The Ghost of SB 100’s Past: How Environmental NIMBYism Threatens Oregon’s Future

With the Christmas holiday around the corner, I am reminded of one of my favorite holiday stories: A Christmas Carol, which was published on this day 180 years ago. This timeless story tells the tale of Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, an ageing miser who serves as a warning of the paradigm of self-interest, and the risks of ignoring the needs of others. 

While some may see this story as mere allegory on embracing the Christmas spirit, I see it as a lesson that we need to take seriously. Right now, our state is divided, and it seems like across all sectors of public policy we are failing to meet the needs of Oregonians. We are especially failing at providing Oregonians with basic needs and services, including safe shelter and opportunities for home ownership.

Some people may want to deny that these critical issues relate directly back to how our communities are allowed to grow and develop, but we shouldn’t. Instead, we should consider the ghosts of land use planning past, present, and future, and heed their warning – we must not continue to put the preservation of a system of government over the overwhelming needs and dignity of Oregonians.

Now sit back, grab your milk, cookies, or favorite Christmas drink, and enjoy our version of A Christmas Carol. 

The Ghost of SB 100’s Past.

As a progressive Republican, Tom McCall was known as a staunch environmentalist and an advocate of “sustainable” (i.e. virtually no) development. As Governor, he signed into law one of the most contentious pieces of legislation in Oregon history – SB 100 – and with it gave a speech on “sagebrush subdivisions” and “coastal condomania” which lives on in infamy today.  No law has done more to negatively impact the lives of average Oregonians than this bill – and not because of what’s in the actual bill language.

SB 100 was adopted under the theory that we needed to act fast to avoid the rampant sprawl of places like California. Oregon itself was experiencing a population boom. Many feared that if left unchecked, Oregon would become the wild west of development, and certainly not the left-leaning environmentally conscientious state it is today. In the minds of McCall and supporters of SB 100, even worse than Oregon turning into California, was the idea that Californians (or anyone else) may come to Oregon to live. In fact, it was McCall who uttered arguably the most famous NIMBY line in history on national television:

“Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.”

Can you imagine a politician making that statement today? They’d be labeled a xenophobic racist by the same crowd that worships McCall’s enduring wisdom. Regardless, with that sentiment, Oregon adopted its first environmental omnibus bills, SB 100 and SB 101. SB 100 created the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) and the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD). LCDC’s first major task was to adopt the Statewide Planning Goals to govern the development of local comprehensive land use plans. Senate Bill 101 created statewide protections for farmland preservation.

Yes, this was a time of immense promise and innocence. Oregon now had a statewide system that could “keep Oregon Oregon” while allowing orderly and thoughtful development. Our planning Goals would guide local communities to grow and prosper, while also protecting important farm and forest land.

Above all, Tom McCall and the SB 100 NIMBY’s would get exactly what they wanted – it would be near impossible to build enough housing to meet demand or to give hope to thousands of Oregon families who would like nothing more than to own a piece of this state for themselves. 

The Ghost Of Activists Present.

Fast forward 50 years and we can still hear the rattling of the eerie chains SB 100 shackled upon the state. While McCall pleaded for folks to stop moving to Oregon, they still came. Since the 1970’s our state has experienced a consistent population increase and with it a need for more housing, services, and jobs. However, due mostly to our planning system, Oregon has chronically been underbuilding those things for decades.

Now, instead of the budding utopia envisioned by McCall, we have a housing and homelessness crisis, a failing public school system, and our biggest city is decaying from lawlessness, open air drug use, and the highest taxes besides New York City. Instead of being a City that Oregonians want to covet for themselves, most people who live in Portland would move away if they could.

Oregon’s system is so broken, we can’t even build the things we know we need, even when it’s smacking us straight in the face. And the same types of NIMBYs who helped create the system have stuck around to be its strong arm and oppose the things we need most.

