Secure stability & access

Securing stability and access is a very broad category that includes:

• Ensuring physical accessibility for disabled residents of all ages.
• Protecting and increasing tenants’ rights to safe, affordable, and fair housing.
• Preventing housing discrimination and unlawful or unjust evictions.
• Increasing financial stability and protections for those at-risk of eviction or homelessness.
• Preventing displacement and gentrification caused by socio-economic shifts and/or natural disasters.

This page covers three topics in detail: Fair Housing, accessible and age-friendly housing, and preventing displacement. For a list of resources related to housing stability and community resilience, see our resilience resources page. 

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Fair Housing

The federal Fair Housing Act and Oregon law outlaws housing discrimination against members of protected classes. Unfortunately, housing discrimination is still common in many Oregon communities. The top three reasons people report discrimination in Oregon housing applications are disability, source of income, and race. Additionally, many people have multiple overlapping identities which can increase the risk of discrimination.

Landlords cannot legally discriminate against individuals and families with alternative income sources, including Section 8 housing vouchers, social security benefits, veterans’ benefits, disability benefits, or other government subsidies. Unfortunately, this type of discrimination is still rampant.

The Fair Housing Council of Oregon has a wide variety of resources on fair housing for residents, landlords, and policymakers.

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Accessible and age-friendly housing

A critical need exists for more accessible and age-friendly homes—and we can address this need through public policy. The following statistics are from Community Vision:

• One in four Oregonians experiences disabilities. One in eight has difficulty walking.
• Currently, only 1 in 100 Oregon apartments are estimated to be physically accessible.
• Under the state building code, just 2% of multifamily housing units are required to meet Type A accessibility standards—and only if the development has 20 or more units.
• Single homes, duplexes, and triplexes are not subject to even minimal accessibility requirements.
• Oregon needs, at minimum, 8,800 new mobility accessible units and 3,500 new vision or hearing accessible units.

For Oregon adults living with disabilities

The following statistics from American Community Survey (2019) and Fair Housing Council of Oregon:

• 26% are living below the poverty line (compared to 11% of the general population).
• 34% are housing cost burdened (compared to 23%).
• 14% live in poor housing (compared to 7.9%).

Cities can promote accessible housing through policy

As part of the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis, all cities must assess and plan for their community’s housing needs across multiple categories—including disability. This means that cities must track the degree of need for accessible housing production and develop policy strategies for ensuring these homes are actually built. Cities have a variety of options for how they can encourage more accessible homes to be built, including:

• Zoning and Incentives: Cities can provide a variety of incentives to build more accessible housing, such as expedited review and permitting processing, planning and building fee reductions, system development charge deferrals or reductions, and density or building height bonuses. See the Fair Housing Council of Oregon’s Guide for Developing Accessible and Age-Friendly Zoning Code for more information.
• Training and technical assistance: Cities can provide centralized informational resources and training about accessible design and construction, as well as technical assistance from their planning department.
• Adopt accessible permit-ready plans: Permit ready plans are home designs that are pre-approved by the planning department. This means, if a person wants to build a home on a standard lot—they can use an existing design and don’t have to pay for a designer or go through a permitting process. This reduces both the expense and the timeline of homebuilding (see our example from Medford).

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Preventing displacement

Displacement refers to the involuntary relocation of individuals, families, or communities from a certain neighborhood or city. It can be caused by a variety of factors, including gentrification, rising cost of living, or natural disasters, and causes long-term harm to impacted communities.

Public policymakers can prevent or slow displacement by using evidence-based strategies and involving impacted communities in planning from the beginning. See Oregon’s Department of Land Conservation and Development’s (DLCD’s) Anti-Displacement and Gentrification Toolkit for more detail on strategies for analyzing and preventing displacement.

Other policies

Cities use a variety of other strategies to promote housing stability and access, including:

• Proactively educate tenants and people that experience discrimination about their rights, options, and resources.
• Support and target affordable homeownership programs for communities of color and low-income communities.
• Build out and fund the continuum of care for unhoused individuals and families.
• Fund and promote accessible housing education, construction, and home retrofit programs.
• Fund and promote energy efficiency education and weatherization programs for low-income tenants and homeowners.
• Enforce livability laws and hold landlords accountable to safe housing practices.
• Fund and promote wildfire or disaster resilience programs in areas with moderate or high risk of wildfire.

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