, democracy vouchers did not cause any significant change. 

Nuance: The indirect effect of competition 

Accounting for the level of competition is particularly important to this analysis. Interest groups tend to spend more when elections are seen as more competitive, like in New York City’s many-candidate 2025 mayoral race or for consequential offices such as April 2025’s judicial race in Wisconsin.  

Or, say, in places where the keys to a competitive race are available to more candidates, which democracy vouchers have offered in Seattle. And it’s true: Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program has increased competition, with more candidates running and decreased incumbent vote margins. This finding corroborates prior studies that reached similar conclusions: public financing programs increase electoral competition. Most voters view this as a good thing: they get more real choices, and their support of a candidate they like matters to the outcome of the race. 

In short, that increased competition may have inadvertently led to an increase in independent expenditures, but it’s not a direct effect of money being pushed out of the public realm. 

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Takeaway: Democracy vouchers do tip the scales for healthier local elections 

Contrary to fears from critics, appropriate comparison data shows that vouchers have not pushed big dollars from candidates’ coffers into super PACs. 

While democracy vouchers haven’t seemed to influence the flow of independent expenditures up or down in Seattle, they have changed the ecosystem of local campaigning. They’ve enabled many thousands more Seattle residents to donate to city elections, encouraged candidates to reach out to more voters, and even increased voter turnout. Democracy vouchers have successfully curtailed big campaign donations from a select few wealthy donors in favor of many smaller donations from everyday people. This outreach means voters have other information sources besides a barrage of expensive ads, so independent spending might matter less. 

As the Democracy Voucher Program continues to shape the landscape of Seattle elections—this year and, if voters approve the levy renewal this August, for at least another ten years— independent expenditures are assumably sure to persist. But so too, hopefully, will the newly empowered voices of thousands more Seattleites using their democracy vouchers to propel candidates they believe in. 

Thanks to Dr. Jennifer Heerwig and Anna Campbell for their research and data analysis. 

Note on methodology for the Heerwig/Campbell analysis: The original sampling frame was the largest cities (by population) in California and Washington, excepting San Jose as it has not yet digitized its campaign finance records. Long Beach had no independent expenditures in its mayoral races, so it was not plotted. 

Everett, Fresno, Kent, Sacramento, Tacoma, and Vancouver all had much lower levels of spending per capita than Seattle and were not included in the primary comparison chart (view the full data and charts here). 

In Washington, data was downloaded from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC). In California, data was downloaded or requested from each city’s city clerk or campaign finance board. 

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Takeaways

• In March 2025, Washington state’s siting agency released a 1,083-page draft assessment of the potential environmental, economic, and other impacts of new large electric transmission lines in the state.  
• The good news is that the draft study found power line projects can have largely negligible, low, or possible-to-mitigate effects on the environment.   
• But the document misses the forest for the trees, omitting consideration of the environmental uber-issue, climate change. Plus, the agency failed to consult with most Tribes before it released the draft. 
• Washington state needs a smarter approach that reflects Tribal perspectives and paints a fuller, truer picture of how a robust electric grid would in fact help the environment, by making it possible to stop burning fossil fuels and protect communities and ecosystems from a warming world.  

In 2023, Washington state legislators attempted to make it easier to build long-distance power lines. Recognizing that more wires are essential to reaching 100 percent clean electricity—and that “transmission projects take a decade or more to develop and permit”—lawmakers directed a state agency to preemptively analyze the environmental impact of these projects.  

More specifically, legislators tasked the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) with preparing a so-called “programmatic environmental impact statement” (PEIS) for hypothetical large transmission lines.¹ The PEIS’s purpose is to evaluate possible environmental harms of transmission lines and identify ways to mitigate them before specific project proposals to facilitate more responsible and quicker project completion. Sightline supported the idea.   

Two years, 1,083 pages, 432 assessments…and zero climate evaluations later 

In March 2025, EFSEC dropped its draft assessment with a virtual thud. Spanning 1,083 pages, the PEIS catalogs dozens of possible impacts of transmission line projects, largely drawn from Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) rules. It is mind-bendingly comprehensive, assessing impacts ranging from the environmental (soil erosion and habitat loss) to the economic (changes in home value) to the faintly absurd (“Physical Hazard to Aerial Recreation Enthusiasts”).  

EFSEC analyzed 72 impacts across three project phases (construction, operations and maintenance, and upgrades and maintenance) for both overhead and underground lines. To save you the math, that’s 432 distinct assessments.  

