Clackamas County - City of Milwaukie Urban Services Study: Financial Analysis

The provision of local government services within the urbanizing area of northwest Clackamas County has posed a difficult challenge for a number of years. This report examines the financial aspects of providing urban services to a study area with the following boundaries: the Clackamas County/Multnomah County line to the north, Interstate 205 to the east, highway 224 to the south, and the City of Milwaukie to the west

Travel and Parking Behavior in the United States

This paper looks at the connection between the regulation of parking by cities, transit service levels, and travel and parking behavior in the United States. Travel behavior information comes from the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) and the Federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration’s 1990 Section 15 Report. Data on the current state of parking programs in place in central business districts of the U.S. is identified through telephone interviews of local officials responsible for parking policies from the twenty cities identified in the NPTS. The travel behavior analyses and the data from the parking officials interviews were combined with data from the Federal Highway Administration’s Journey-to-Work data to group cities according to their parking policies, transit service, and ridership levels on a continuum of “Transit-Accommodating Cities” and “Auto-Accomodating Cities”. A key finding is that cities with interventionist parking policies, high parking prices and limited supply, frequent transit service, and a high probability that travelers will pay to park are the most likely to have high transit ridership figures

Affordable Housing Needs Study for the Portland Metropolitan Area Draft Final Report

The purpose of this report is to respond to the recommendations of the Regional Housing Choice Task Force by providing information to guide housing choice policy for the Metro Council. In particular, the objectives of this project were to: estimate current and future affordable housing need for the Metro region; describe the distribution of households by income, age, and size across the metro region; describe the tenure of these households and the type of housing they will choose; identify and describe those household types that are most likely to struggle to meet the cost of housing based on their income; and make recommendations for improving analysis of affordable housing need in the future. Our approach to this task was to use output from the Metroscope model, using the base case scenario, to forecast the housing consumption decisions of households from 2005 to 2035. We chose the Metroscope model after also considering the State of Oregon?s Housing/Land Needs model. We concluded from examining the assumptions and abilities of each model that Metroscope is better able to offer the Metro Council the insight into the housing market required to inform housing choice policy. The Metroscope model incorporates housing supply and demand for the entire four-county metropolitan region (Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, and Clark counties). The region comprises a single housing market; residents travel throughout the region to work, shop, and socialize. Thus, it makes little sense to examine any one county in isolation. While this report does not include the results for Clark County, its impact on demand and supply of housing in the rest of the region is taken into account in the Metroscope model and is reflected in the results presented here. Given the assumptions of the Metroscope model (described in Section 2), we address several questions, including: Where will household growth occur? What kinds of households will grow? What kinds of housing will these households live in? What percentage of their income will they pay for housing? What demographic groups are most cost-burdened and where do those households reside? This report offers a summary of the findings regarding each of these questions

Baseball and Basketball Stadium Ownership and Franchise Incentives to Relocate

In an earlier paper, we examined the factors leading Major League Baseball franchises to relocate using data from 1950 to 1995 (Mildner and Strathman, 1996). In this paper, we extend our analysis to look at the National Basketball Association from 1960 to 1995. Our intent is to extend this line of research to cover the other major league sports, but we present here the data for these two sports along with some location data for professional hockey and football. The paper proceeds as follows: a model of the team relocation decision process, a description of our data set, our analysis of that data, and a concluding section

Trends in Vacant Single Family Land Values Portland, Oregon 1990 to 2005

The purpose of this report is to summarize price trends from 1990 to 2005 in vacant land zoned for single family development in the Portland region. While regional housing prices are compiled, tracked, and reported on a regular basis by sources like the Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS), information on trends in vacant land sales remains dispersed among independent builders, county assessors, and appraisers. As a consequence, while current and accurate information exits to inform a discussion about regional and local housing policy, relatively limited information exists on which to base discussions of regional and local land policies

Impact of the Urban Growth Boundary on Metropolitan Housing Markets

As required by state law, Metro has conducted an Urban Growth Report and a Housing Needs Analysis to determine whether the currant Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) surrounding the Portland metropolitan area is sufficient to handle the increase in population and number of households expected over the next 20 years. Mr. Don Morissette commissioned Portland State University\u27s Center for Urban Studies to assess whether the techniques used in theses two studies were appropriate and to assess the impact of the UGB on housing markets in the Portland metropolitan area generally. The focus will be be on the impact of the UGB and other land use regulations on the availability of land for development, the achievable density, as well as land and housing prices. As such, much of this report is a review and techniques used by Metro rather than primary data collection. However, some review of public data on housing construction, zoning, and prices was done as part of this study

Housing Needs Study for the Portland Metropolitan Area Final Report

The purpose of this report is to respond to the recommendations of the Regional Housing Choice Task Force by providing information to guide housing choice policy for the Metro Council. In particular, the objectives of this project were to: Estimate current and future affordable housing need for the Metro region; Describe the distribution of households by income, age, and size across the metro region; Describe the tenure of these households and the type of housing they will choose; Identify and describe those household types that are most likely to struggle to meet the cost of housing based on their income; and Make recommendations for improving analysis of affordable housing need in the future. Our approach to this task was to use output from the Metroscope model, using the base case scenario, to forecast the housing consumption decisions of households from 2005 to 2035. We chose the Metroscope model after also considering the State of Oregon?s Housing/Land Needs model. We concluded from examining the assumptions and abilities of each model that Metroscope is better able to offer the Metro Council the insight into the housing market required to inform housing choice policy. The Metroscope model incorporates housing supply and demand for the entire four-county metropolitan region (Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, and Clark counties). The region comprises a single housing market; residents travel throughout the region to work, shop, and socialize. Thus, it makes little sense to examine any one county in isolation. Given the assumptions of the Metroscope model (described in Section 2), we address several questions, including: Where will household growth occur? What kinds of households will grow? What kinds of housing will these households live in? What percentage of their income will they pay for housing? What demographic groups are most cost-burdened and where do those households reside

The Demand for Solid Waste Disposal

In this paper we estimate the elasticity of demand for landfill disposal of municipal solid waste using data from the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. Efficiency losses associated with deviations from marginal cost pricing of disposal services are then derived. The efficiency losses of small deviations from long-run marginal disposal costs are not large. However, many municipalities finance solid waste services from general tax revenues, in which case waste generators effectively face zero marginal costs. Here, the efficiency losses are much larger, indicating that communities would benefit from introducing volume or weight-based pricing.