Oregon pins hopes on mass timber to boost housing, jobs
PORTLAND, Ore. — Inside a warehouse at the industrial Port of Portland lies what some believe could be the answer to Oregon’s housing crisis — a prototype of an affordable housing unit made from mass timber.
Once mass-produced at the factory being planned at the port, the units ranging from 426 square feet to 1,136 square feet could be deployed across the state to be assembled in urban and rural communities alike, potentially alleviating a critical housing shortage that has driven Oregon’s high rates of homelessness.
“I can’t wait to see these homes rolling down the road to those communities who need them right now,” said newly inaugurated Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek, who visited the prototypes last Friday. “We have to do this day in and day out in order to meet the goals of providing enough housing for every Oregonian in this state. Because that is the long-term solution to end homelessness.”
On her first full day in office last month, Kotek signed an executive order setting a new housing construction target of 36,000 units per year — an 80% increase over current production — in a bid to address the state’s housing shortage.
Mass timber has yet to be widely adopted for affordable housing construction. While Oregon seeks to change that, some environmentalists have expressed concern that increased logging could lead to deforestation if not managed sustainably, which could add to global warming.
Mass timber is made from layers of wood that are stacked, often in perpendicular layers, then compressed and fastened together to make large panels or beams. Already popular in Europe, where it was developed in the 1990s, mass timber is gaining
ground in the U.S. The tallest mass timber building in the world, the 25-story Ascent MKE building, opened in Milwaukee last summer, surpassing Norway’s 18-story Mjostarnet tower.
Proponents of mass timber say it uses less energy and emits less carbon than concrete and steel. They also claim it can help reduce wildfire risk, as the material can be made of the smaller trees in a forest’s underbrush. And they point to the rural jobs the industry can create.
The Oregon Mass Timber Coalition received a $41 million federal grant in 2022 to help finance the construction of the housing factory at the Port of Portland. Members of the coalition, made up of government agencies and Oregon universities, say the factory would make it easier to produce prefabricated homes.
“The beauty of it is, you can cut the openings required for electrical and plumbing and stuff like that,” said Iain MacDonald, director of the TallWood Design Institute, a member of the coalition. “And you
can do all that on a computer-controlled machine in the factory. Then when you get to the job site, it’s a really fast assembly. It’s basically an assembly operation rather than a construction operation.”
The TallWood Design Institute is a collaboration between the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
Producing more factory homes also would allow the state to ramp up housing despite a labor shortage that’s seized the manufacturing and construction industries, MacDonald said.
But some environmental groups say cutting down more trees will release more carbon and reduce forests’ ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
“The business has gone toward clear cutting, spraying, replanting and cutting them down 35 years later,” said Sean Stevens, executive director of conservation organization Oregon Wild. “When you do that 40-year rotation, you never let them get to that point where they could really contribute to storing more carbon. You’re treating it like a crop at that point.”