Urgent Solutions for Oregon’s Housing Crisis: How We Got Here and the Path Forward
It’s no secret that Oregon is in a housing crisis. But what does that mean?
Oregon has built too few homes for years – at least 140,000 too few – and researchers suggest we’ll need to build over a half million new housing units in the next 20 years to catch up. In fact, Oregon ranks 4th nationally in the underproduction of housing.
This shortage means more people need housing than there is housing available. This drives up the price for everyone. As a result, more than half of Oregon renters, and a fifth of homeowners, don’t have enough money after paying rent to afford other basics, including food, child care, internet access and transportation.
So how’d we get here? There are a lot of reasons. One is our land use system and its restrictions on how we can use land in Oregon. High taxes and burdensome regulations also discourage the building of naturally affordable homes.
However we got here, we need to find our way out so Oregon can become a more affordable place for folks to live, work, and raise a family. That’s why, when I got elected, I got to work on passing two historic, bipartisan housing packages that will begin the work of getting us out of the mess we are in.
These bills have dedicated millions to building affordable housing units for Oregonians struggling with the cost of housing, expanded the number of homeless shelter beds to get folks off the street, and even funded the preservation of housing for agricultural workers.
We won’t be able to subsidize our way out of the housing crisis. That’s why these packages included reforms to our land use system to encourage the development of more homes in our communities.
I am proud of my work on housing, and the bipartisan nature of these packages was a welcome reprieve from our often divisive politics. That’s why I was astounded to learn that my opponent, Salem City Councilor Virginia Stapleton, voted against an affordable housing complex that will house over 200 Salem families. She voted against the project because she feared residents would have to drive their cars to work.
I’m glad the Salem City Council overrode her no vote and passed the funding anyway, but there is a troubling trend in Virginia Stapleton’s record when it comes to understanding the struggle of working families. Before she opposed affordable housing projects, she was a vocal supporter of Salem’s payroll tax that would have taken $500 per year in wages from workers.
Working folks need a place to live, and they may also need to drive a car to get to work. We can address transportation concerns through more transit and highway development- not by refusing housing solutions.
I will continue to look for ways to make housing more affordable in Salem.