## Facts

- Metro, a regional government, was required by ORS 197.296 and ORS 197.299 to maintain and timely provide a 20-year supply of buildable residential land.
- Metro identified a need for additional affordable housing and treated the Stafford–Rosemont area as a subregion in evaluating how to address that need.
- Metro adopted an ordinance expanding the urban growth boundary (UGB) by about 830 acres in portions of three urban reserve study areas within the Rosemont area.
- Metro’s alternatives analysis largely focused on land within or adjacent to the Stafford–Rosemont subregion, rather than considering potential locations across the broader region.
- Petitioners (including the Rosemont Property Owners Association) challenged LUBA’s remand of Metro’s UGB amendment; the Cities of Lake Oswego and West Linn cross-petitioned, arguing the remand should have required a broader Goal 14 alternatives analysis.

## Issues

1. Whether Statewide Planning Goal 14 allows Metro to define a housing need on a subregional basis.
2. Whether Goal 14 permits Metro to limit the alternatives analysis for meeting a subregional housing need to sites within or near that subregion, rather than evaluating reasonable alternatives inside the UGB and, if necessary, outside the UGB under ORS 197.298 priorities.
3. Whether LUBA applied the correct standard in remanding Metro’s UGB amendment for compliance with Goal 14’s requirements for comparing alternative areas and addressing conversion factors.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed LUBA on the petition for review, rejecting petitioners’ contention that remand was unwarranted.
- The court reversed and remanded on the cities’ cross-petition, holding that LUBA did not require a sufficiently broad alternatives analysis under Goal 14.
- The court held Metro may identify a subregional housing need, but may not confine the alternatives analysis to that subregion when deciding whether to amend the UGB.

## Legal Principles

- Goal 14 may accommodate identification of a geographically localized (subregional) housing need.
- Goal 14 requires a comparative evaluation of alternative areas; a planning authority may not treat a subregional boundary as a categorical limit that excludes otherwise reasonable alternatives from consideration.
- Before expanding a UGB, the decision-maker must evaluate whether the identified need can reasonably be accommodated on land already inside the UGB, using an alternatives review not artificially limited to a single subarea.
- If expansion beyond the UGB is necessary, alternative sites outside the UGB must be considered using Goal 14 locational factors and the statutory priority scheme in ORS 197.298, without restricting the inquiry to a chosen subregion.
- Proximity to a subregion where a need is identified may be a comparative factor, but it cannot substitute for the required broader alternatives analysis.

## Conclusion

The court held that Metro could define a housing need at a subregional scale, but Goal 14 required Metro to consider reasonable alternative locations more broadly—first across land inside the UGB, and then, if needed, among lands outside the UGB under ORS 197.298—so LUBA’s remand was affirmed but expanded on cross-petition.


Residents of Rosemont v. Metro, 173 Or. App. 321, 21 P.3d 1108 (Or. Ct. App. 2001)