The Dalles sees more new housing, buildable lots in 2025

THE DALLES — City planning commissioners received a long-range update the evening of Dec. 4, reviewing this year’s building activity, housing approvals, projects and a major overhaul to The Dalles’ development code that will change how land-use decisions are made.

Wasco County’s low housing inventory has been a major focus of the city and county, citing the region’s housing needs at close to 660 new homes by 2040 to catch up with demand.

Joshua Chandler, director of the community development department, began his presentation by outlining reforms made to the city’s planning process, including a new hearings officer planned for early 2026.

A hearings officer is an independent land-use adjudicator used in many Oregon cities. They take over quasi-judicial matters such as site plans, variances and conditional use permits, allowing the planning commission to focus instead on long-range planning and code updates.

If approved by the commission and then city council, Chandler said a new hearings officer may be installed as early as April of next year.

Rebounds in residential construction

Despite a difficult financing environment, 2025 saw the strongest uptick in residential construction in several years.

The city issued 26 building permits that created 34 residential dwelling units, including 20 single-family homes, three duplexes and two replacement units. Because replacement dwellings don’t increase the overall housing count, Chandler said, the city approved 32 new units last year, compared to 13 the year prior.

Chandler admitted he and his staff initially doubted such strong numbers, so great was their surprise.

“It was a shock for us,” he said.

And while zero accessory dwelling units (ADUs) were built in 2025, that was somewhat expected. Chandler explained that recent code changes allow detached duplexes, which function like two small houses on one lot and come with fewer size restrictions.

“There’s only a couple thousand dollars difference” in fees, he said, making this style of duplex more attractive to builders than ADUs.

Following the adoption of the city’s Housing Production Strategy, staff are now developing the tools to implement it.

Chandler highlighted several:

• A multi-unit property tax exemption to incentivize affordable housing.

• Pre-approved building plans to reduce costs for homeowners and builders.

• Partnerships with Hood River and the University of Oregon.

• Code changes to allow triplexes, quadplexes and cottage clusters in low-density zones, where “the bulk of our available land is.”

• A proposal to let some small multi-unit projects skip land-use review entirely and go “just as building permits.”

Large multi-family housing still lagging

Only one new multi-family land-use application was approved in 2025: a 76-unit affordable housing project at 816 Chenowith Loop Road, developed in partnership with the local housing authority.

“Their team has let us know that they are intending on submitting the building permit for that in January, and they do have funding secured,” Chandler said.

But critically, no new multi-family buildings have been constructed in The Dalles since 2019. Chandler did note that a six-unit building is currently being built on the west side of town.

New land set aside for future housing development

Land-division activity — the dividing of property into buildable lots — also increased dramatically, creating 64 potential new housing lots in total.

In 2025, the city approved:

• Two minor partitions (creating three parcels)

• Two subdivisions (creating 56 lots)

• One middle-housing land division (creating five lots)

However, Chandler cautioned the public that “these do not reflect final recordings.” Subdivisions often take two to three years to complete because streets, utilities and other infrastructure must be installed first.

Some neighbors opposed new subdivision development this year, including residents near the Smith Ridge project who brought concerns about landslides to The Dalles City Council last May.

Ted Valkov, representing the Neighborhood Association for Responsible Development, also noted the new subdivision’s plan priced future homes at $500,000 to $600,000.

“This development is really not going to do anything about the housing shortage in town,” Valkov said at the May 12 hearing. “In fact, it’s going to make it worse, because the people who need homes in The Dalles are teachers, firefighters and so forth.”

Jason Alford, the developer, argued that introducing higher-priced homes would indirectly expand the supply of affordable housing, since local residents who buy into Smith Ridge would vacate lower-cost homes.

Ultimately, the city sided with the developer, allowing the site’s approval to move forward in its current design.

Flood maps that reflect a real flood

The county’s floodplain re-mapping effort, which began in 2014, has experienced numerous delays, and Chandler said the impending changes will have land changing designations.

In Lone Pine, for instance, some properties will likely be drawn out of the floodplain, because past grading work that raised the land never made it onto the old maps from 1984. But on Mill Creek and Chenowith Creek, some properties that were not previously designated as flood-prone may be added in.

“There’s areas of downtown that are now in the floodplain,” Chandler said, noting that the new modeling more closely matches what happened during the 1996 flood, when water poured into parts of downtown.

The city has had some early conversations with the Army Corps of Engineers about the Mill Creek tunnel under downtown. Chandler said “the pipe … is undersized for the amount of flow that can happen in a normal flood,” and that new U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)modeling data could help the city pursue federal assistance in the future.

Additionally, the county has signed off on future changes to the floodplain building codes to comply with FEMA’s regulations aimed at protecting endangered fish. The county has publicly opposed these changes, citing the “astounding and unsustainable costs” of the proposed requirements.

Just this week, FEMA notified the city that the map process is back on, triggering a new 90-day appeal period for affected property owners. Chandler said staff will be preparing to notify neighbors in the coming weeks.

Development planned for The Dalles’ west side

Looking further out, Chandler previewed two large efforts scheduled to ramp up in 2026.

Funded through the Transportation and Growth Management Program, a joint effort between Oregon’s Department of Transportation and the Department of Land Conservation and Development, the West Side Renaissance Master Plan will tackle fragmented streets, limited sidewalks, bike lanes, constrained access to schools, housing, health services and transit on the west side of town.

A separate project, the development review audit, will be more internal. Funded by the state’s Housing Accountability and Production Office, it will examine how the city processes applications and look for ways to streamline them.

Right now, Chandler said, the same site plan review process is used for everything “from a food cart to 116 unit multi family development to a 90 acre data center,” all under one application.

The audit will help the city explore a more tiered system and may lead to code changes and new technology tools.

“We’re trying to not only improve the customer experience, but improve staff’s experience. Less of a process for the customer is less of a process for us as well,” Chandler said.