Gov. Tina Kotek's middle-housing bill this session will undergo changes, she said.

Gov. Tina Kotek said a housing-production bill she’s championing this session will drop a provision that would have made it easier to demolish historic homes.

While the bulk of the bill is aimed at expanding medium-density home construction in new and existing neighborhoods, 15 words in House Bill 2138 — calling on the Land Conservation and Development Commission to adopt rules “Repealing requirements for demolition review for houses listed in the National Register of Historic Places” — generated hundreds of pages of testimony.

Many in opposition appeared to respond to an emailed alert from the Architectural Heritage Center, which showed a Hitachi excavator shredding into a residence on Southeast Belmont and 28th Avenue in Portland. The center encouraged testimony in favor of more middle housing generally, but to remove the section on demolition review.

Members of pro-housing group Portland Neighbors Welcome, meanwhile, countered that establishing historic districts “are merely ways that neighborhood associations attempt to control development and growth in their beautiful neighborhoods.”

By Monday morning, when Kotek convened a press conference to tout her bill, she said that she supported dropping the demo-review language from HB 2138.

The bill broadly aims to ease the way for townhomes, triplexes and other so-called middle housing, building upon 2019’s HB 2001, which legalized those homes across single-family neighborhoods throughout most of Oregon’s communities.

Changes contemplated in HB 2138, such as allowing middle housing in unincorporated land in urban areas, would ease the way for thousands of new units, Matthew Tschabold, Kotek’s housing and homelessness initiative director, told the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness later Monday.

The bill would also allow middle housing on lots with existing homes, and let them be attached or detached, Tschabold said, giving developers more flexibility.

But as for the historic homes language, Tschabold reiterated what his boss said earlier in the day, noting it would go in an upcoming amendment.