Tag Archives: Affordable Housing

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

The City of Bend is changing the rules for cottage clusters, dorm-style group living and quadplexes to address Bend’s housing crisis. The chief underlying cause (of the housing shortage) is the ongoing low levels of new construction this decade. On a population growth-adjusted basis, Oregon built fewer new housing units this decade than we have […]
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Commentary: The rent crisis won’t go away without more housing

San Francisco, an archetype of the urban housing affordability crisis, appears to have decided that enough is enough. Proposition E, a ballot measure that will be voted on in March and is widely predicted to pass, will tie construction of new office space in the city to building subsidized, affordable housing. Source: Commentary: The rent […]
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Our View: RV living a sign of the times

With the North Coast’s affordable housing crisis in full swing, it is hard to defend Clatsop County’s rule about recreational vehicle living. The rule restricts people from living in their campers, trailers and other recreational vehicles to no more than 30 days out of a 90-day period. Simple question: Where are they going to spend […]
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Attack the housing crunch by building

It sounds simple enough. Economics 101: When a commodity is in short supply and demand is high, the price goes up. If it rises too high for consumers to afford it, make more of it and the price will come down. But when the commodity is housing — and the construction industry took a beating […]
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Editorial: Legislature has much to do about Oregon housing

You’d think Oregon legislators would get around soon to some of the deeper housing challenges for the state. Yes, the Legislature put in place caps on rent increases for apartments. And it has compelled statewide zoning changes to allow denser development where only single-family housing once stood. Lawmakers also have allowed affordable housing to be […]
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Housing affordability worsened in Oregon in last decade with low construction rates

Despite Oregon’s strong economy, a state economist called the last a decade a “disappointment” as the state recovers from the Great Recession. Despite Oregon’s widespread housing shortage, the amount of housing built in the state during the last decade reached a record low. That was one of the unexpected conclusions state economist Josh Lehner included […]
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Editorial: Review rent for affordable housing

When the Oregon Legislature passed its rent control limits last year, there was what seemed, at first, to be an odd exception. The law did not include affordable housing. That’s because affordable housing already has federal limits. And in Oregon, the state already has additional regulations for rent control for affordable housing. Source: Editorial: Review […]
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Editorial: No easy answers to housing problems

Ben Carson, secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, talks about the homelessness problems plaguing California and Oregon are as if they could be solved, and quickly, if only we’d try harder. Unfortunately, it isn’t lack of effort that’s at issue. Source: Editorial: No easy answers to housing problems | Opinion | […]
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Leading Tenants Rights Group Supports Requiring Affordable Housing Developers to Follow State Caps on Rent Increases

Senate Bill 608 capped rent increases at no more than 10 percent a year, but it exempted affordable housing developers. A leading tenants rights group, Community Alliance of Tenants, is calling for closing the loophole that allows affordable housing landlords to raise monthly rents more steeply than what is allowed under the state’s newly passed […]
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America’s love affair with the single-family house is slowly cooling

Zoning restrictions are being lifted to address affordability, racism and environmental destruction. For decades, land-use regulation across the U.S. has emphasized single-family houses on large lots. This approach has priced many people out of the quintessential American dream: home ownership. It also has promoted suburban sprawl — a pattern of low-density, car-dependent development that has […]
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