But nowhere in its 1,083 pages does the PEIS analyze how transmission lines would affect the biggest environmental issue of our day: climate change.  

EFSEC isn’t entirely to blame. The legislature directed the agency to focus on “significant adverse environmental impacts” of electric transmission facilities. Climate change does not obviously fit into this definition. (Though arguably, neither does aerial recreation.) And to be fair, the document does explain, in a two-page Purpose & Needs section, that “existing constraints on transmission capacity within the state already present challenges in ensuring adequate and affordable supplies of clean electricity.”  

But by failing to assess how expanding the grid would reduce climate pollution, these 1,083 pages leave decisionmakers without the full picture they need to weigh the trade-offs of critical clean energy infrastructure.  

The good news: Power lines’ impacts can be mostly small and often avoidable 

Even though the draft PEIS only tells half the story, it does offer one clear takeaway: stringing up wires can be, by and large, not hugely environmentally harmful, and most harms can be mitigated through careful planning, site selection, and design.  

EFSEC rates each possible impact on a scale ranging from “nil” to “high.” It then offers mitigation techniques that the agency says would bring the impact determination to a “less than significant level.”  

Before even applying mitigation measures, roughly a third of the total 432 assessments received a rating of “low,” “nil,” “negligible,” or “not applicable.” Public health and safety, recreation, energy and natural resources, and earth (e.g., soil erosion or compaction) are most likely to fall into this category, indicated by the green dots on the chart below. (Aerial recreation enthusiasts will be happy to know that they, too, land in this group.)  

EFSEC also finds that, with smart design and siting choices, most remaining possible impacts could be negligible or low. Two-thirds of the assessments received a rating with an impact range that includes low, nil, or negligible (for example: “low to high,” or “negligible to moderate”), as indicated by the yellow dots below.   

The bad news: EFSEC did not consult Tribes  

Of the 432 assessments, just four received a rating of at least “moderate” before mitigation. All four concerned Tribal cultural resources.²

That tribal resources are the most likely to be affected by power lines makes another omission by EFSEC even more glaring than the climate one: the agency failed to consult with most Tribes before it released the draft PEIS.  

The legislature explicitly instructed EFSEC to “offer early and meaningful consultation with any affected federally recognized Indian tribe on the nonproject review…. The consultation is independent of, and in addition to, any public participation process required by state law, or by a state agency.”³

But according to the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fisheries Commission, EFSEC did not speak with them prior to publishing the draft PEIS.  

“The trend is minimal consultation,” Donald Williams, an enrolled member of the Umatilla Tribe and CEO of From the Light Consulting, a Tribal member-owned energy consulting firm, told Sightline. He wants Tribes consulted at the beginning, not the end of projects, so they can help shape decisions and, even better, benefit from the green energy transition.  

Tribes continue to bear the devastating consequences of the Pacific Northwest’s last big energy infrastructure build-out, with hydropower dams flooding burial grounds, displacing communities, and decimating fish populations, among other lasting harms. If the PEIS excludes tribal perspectives, it will prove useless in helping Washington develop transmission projects both swiftly and responsibly.  

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Washington can’t afford to miss the forest for the trees

In the near term, EFSEC could improve the PEIS, most obviously by immediately reaching out to consult Tribes. The agency could also revise the document to fully weigh the immense upsides of transmission lines against their modest downsides. And EFSEC could winnow the impacts it evaluates to just the “probable significant adverse environmental impacts” (as the legislature originally directed) to make it easier for Tribes and others to offer feedback.  

But ultimately, this process may reveal that the PEIS is no longer the right tool for making decisions about clean energy projects. Washington is racing toward its legal greenhouse gas emissions deadlines and is not on track to meet them. An approach that worked well for opposing fossil fuel development may now be inadvertently prolonging the lifespan of these same dirty projects, by delaying the clean energy infrastructure needed to supplant them.  

The Northwest needs a better approach, one that acknowledges the real trade-offs facing decisionmakers.  

Yes, wires could “create visual contrast with rural or community character,” but they could also help us to curb the oppressive wildfire smoke that has come to define Cascadia’s summers.  

Yes, power lines could disturb endangered species’ habitat, but they could also help avert the far greater threat that climate change poses to these species, including the Cascade red fox, the larch mountain salamander, and the Makah copper butterfly.  

Yes, construction could briefly disrupt local businesses’ day-to-day operations, but transmission lines could also address today’s energy affordability crisis by increasing access to cheap, renewable power.  

