Expands eligibility for cities and Metro to amend their urban growth boundaries under a temporary program.
HB 4035 expands and extends Oregon’s temporary urban growth boundary (UGB) amendment program for cities outside Metro and for Metro-area cities, with a focus on adding land for housing development. The bill revises eligibility rules, increases the acreage that some cities may add, clarifies what counts as “net buildable acre,” and updates the process for selecting sites, including notice, application, review, and approval steps. It also preserves a separate exchange process for the City of Monmouth and creates a special expedited pathway for the City of Woodburn.
The bill requires or encourages conceptual plans for larger sites and sets detailed standards for density, housing mix, transportation access, urban services, environmental protections, and affordable housing. For smaller sites, it allows a city to proceed without a conceptual plan if it has binding agreements ensuring affordability and service provision. The measure also amends related land-use statutes, updates the criteria for demonstrating housing need and affordable housing need, and extends the temporary program’s repeal date to January 2, 2033. It takes effect immediately under an emergency clause.
HB 4035 changes Oregon land-use law by amending ORS 197.045 and multiple sections of the 2024 and 2025 laws that created the temporary UGB expansion framework. It broadens the circumstances under which cities can add land to their urban growth boundaries, changes acreage limits, modifies procedural requirements, and makes county approval of qualifying UGB amendments mandatory rather than discretionary. It also exempts certain local actions from being treated as land use decisions, limits hearings in some Metro processes, and creates city-specific exceptions for Monmouth and Woodburn. The bill affects cities, counties, Metro, landowners, utilities, and housing developers, especially those pursuing residential and mixed-use development on newly added land.
The overall sentiment appears strongly favorable. The bill passed the House committee unanimously, passed the Senate committee unanimously, and received broad floor support in both chambers, with only a small number of no votes in the House and Senate third readings. The final House concurrence vote was unanimous. This voting pattern suggests broad bipartisan agreement that the measure should move forward, likely reflecting shared interest in increasing housing supply and streamlining UGB expansion.
The main points of contention are implied by the bill’s structure rather than by recorded transcript debate. The most likely areas of disagreement are the expansion of city authority to add land, the reduced role for hearings and some procedural review, and the special treatment of specific cities such as Woodburn and Monmouth. Another potential concern is the balance between housing production and land-use protections, since the bill allows conversion of resource-adjacent land under certain conditions while also imposing affordability, density, and environmental safeguards. Stakeholders most likely to have differing views include local governments, land-use advocates, housing developers, farmland and forestland interests, and residents affected by UGB changes.