washingtonpost.com
Source: washingtonpost.com
- Portland's Residential Infill Project (RIP) and RIP2 unleashed a boom in middle housing like duplexes and ADUs, permitting over 1,400 units from 2021 to mid-2024 without spiking demolitions.
- These reforms slashed max home sizes to curb teardowns, delivering nearly twice as many units per demolished site compared to before.
- Middle housing is hitting affordability goals, with production accelerating to match Portland's housing needs in 75% of its residential land.
Portland's Residential Infill Project ended decades of single-family-only zoning, legalizing duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, ADUs, and cottage clusters across most neighborhoods. This shift, expanded by RIP2, tackles the housing crunch by boosting diverse, smaller homes on single lots. It matters because Portland's old rules—rooted in 1950s zoning—locked out affordability while population grew, forcing density into overburdened areas.