And so on. In other words, missing the climate change “forest” for the environmental impacts “trees.”  

As it stands, EFSEC’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement is a bit like evaluating whether to install a smoke detector based only the noise it makes and the drill holes required—ignoring that it very well could save your life.  

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Takeaways

• Thousands of duplex, triplex, fourplex, and cottage homes have been built in Oregon since its 2019 zoning reform took effect, but they’re unevenly distributed.  
• Oregon cities that saw relatively faster growth allowed homes to be either attached to or detached from each other; didn’t force them to be too small; and scaled development fees with building size. 
• Most middle housing that has been built is owner-occupied and is not accessible to people who can’t easily climb stairs. 
• House Bill 2138, a follow-up bill currently in Oregon’s legislature, would respond to all these issues. 

Update: HB 2138 passed Oregon’s legislature on June 26, opening the way to all the changes described in this article. Gov. Kotek expects to sign it into law within six weeks.

Almost six years after Oregon became the first state to re-legalize duplexes, fourplexes, and cottage clusters throughout urban areas, the effects have arrived. 

From Gresham to Grants Pass, permits are being pulled, roof beams are rising, and first-time homebuyers are signing their closing papers. Policymakers in Oregon and elsewhere, meanwhile, have their own opportunity: learning lessons. 

Oregon’s 2019 state-level reform to low-density zoning turned out to be the leading edge of a wave that has since rolled to California, Maine, Vermont, Arizona, Washington, and Montana, with various cities initiating similar reforms in their own right. But through it all, some sympathetic analysts have asked: Is this reform actually worth the trouble? Is the juice worth the squeeze? And if it is, which details do we need to worry about getting right? 

Well, the proof is in the permits. Oregon cities are now several years past the state’s deadline for legalizing so-called “middle housing.” And though it’s still too soon to say exactly how big a deal these smaller home options will prove to be over the long term, the data suggests they do have potential. Most notably, within three years of legalization in Portland, they accounted for 26 percent of new residential units approved there. 

Another lesson: The finer details of zoning reform definitely seem to matter. As Oregon lawmakers consider a new law, House Bill 2138, that would build on the state’s 2019 bill, here are some of the takeaways so far from the outcomes of the first one. 

1. Zoning reforms take time to pay off—but they can 

In a thoughtful 2024 law review article, housing advocate Brian Connolly succinctly named one of the key “structural roadblocks” to middle housing getting built: “the absence of a middle-housing building industry.” 

Connolly is right. You can’t build a business on something that’s illegal, and fourplexes have been illegal in most of North America for 70 years. Therefore, the middle-housing building industry is very small. 

The good news is that in Portland, entrepreneurs have been changing that. It just took them a few years. 

After a lackluster first year, production of newly legal homes in Portland quadrupled in years 2 and 3: 

The year 3 total of 400 new homes per year isn’t a lot in the context of a city with 300,000 homes. But, crucially, this rapid growth has been happening in Portland even in the face of a three percent population decline over four years and a huge slowdown in local apartment building. By year 3 after Portland’s reforms, those 400 homes actually accounted for 26 percent of all housing permits citywide. 

The main reason these homes are so popular even in a relatively cool market is probably that they have been able to come to market at much, much lower prices than homes on their own lots. The newly built middle housing homes average $300,000 less than single-detached houses: 

What does it mean that this previously obscure category of the housing market has been able to grow so quickly amid a homebuilding slump? At least two things: 

Lesson learned: Legalizing middle housing will not rapidly transform cities. But it can meaningfully boost housing production to create new price options for middle-class people. 

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2. Fourplex legalization has not paid off everywhere yet 

Building permit data reported to the state show that once House Bill 2001 legalized middle housing in much of Oregon, Portland wasn’t the only city to see it take off. Among the state’s larger cities, there have been two other standout performers: Eugene and Beaverton. 

Eugene issued 93 permits for townhouse, duplex, triplex, and fourplex homes in 2023, its first full year in which those options were allowed throughout low-density zones. That came to 11 percent of citywide housing permits, up from 3 percent in the pre-legalization years of 2018 through 2021. In Beaverton, middle housing went from less than 1 percent of permits in those earlier years to 6 percent in 2023. 

Various smaller cities saw jumps, too. In Keizer (population 39,152), those four middle housing types went from 9 percent to 42 percent of permits. In Troutdale (15,749), from 17 percent to 47 percent. In Lebanon (19,950), from 16 percent to 41 percent. 

