Bend, ORE – Monday, August 4, 2025 – Roundabout Books will host Jonathan Bach, raised in Bend, to discuss his new book, “High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the American West”, grown out of his 2021 “Portland Business Journal” article about Bend’s runaway housing market. The event takes place at Roundabout Books on Sept 4 at 6:30 pm.
[Read Bach’s May 16 interview with the Source.]
Nestled against the Cascade Mountains, former lumber town Bend, Oregon, entices residents who long to live in a wonderland of sagebrush and forests. But like so many other communities across the West, Bend has too few homes for everyone clambering for access. In “High Desert, Higher Costs”, Jonathan Bach takes a closer look at the housing crisis in this mid-sized city that is both the population center for rural Central Oregon and a major recreation area. Bach uses Bend as a lens into the growing housing crisis in the region, where residents and tourists alike prize access to outdoor recreation, and housing issues have been brewing for decades.
Like other cities in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado, Bend serves as a gateway to popular natural areas while also experiencing a limited amount of new housing, increasing populations, amenity migrants in the age of remote work, depressed or stagnating wages, and a widening gulf between homeowners and renters. High Desert, Higher Costs introduces us to regular people—from the former political candidate evicted during COVID-19 to the nonprofit worker hoping to build apartments for the houseless—who struggle to call Bend home. Bach explores the causes of these issues and the political, legal, economic, and cultural factors influencing them, and also offers potential solutions for current and future residents to build their lives now, and in the years to come, in Bend and throughout the American West.
Jonathan Bach covers housing and commercial real estate for the Oregonian. He previously wrote for the Portland Business Journal, where his reporting on home-lending disparities received an honorable mention from the nonprofit Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bach has been recognized by the 2019 and 2021 Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest and by the SABEW 2021 Best in Business Awards. Jonathan lives with his wife, Makenna, near Portland, Oregon.
The purchase of “High Desert, Higher Cost: Bend and the Housing Crisis of the American West” or $5 is your entry ticket. Books and tickets can be purchased through Roundabout Books’ website here, via telephone at 541-306-6564, or in the store. The event will be held at Roundabout Books & Cafe in Bend. For further information, please contact Roundabout Books’ Event Manager, Julie Swearingen, at julie@roundaboutbookshop.com.
Roundabout Books & Cafe is a full-service independent bookstore, located in the heart of Bend’s Northwest Crossing Community. The staff takes tremendous pride in their highly curated selection of new adult and children’s books. Local Bend resident, Cassie Clemans, founded Roundabout Books with a vision of enhancing the life of our community by providing a warm and comfortable literary space where people of all ages are welcome to read, browse, shop for books, meet a friend, or enjoy an event.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 31, 2025.
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“But like so many other communities across the West, Bend has too few homes for everyone clambering for access.”
This is changing…….rapidly. The City of Bend and Brooks Resources are working with crooked developers and have plans for 30,000 more homes. Most of them on the West side that was once outside of an urban growth boundary.
They are ruining Bend. It doesn’t have to be this way. In 10 years, you won’t be able to find anyone who lived here before 1999.