Construction Begins on Massive Redmond Neighborhood, Eight Years into Land Use Experiment

In 2019, Redmond was selected to be part of a test.

That was Oregon’s Affordable Housing Pilot Program, a legislative experiment to see if loosening the state’s strict development boundaries could help cities get more affordable housing on the ground faster.

Eight years later, the first homes in that test are under construction.

“We have literally spent eight years bringing this project out of the ground,” Redmond City Councilor Cat Zwicker said Tuesday afternoon during a groundbreaking celebration at the construction site. “I am so excited.”

Nonprofit developers RootedHomes and Northwest Community Housing Foundation broke ground this summer on 30 homes that will be permanently affordable through the community land trust model. That means the nonprofits will maintain ownership of the land while selling the homes to people who make less than a certain income.

Affordable housing is under construction in northeast Redmond as part of a 450-home neighborhood made possible by tweaks to urban growth boundary planning rules. Credit: Clayton Franke

It’s all part of a planned neighborhood called Northpoint Vista, what will eventually include 450 homes across 40 acres in northwest Redmond.

That land was made available for development through a pair of bills the Oregon Legislature passed in 2016 and 2019. It created a pilot program allowing cities to forego the tedious planning process associated with expanding the urban growth boundary. In exchange, the program mandated that at least 30% of the housing be restricted to people earning less than 80% of the area median income, which is about $96,000 for a family of four in the Bend-Redmond metro area.

Despite the expedited urban growth boundary expansion, it still took years to get the site ready for housing, said Linda Cline, housing program analyst with the City of Redmond.

“One of the lessons we learned is, when the property is outside city limits, there’s no infrastructure,” Cline said Tuesday. “It ended up being a very big project.”

Deschutes County donated the land for the project, while the state kicked in $8.5 million in grants for infrastructure.

Bend and Redmond were the only two cities to participate in the state’s pilot project. Since then, Central Oregon has continued to be a testing ground for bending urban growth boundary rules to spur affordable housing development, which has raised concern from some land-use advocacy groups, who say cities should instead focus growth inward.

The Northpoint neighborhood will bring 134 new income-restricted units for Redmond. State rules dictate that all affordable housing must start construction before the last 15% of market rate housing is finished, said Linda Cline, housing program analyst with the City of Redmond.

Previous rules required more of the affordable housing to be built sooner, but the state allowed market rate housing to move ahead as state funding for affordable housing lagged.

The Northpoint Vista neighborhood in northeast Redmond will be a mix of affordable and market-rate housing. Credit: Clayton Franke

Housing Works will build apartments to round out the affordable portion of the development, while regional builders Pahlisch Homes and Cobalt development will build the market rate portions starting next year, Cline said.

The first affordable homes are going up quickly, said Emma Rose, marketing manager at CS Construction, which is building the initial phase for RootedHomes.

“Even just a few weeks ago, you didn’t have this framing,” Rose said, pointing to the wooden framing for homes under construction nearby. “This went up so fast.

“It’s happening at a rapid pace, which is really exciting,” she added.