Founder

After moving to Portland in 1994 as a construction supervisor with Habitat for Humanity, Eli Spevak managed the finance and construction of over 250 units of affordable housing through work in the non-profit sector. He served on the board of Portland’s community land trust for its first 5 years and worked with residents of Dignity Village, a self-built homeless camp, during its first two. After taking a year off to work as a backcountry ranger, Eli launched a development and general contractor company, Orange Splot LLC, to pioneer new models of community-oriented housing, ideally within an easy bike ride of his house. Completed projects have been featured in the New York Times and Sunset Magazine – and his most recent community, Cully Grove, just received a 2016 AIA Housing Award. He’s led tiny house bike tours, advocated for regulatory changes to support accessory dwellings, and co-founded the www.accessorydwellings.org website. Eli was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in the 2013-2014 school year. Since then, he’s participated in Portland’s Residential Infill Project to reform zoning in single dwelling areas, co-founded an advocacy organization (Portland for Everyone) to support diverse, abundant and affordable housing, and he is past chair of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission (and still serves). He continues to launch new communities and hopes they go well enough to fund his policy habit.