Housing Voices

09/15/2026

The First Thing He Fixed Wasn't Housing. It Was the Meeting Start Time.

Albany Mayor Alex Johnson II walked in with a list of 15 things to fix, and housing was third. Number one was city council meetings. They started at 7:15 and the last bus ran at 7:30, so anyone without a car was shut out before public comment began. There was also no time limit — he describes eight people reading an eight-page letter while seniors waited their turn and people with morning shifts sat there doing the math.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish know the friend who pushed him into it — Liz Irish called him into her office and told him to get off the pot. He talks about running against the incumbent, winning by more than 70 percent, and walking home from the bowling alley on election night to avoid a DUI photo, only to turn onto his cul-de-sac and find every neighbor standing in his driveway. "What did I just do?"

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/INXedhVkrk4

09/14/2026

Farmed for 50 Years, Still Zoned as a Wetland

Ryan McAllister, President of Girding Builders, says Oregon's land use process takes longer than it should, especially when a buildable property gets flagged for wetlands, pulling in multiple agencies like the Department of State Lands and the Army Corps of Engineers, the latter with no required timeline to even respond. One recent project in Linn County waited nearly a year for an answer.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish hear his frustration with land that's been farmed for 50-plus years but still carries a wetland designation on the map, and his case for streamlining that review without skipping it.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/c3neU9huyfk

09/14/2026

City vs. County: Who Actually Approves Your Project?

Ryan McAllister, President of Girding Builders, explains how a project's fate can hinge on where it sits: inside city limits, the city calls the shots; on the fringes, the county gets involved too. Counties tend to know rural development, cities know density, and plenty of counties even farm out plan review to the cities they surround.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish hear how messy it gets on annexed or county-adjacent land, where multiple jurisdictions have to sort out whose rules even apply.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/c3neU9huyfk

09/13/2026

Title: From Idea to Move-In: Why Apartments Take Three Years to Build | HV17 Short5

Ryan McAllister, President of Girding Builders, lays out the real timeline behind a new apartment project: 14 to 16 months just for drawings and permitting, then another 16 to 18 months of construction, three years start to finish for a project of 100-plus units. And that's the normal case; he's seen a 130-unit affordable housing project take five years from idea to ribbon-cutting.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish can't quite believe that timeline for just 130 units, and neither, really, can he.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/c3neU9huyfk

09/13/2026

New Apartments, No Power: The Grid Bottleneck No One Saw Coming

Ryan McAllister, President of Girding Builders, walks through what it actually takes to turn a piece of land into apartments: zoning, density limits, setbacks, utility coordination, and flags a constraint that didn't even exist a decade ago: power. He describes waiting up to 80 weeks for a transformer, leaving finished, rentable units sitting empty for months.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish are floored by just how new, and how disruptive, that power-grid bottleneck has been for builders since 2022.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/c3neU9huyfk

09/11/2026

09/11/2026

Why Builders Are Scared to Build Condos

Ryan McAllister, President of Girding Builders, explains why condos, despite creating real ownership and equity, are so rarely built: with dozens of individual owners each able to file a claim over a 10-year window, the liability is nearly untenable, and the insurance to cover it, a "wrap policy," is expensive enough to price projects out on its own.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish hear about one possible fix in the works, shortening that statute of limitations from 10 years to 6, and about the appeal and the challenges of converting old office buildings into condos instead.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/c3neU9huyfk

09/10/2026

Where Did All the Starter Homes Go?

Ryan McAllister, President of Girding Builders, says his real goal isn't just more affordable housing, it's getting first-time buyers into a home so they can start building equity instead of just paying rent. Bre Irish feels the gap firsthand: turning 30 with no starter homes on the market, and an entry point into homeownership that now looks more like $400,000 and up.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish talk through what it means to be stuck at the first rung of the ladder, maxed out on rent, with nothing left to save, heading toward retirement with no equity to show for it.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/c3neU9huyfk

09/09/2026

Representative David Gomberg explains why Oregon's road funding is squeezed from both directions: the cost of maintaining highways keeps climbing while gas tax revenue keeps falling, because more drivers are in fuel-efficient or electric vehicles buying less gas. The legislature's fix was a 6-cent gas tax increase, quickly referred to the ballot by petition, paired with a new system charging electric vehicle owners either an annual fee or a per-mile rate.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish get into just how tricky it is to raise any tax, even one meant to fix roads everyone uses.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/2F6CgTj-fGE