Cities, states, our entire country is in need of affordable housing. But will Portland’s proposed replacement of its current zoning ordinance with ReCode be a solution that creates such intense building density, in all housing – not just affordable housing – as to cause serious problems that will affect present and future citizens?

Proponents of ReCode’s increased density offered other cities with similar code changes as successful examples for Portland to follow. Were those cities on the Gulf of Maine with its warming waters, rising sea levels and higher storm surges?

Not mentioned in ReCode is any consideration of the cumulative impacts to the infrastructure needed to support such a large number of new living units.

The density increase in ReCode will allow, and intends to encourage, more structures pressed into all existing land area. The removal of open land, setbacks, yards, lawns and gardens is the removal of pervious soils that helps mitigate stormwater runoff. Where will stormwater runoff, coming with increasing intensity and frequency, go when more and more drainable surface soil area becomes impervious with additional buildings?

With increased higher density in living units will come more toilets. How many more? Lots more. Does the water treatment plant (sewage) have the capacity to accommodate the increase that ReCode surely will demand? Will more toilets and lower landscape capacity to absorb stormwater introduce sewage backups in basements, which is now occurring in some areas of cities for the first time (Toronto summer of 2024)? Have engineering studies been done to address these long-range planning infrastructure questions? If not, I think this to be irresponsible, if not negligent. Portland’s slogan may need to be changed from “Yes, life is good here” to “Yes, we smell it, too.”

Has Portland’s fire department reviewed and commented on the ReCode plan? Buildings packed so closely together and with increased heights as this code allows will increase the challenges to the PFD doing its already dangerous job. We should keep in mind that firefighters want to return safely home each night like the rest of us.

These are not frivolous concerns meant to get in the way of needed affordable housing. They are realistic possibilities that could affect the health, safety and welfare of Portland’s citizens today and in the future. These cumulative impacts are quality of life issues. They are objectives in what we should be aiming for in building sustainable communities.

Notwithstanding the public involvement at a number of public meetings, I question if the visual impacts, the sense of feeling and sense of comfort to be experienced within this denser built environment has been completely understood by the participants. Architectural elevation drawings and scale models should have been provided in the public meetings to help people understand what significant changes are being proposed in residential and other neighborhoods.

For example, the RN-6 zone is allowing 65-foot building heights with property setbacks of only 5 feet. Two structures built on adjacent properties could be built only 10 feet apart, which is a little over one parking space wide. There’s not much privacy with two open windows directly across from each other at this distance. But I suppose the bright side with cheek-by-jowl living is that we’ll know what our neighbors are up to.

Portland will not be changing its zoning ordinance at this magnitude for decades to come. We must be thinking with long, long thoughts, not just attempting to solve today’s affordable housing problem. Long-range planning and short-term solutions can be accommodated if we think and fully consider the consequences of all decisions very carefully. Should mistakes, oversights and rush to judgments happen in this arena today, the future social and financial consequences are often demeaning to people’s lives, expensive to correct and often won’t be remediated for generations into the future – if they are remediated at all.