Strimling: Inclusionary Zoning works in Portland. Obviously, developers want to kill it.

Strimling: Inclusionary Zoning works in Portland. Obviously, developers want to kill it.

In 2020, Portland voters initiated and overwhelmingly passed an aggressive affordable housing policy – part of the city’s Green New Deal – over the will of developers, the mayor, and most of the Portland City Council. The initiative, called Inclusionary Zoning (IZ), requires developers to build about two and a half times as much affordable housing as they had previously been required to build, and lowers the expected rent on those units by hundr…