Eugene staff present locational analysis mapping for 20‑year housing needs

Leah, a city planning lead, told the Eugene advisory committee that the contextualized housing need (CHN) mapping is intended to translate the city’s 20‑year housing need and the state’s requirements into practical locations for future housing and targeted asset investments. "The contextualized housing need is an analysis we're working on as a part of the new Oregon housing needs analysis kind of uh housing planning framework," she said.

Staff explained the technical approach before taking questions. Thea, the GIS lead, said the team created a 250‑foot‑side hexagon grid covering nearly 10,000 hexes inside the Eugene urban growth boundary so distances to assets and hazards can be measured to the edge of each hex. "We chose this approach because it aligned with what the Department of Land Conservation and Development did and also because it was a way to simplify what was already becoming a fairly complex analysis," Thea said.

Jeffrey, who demonstrated example maps, showed two composite themes used in the analysis: access to community assets (groceries, parks, transit, schools, child care, clinics, sidewalks, bike facilities, retail and tree canopy) and proximity to environmental conditions (major arterials and highways, rail corridors, toxic sites, landslide and flood risk, wildfire interface and underserved fire/EMS response areas). He illustrated a grocery access indicator that used a one‑mile driving distance to full‑service grocery stores and a half‑mile walking distance to SNAP‑accepting locations, noting "large portions of the UGB" fall outside the one‑mile driving buffers.

On transit, staff distinguished between all transit stops and MX bus rapid transit: "MX is very like local insider baseball… MX lines are 10 to 15 minutes every stop," Jeffrey said, so MX service was weighted differently in scoring because of higher frequency and permanent infrastructure. For environmental harms, the team applied buffers around major arterials and highways so hexes within those buffers receive points that increase the harms composite score.

Thea described scoring: each indicator is measured (count, network distance, yes/no buffer or percent coverage), normalized to a 0–1 scale and then summed into composite scores so no single raw indicator drives the overall result. Jeffrey showed several visualization options (linear ramp, quintiles, natural breaks) and recommended natural breaks to preserve interpretable clusters; he cautioned quintiles can overcompress downtown and other hotspots.

Committee members pressed on choices and interpretation. One member asked why indicators were equally weighted; staff said they intentionally avoided subjective weighting to keep the analysis transparent and comparable, but invited feedback. Another member noted that arterials and transit can be both assets (access) and harms (noise, pollution); staff agreed the result should not be a ban on housing in such areas but rather inform mitigation (infrastructure, tree canopy, noise buffers) and complementary tools such as upzoning in asset‑rich areas.

Staff also confirmed they reviewed prior local efforts (including 20‑minute neighborhood mapping) and used local GIS layers where possible; when local data were missing they relied on state datasets from the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) and Oregon Housing and Community Services. "We really started with a resource from the state from the Department of Land Conservation and Development or DLCD," Leah said.

The team said a public web map with selectable layers and an address search is in development so residents can view the draft indicators and composite maps; some environmental harm layers will be withheld from public display for sensitivity reasons. The committee asked staff to spot‑check places that seem inconsistent with local knowledge (Valley River Center was mentioned as one example staff will re‑examine).

Elena closed by announcing committee reappointments (Phil and Tiffany), a new member appointment (Chip) and scheduling changes: the June 4 meeting will be canceled, the CHN continuation will be moved to August, June 18 is planned as an in‑person meeting at the atrium building, July 2 is canceled and members should hold July 16.

The meeting focused on methodology and visualization rather than decisions; staff solicited more written feedback and said the mapping will inform later land‑supply and action planning steps for housing production, affordability and mitigation of harms.