However, that wasn’t the case everywhere. As The Oregonian reported in March (drawing on this data set and method Sightline developed for assessing the effects of HB 2001), many cities actually reported 2–4-plexes and townhome permits dropping as a share of total permits in the first calendar year after they complied with HB 2001. If we were to pull out of the statewide numbers the three largest cities that were strong performers, middle housing would have slightly declined as a share of total production: 

Huh? The bill legalized duplexes in 56 cities statewide! How could it have resulted in fewer duplexes? 

Almost certainly, part of the reason is that some cities allowed duplexes only to the bare minimum amount—for example, with tight restrictions on the size of new buildings or onerous mandates for the number of off-street parking spaces. Other cities, including Beaverton, Eugene, and Portland, voluntarily exceeded state requirements. 

Some of these trends, both upward and downward, are definitely just the result of random variation. That’s especially likely in small cities that may only see a few dozen new homes per year anyway. Another factor is that in almost all cities, the “after” period is very short. As we showed above, it wasn’t until the second full year of middle housing that Portland saw its big uptick in middle housing permits. 

Overall, across 45 affected cities in Oregon, middle housing permitting is up slightly since the bill took effect: from 8 percent of housing permits to 11 percent. But with so many cities showing declines, it’s hard to argue that Oregon’s middle housing legalization is working as intended yet. 

Lesson learned: Some Oregon cities are building much more middle housing than others, though the overall rate will probably pick up over time. 

3. The law shouldn’t require starter homes to be attached to each other 

OK, now let’s turn to solutions: What can Oregon learn from the Oregon cities where middle housing is getting built in larger numbers? 

Here’s one of the big ones: You shouldn’t have to tear up an existing building to insert new ones.  

“The majority of my clients have an existing house and are dividing off the back yard and building one to three more units,” said Carol Schirmer, a land use consultant in Eugene who regularly works with small-scale builders. 

That’s what Daniel Force is doing. The Eugene resident and former carpenter is now developing his first project, a duplex, with no need to demolish or knock down the perfectly good existing structure. 

“For the basic person who’s not a developer or builder, that’s the most approachable way to create housing,” he said. “There’s so many lots around here, too—where it was built in the ‘50s and the yard is as big as the footprint of the house and driveway.” 

Though Eugene and Beaverton are two of the many Oregon cities that make this option relatively simple, others—including Portland, Lake Oswego, Tigard, Wilsonville, Keizer, and Coos Bay—don’t. Their basic definitions of “duplex,” “triplex,” and/or “quadplex” require multiple homes on the same lot to be physically attached to each other—even though this requires costly work, and potentially demolition, for any existing structures. The lack of flexibility can even force projects to needlessly remove existing trees and driveways. 

In Portland, the problem is apparent from a close look at this map of recent infill projects. The city allows extra-small accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to be either freestanding structures or part of a larger structure. And it’s ADUs, not middle housing, that are being built in the backyards and side yards of the city’s pricey central neighborhoods.  

Larger middle housing, meanwhile, is required by the city to be attached, townhouse-style, and therefore involves demolition. It’s represented by orange triangles in this map, and has been restricted mostly to mid-price neighborhoods in the north and south: 

In Portland, cottage clusters offer an alternative to ADUs as a path to building homes that don’t share walls. As time has gone by, those have become increasingly popular among builders; by the first six months of 2024, cottages in clusters outnumbered attached homes in duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes for the first time. But cottage clusters have the opposite constraint: current state law bans them from being attached to each other, making them harder to fit on shared lots. 

HB 2138, Gov. Tina Kotek’s follow-up infill bill, would solve both of these problems at once by allowing all middle housing options to be either attached or detached, in any combination. 

Lesson learned: Letting small homes be either attached or detached preserves existing structures, saves money, and boosts homebuilding. 

4. The path to more midsize homes: Let buildings be larger 

Another thing that separates less productive zoning reforms from more productive ones: maximum building size allowances. 

The big difference between Minneapolis’s 2020 triplex legalization (107 homes from 2020 to mid-2023) and Portland’s 2021 fourplex legalization (823 homes from mid-2021 to mid-2024) wasn’t just the right to build that fourth unit. It was also that Portland allowed new triplex and fourplex buildings to be larger than Minneapolis did. 

