Saturday, June 13, 2026

 May 27, 2026

 

Dear Mayor, City Councilors, City Manager, and Planning Commissioners,

 

The South University Neighborhood Association asks you not to increase R-1 middle-housing height to 35 feet, and to remove the 7-foot “roof bonus” ... which would together allow three-story buildings to reach an imperious 42 feet. We ask that R-1 middle-housing height be restricted absolutely to 30 feet, which is acceptable to State law.

 

We're making this request because we see now, in our own neighborhood, what the current law already allows. Our alarms went off because of the monstrous “middle-housing” rental construction at 22nd and Alder: unnatural lot coverage, damage to adjacent homes during construction, killing of neighboring trees and plants, and shamefully wasteful height.

This giant box permanently blocks sunshine from houses on three sides, looks down into neighboring gardens and windows, and blocks sky and horizon for dozens of surrounding homes. Once buildings like this are built, the harm is permanent. The neighbors are stuck with the loss of sun, privacy, trees, gardens, and peace for generations. We can attest to the resulting psychological, health, and community damage.

 

We support middle housing when it's sensitive to, and in scale with, the surrounding neighborhood, and when it provides real housing opportunity. We want infill that helps Eugene’s renting young adults to stop paying someone else’s investors, and to become homeowners, to send their children to Edison, Roosevelt, South, and the U of O, and to build wealth through ownership. That's the promise of good middle housing. 

But that is not what we are getting.

The South University neighborhood is already approximately 84% rental housing. More large, expensive rental infill does not create a path to ownership for young families. It doesn't stabilize the neighborhood. It doesn't strengthen the schools. It doesn't help ordinary Eugeneans build equity. It simply increases the stranglehold of rental monopolies, raising local rents and reducing the number of owners, as happened in the West University neighborhood.

 

City planning staff would have you believe that 5 and 7-foot height additions provide “flexibility.” But flexibility for whom? For developers and their investors. For surrounding residents it mean less flexibility: less sunlight, fewer gardens, fewer trees, less nature, fewer permeable surfaces, less quiet, more heat-island effects, more traffic, and less privacy. 

 

Existing residents are being asked to make sacrifices, only so the real estate industry can increase returns and raise asset-values.

 

Staff would also have you believe that tall buildings in mature, beautiful, century-old neighborhoods offer “housing choice.” They do not, unless they create housing that people can actually afford to own and live in. Excessive height increasingly removes choice from people who already live here, by making neighboring homes less livable.

 

We're shocked that the City is considering further deregulation before honestly and rationally studying the impacts of the current law. The original intent of middle housing was not to allow looming, high-cost structures to encroach on the sun, peace, privacy, and livability of existing residents. If anything, the City should be holding the line, and reducing allowed heights to match the scale that was originally promised.

 

The recommendations of city staff are helping to destroy the well-cared-for, living fabric of neighborhoods built by generations of Eugeneans. They are working to replace one kind of city, with another. We ask you not to allow by-right 42-foot buildings in R-1 neighborhoods. Take time to study, and listen to residents about what the current law is already doing, before going even further.

 

We can do better. We can have middle housing that is humane, affordable, ownership-oriented, and compatible with neighborhoods. But this is not happening.

 

The SUNA Board