Take semi-conductors for example. Oregon is one of the global centers of semiconductor manufacturing with 15% of the chip industry in the state. Yet, despite a growing global demand for the product, and oodles of money from the federal government to incentivize domestic production, Oregon continues to be passed up for mega-fab facilities. One of the major barriers identified by experts was a lack of available land inside urban growth boundaries and zoned for this type of multi-billion-dollar investment.

To remedy this land supply shortage, the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 4 in 2023, championed by Governor Kotek. SB 4 included millions of dollars for semiconductor companies seeking federal funding to expand in Oregon. The bill also allows Governor Kotek to designate land outside city urban growth boundaries as industrial, which reduces barriers to expansion and makes it easier to annex land for semiconductor manufacturing projects.

Despite having the potential to bring billions of dollars of new revenue into the state and thousands of jobs, the bill received opposition from the same ol’ folks – environmental activists.

Now let’s look at housing. Recent studies show that Oregon has to build more than 540,000 new housing units by 2040 to house our current population. We also have a backlog of 110,000 units we must overcome. This means that builders need to double the rate of production. Recognizing the severity of the issue, Governor Kotek enacted an Executive Order on the matter on her first day in office and put together the Housing Production Advisory Council to identify barriers to housing development.

During the 2023 Session, Governor Kotek also championed HB 3414, which would have provided regulatory relief for housing producers and put in place an emergency measure to increase the amount of land available for affordable housing.

Again, despite having the ability to rapidly produce more affordable housing than any previous land use bill in history, the bill was killed by a single vote. The main opposition? You guessed it – environmental activists.

The Ghost Of Nimbys Yet To Come.

Last week, Governor Kotek and community leaders unveiled their plan to save the City of Portland at annual Leadership Summit of the Oregon Business Plan. While headlines have focused on the Central City Task Force’s recommendations to remove the plywood facades of downtown, recriminalize open-air drug use, and reduce taxes, a most interesting presentation has flown under the radar.

Insert the next ghost with a dire warning, but instead of a veiled specter pointing to our inevitable fate, this ghost comes in the form of an East Coast journalist.

Somewhere wedged between a poetry reading and a presentation on electronic voting, Derek Thompson, Staff Writer at The Atlantic, lamented on the disconnect between progressive values and regulations we pass to effectuate them. Dick Hughes, writer of the Capital Chatter, reported on the high points of Mr. Thompson’s presentation:

“Over and over and over again, you see this gap between what we say [are] the values we profess and the laws and the regulations that we write,” he said. “We say that housing is a human right. But it is prohibitively expensive to build housing in the bluest states and deep blue cities. In America, we have this set of rules that makes it almost impossible to meet population growth with housing growth. …”

He went on.

 “And my thesis is that the medicine of the 20th century has become the disease of the 21st century. Environmentalists and right-thinking liberals made it so difficult to build anything.”

As we saw this past Session, Mr. Thompson is completely right – environmental NIMBYism is the greatest threat to solving our housing crisis and growing our economy.

When asked how Oregon can solve its housing crisis, Mr. Thompson’s message was clear:

“It’s going to be really, really hard,” he said. “And I guess this just comes back to the idea that you have to decide not just as a governor’s office, not just as a legislature, but as a public, as a citizenry, that … housing is your priority, and you’re willing to sacrifice other priorities and services to it.”

This is a bold and frankly scary statement to make in a place like Oregon. Most people who live here would agree that taking care of our environment, conservation, and sustainability are important principles. However, some people take these principles to the extreme. Regardless, I don’t think that anyone would disagree that our state is beautiful, and filled with important natural resources and habitat that should be protected.

But our state is also filled with over 4 million people. That’s 4 million individuals who need access to basic needs like food, water, and shelter. Herein lies the existential balance our land use planning system was supposed to provide, but has failed miserably.

This failure will continue if we do not stand up to special interest groups who would rather uphold a system designed to keep people out, instead of keeping people housed. Oregon must get its priorities straight and make the right choice for those in need.

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not represent the opinions or positions of any party represented by the OPOA Legal Center on any particular matter.