Under Minneapolis’s rules, homes in a triplex on a standard lot could average no more than 833 square feet—barely enough for a second bedroom after you make room for the inevitable staircase. The same home in a new Portland triplex could be up to 40 percent larger. Add a fourth unit, and the new Portland building could be up to 60 percent larger. 

Because people are willing to pay more money for a larger home, that additional size made more Portland lots developable. And that additional indoor space allowed Portland fourplexes to hit a niche that nothing else in the market had previously been filling: two-bedroom homes with their own roofs, front porches, and modest yards. According to a city study, those projects have accounted for the vast majority of Portland’s low-density infill so far: 

In Eugene, building size is less tightly regulated. A 5,000-square-foot lot in its standard low-density zone allows up to four homes of up to 1,500 square feet each. Schirmer, the land use consultant there, said that’s more than most such projects bother to use. 

Eugene’s code includes a small size incentive for 2–4-home projects relative to one-home projects, but not nearly as much as the codes in Portland and Beaverton. Portland and Beaverton inserted steeply sliding size limits into their code in a deliberate attempt to steer builders toward projects with more, smaller homes. 

But Eugene’s experience shows that major size incentives may not be important, as long as the maximum building size is large enough. Since Eugene’s code reform, single-detached housing construction is down 73 percent there as a share of total homebuilding, essentially the same as Portland’s 75 percent drop and much larger than Beaverton’s 26 percent drop, even though Beaverton had, like Portland, deliberately tilted its code against one-unit projects. 

Ken Kinoshita, a Salem-based middle housing developer, said that as long as the maximum square footage on a site is large enough, developers’ incentive in relatively desirable areas is generally to create more homes rather than bigger homes. 

“If you have a 3,000-square-foot home and you’re adding 30 square feet, you don’t notice that,” Kinoshita said. “But if you have 830 and you turn that to 860, that might make the difference between a 1.5-bedroom unit to a true 2-bedroom unit.” 

Kinoshita is nearing completion of 20 fourplex homes in Northeast Portland. He said building size was so precious that out of a one-acre parcel, the project came within 15 or 20 square feet of the regulatory maximum in all 5 structures.  

That lesson about the importance of size is also embedded in HB 2138. The bill would give affordable and accessible housing a leg up by legalizing up to six homes on all fourplex lots if at least one home meets price or accessibility standards. But, crucially, the bill also offers “commensurate” increases to building size and footprint. 

Lesson learned: Don’t just legalize more homes in theory—allow buildings to be big enough for more homes to actually exist. 

5. Almost everything is being built for sale, not rental 

Some of Oregon’s new townhomes are technically condos, with some of the surrounding land (such as a front walkway or a garbage area) owned in common. Others are subdivisions, completely separated into a few private lots. But almost all of them are owner-occupied. 

One of the few exceptions is actually the building that may have been the very first in the state to have been legalized by HB 2001: a triplex at Southeast 75th and Burnside, in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood. 

Its developer and general contractor, Kim Wiebke, told me in a 2022 interview that in retrospect, maybe they should have built it for sale. She said her business partner and husband, Brian Wiebke, was spending too many hours schlepping around town to look after their scattered properties. 

“It doesn’t make sense here for him, who should be making 100 an hour because he’s such a good carpenter, to go and literally check on a mousetrap at somebody’s house,” she said. But when you’re a landlord, she said, “this is the nature of the relationship.” 

Wiebke told me they were making it work. But their experience makes it pretty easy to see why most developers are opting to build middle housing for sale rather than for rental. And that’s why HB 2138 offers specific incentives for affordable homeownership and focuses on streamlining “middle housing land divisions,” a state-defined process intended to make it easier to build townhouses specifically for homeownership. 

Lesson learned: Mostly, middle housing is good at lowering the barriers to homeownership. Use that strength while understanding its limitations. 

6. Side-by-side townhomes are what’s getting built so far, and they’re not very accessible 

Most of the “middle housing” being built in Oregon looks a lot like the homes in the picture above. 

There’s nothing wrong with townhomes, of course. They were a popular home option for centuries before being banned from most neighborhoods in the United States and Canada during the mid-1900s. But one thing they almost all have in common is a staircase—and, generally, a dependence on their residents being able to easily walk up and down. 

A study commissioned by the City of Portland found that out of 122 triplexes, fourplexes, and clustered cottages permitted in Portland in 2022 and 2023, only 2 included a ground-floor bedroom. That’s a mismatch. The Census estimates that six percent of Oregonians currently have ambulatory difficulty. And that number is likely to rise, since like most of the developed world, Oregon has a rapidly growing senior population. 

Kinoshita said he sees a market for more senior-friendly housing and even commissioned an economic study to test the waters for it. But he found that so many people are turned off by second-floor homes, and so few turned on by first-floor homes, that he’d be losing money to build them. 

“Not having ground-floor access ends up reducing value by 10 to 15 percent,” Kinoshita said. “That’s one of the reasons why the townhome-style project seems to be so prevalent.” 

With those numbers, a state or city mandate to include accessible homes in every project wouldn’t work either, because developers wouldn’t build at a loss. But another approach might: the right to build more and larger buildings if some accessible homes are included. 

That’s exactly what HB 2138 would do, by legalizing two additional homes, and the space for them, on fourplex lots. 

Lesson learned: If you want more new accessible housing, you probably need to go beyond the fourplex. 

7. Big development fees are a big barrier 

One of the reasons Portland issued permits for so many small homes in 2022 and 2023 is that it exempted hundreds of them from tens of thousands of dollars each in development fees. 

These “system development charges” (SDCs) are intended to pay for public infrastructure related to housing growth, everything from pipes to parks. But although the state doesn’t require them to be levied as a flat fee per home (for example, transportation- or stormwater-related fees could legally be charged per parking space), they usually are. This makes many SDCs regressive, putting bigger cost burdens on smaller homes. In those years, Portland’s SDCs added up to more than $20,000 per small home—something like five percent of the hard cost of building a 1,000-square-foot home. 

Portland had long waived SDCs for homes sold to, and affordable to, people with incomes below the local median income for a family of four, which in 2023 was $114,400. If a developer could keep their sale price below $455,000, the city considered it “affordable” to such a family, and therefore eligible for an SDC waiver worth more than $20,000. 

For big oneplexes built before 2021, that sale price wouldn’t have been possible. 

This chart adapted from the city’s recent middle housing report shows the result: a big surge of applications for SDC waivers for projects in low-density zones. 

The program was so important to making these projects viable that after interest rates rose quickly in 2023, townhouse developers persuaded Portland’s city council to temporarily loosen the eligibility thresholds, allowing sale prices up to 20 percent higher to qualify for fee breaks, too. 

Fee breaks like these may seem icky to people worried about a city’s fiscal health. But they reflect something important: flat fees are an especially big deal for small homes. That’s extra true for small detached homes, which appeal to many buyers and are legal in many middle housing codes (see #3 above) but are treated by many cities as identical to large detached homes. 

Portland’s SDC fees are less regressive than in some cities, because they are somewhat lower for smaller homes. The same is true in other relatively high-performing cities, like Eugene and Lake Oswego. Some lower-performing cities, like Tigard, Salem, and Gresham, differentiate between attached and detached homes, but don’t scale fees by home size. 

HB 2138 includes a fix for this problem, too. It wouldn’t directly override local development fees—too controversial—but it would empower the state land use agency to create a “model” fee schedule for SDCs, with particular emphasis on “increasing housing production, availability and affordability, especially that of middle housing, accessory dwelling units and single room occupancies.” A schedule like that would be likely to scale by home size—and might also become a safe harbor that cities could legally adopt without the need for an expensive custom study. In that scenario, it’s likely that many cities would switch to the state’s less regressive fee schedule. 

Lesson learned: If you use fees on new homes to pay for infrastructure, set them lower for smaller homes—or risk getting none at all. 

Oregon’s cities have been laboratories for better land use 

The word “innovative” is a cliché in housing policy. 

Sometimes it’s apt, like the time a few years ago when Oregon helped rewrite United States building codes to allow buildings made of superglued wood panels. That was awesome. 

But duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and cottages aren’t actually new or complicated. They’re just old, simple, good ideas that happened to be banned from most urban land for a while. As Oregon and other states re-legalize them, there’s no need to overthink things. Oregon’s delightfully simple duplex model code, written in 2020, is just three pages of text and three pages of pictures. 

That said, societies are complicated, and different people are different. As a result, democracy is messy, and the process of re-legalizing housing can get messy, too. Dozens of Oregon cities worked in good faith to implement Oregon’s 2019 law, and there were a lot of details to work out. 

If all this experimentation resulted in some local codes working better than others, that’s fine. In fact, it’s healthy—as long as Oregon’s next step is to successfully learn from all its experiments. 

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