Some Central Oregon Candidates Take "Pledge" to Help Build More Housing. Others are Skeptical. - The Source

A series of local election forums in Deschutes County this year have all ended the same way: with a pledge.

During the housing-focused forums hosted by a development advocacy group, candidates for city or county offices respond to questions on how they plan to reduce obstacles to construction and lower the cost of housing.

Then, a moderator with Central Oregon Daily News reads a pledge and asks candidates to raise their hands and sign a bulletin board in support.

Affordable housing is under construction in northeast Redmond as part of a 450-home neighborhood made possible by tweaks to urban growth boundary planning rules.

“If elected, I pledge to advance policies that ensure housing is affordable, accessible and stable for everyone in our community, make my decisions through a pro-housing lens, including calculating the impact to housing cost and availability for each of the policies I support, and transparently reporting the cost impact of policies to the community, take bold action to address land availability, housing costs and housing supply, and promotion of diverse housing types.”

Earlier this year, Bend City Council and Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners candidates raised their hands in support.

But an Oct. 5 forum in Redmond was different.

The seven mayor and city council candidates on the panel didn’t move, and the room grew quiet.

Housing affordability remains a top issue in Central Oregon’s local elections. Bend and the surrounding area still have some of the highest home prices in the state, and thousands of people are homeless. Advocacy and industry groups say a new “housing pledge” is a tool to urge candidates to take the issue of reducing costs seriously. While most running for office this year are on board, some feel signing the pledge binds decision makers to an agenda that favors housing construction above all else.

Redmond candidates have said they’re committed to making housing affordable, but the pledge goes too far.

“The pledge basically said that we would do everything in our power to build new housing,” said Tobias Colvin, a candidate for Redmond City Council, in an interview. “When you make pledges that are absolute like that, it doesn’t leave room for other competing, either monetary or other things that we want to do in the City.”

“I do support everything that was said on the pledge, but I just won’t make an absolute pledge,” Colvin added.

The forums are run by a group called Partners for Affordable Housing, founded, according to its website, as a nonprofit in 2010 by members of the Central Oregon Builders Association. But it grew into a broader coalition to include Central Oregon’s largest home building companies, affordable housing developers, homeless shelter providers, construction worker and nurse unions, community groups and others. The organization’s website describes its mission as “educating the public on bold solutions that increase housing supply and lower costs in Central Oregon.”

The state has set targets for Central Oregon cities to build thousands of new homes each year, including a certain portion attainable to lower incomes. But the Redmond City Council hasn’t always aligned with the state’s housing agenda. Earlier this year, Redmond faced enforcement from the state’s Housing Accountability and Production Office over requirements for alley setbacks and parking for townhome developments. The state’s involvement was initiated by a complaint from COBA, which called the code changes a “production killer.”

Eliza Wilson is the executive director of Rooted Homes, an affordable housing developer and partner in the coalition. She said she’s “very proud” of the work Redmond has done to address housing costs.

Wilson said the pledge is, “really less about people going along with anything and more about, how do we encourage our elected officials to be thinking about housing when they’re making these other decisions.”

Rick Russell, a homelessness nonprofit leader who will soon serve as county commissioner, said he doesn’t think the pledge will limit his ability to make free decisions later on.

Candidates for the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners participate in a Partners for Affordable Housing Forum in April. Credit: Partners for Affordable Housing

“Housing affordability is the top issue on local voters’ minds and something I work on every day,” Russell said in a text message to the Source. “I signed it because the pledge asks for things I’d hold myself to anyway — measuring how each policy impacts housing costs and reporting that openly.”

This year, the Political Action Committee for Cascades East Association of Realtors added the same housing pledge to the application candidates fill out to ask for campaign funding or endorsements. Cascades East is a trade group representing the real estate industry and a founding member of the affordable housing group.

The language for the realtors’ pledge is virtually identical to the one recited at the Partners for Affordable Housing forums, only with the order of sentences swapped. Cascades East government affairs director Morgan Greenwood sits on the steering committee for Partners of Affordable Housing. She said the affordable housing coalition’s pledge was not copied from the realtor PAC. Instead, it was the other way around, with the realtor PAC copying the pledge developed in meetings among affordable housing coalition members.

“We wanted to make sure that as we interviewed candidates, we were as closely aligned with our objectives as a member of Partners (for Affordable Housing) as possible,” Greenwood told the Source.

The realtor group is consistently a top spender in local elections. The PAC has spent nearly $70,000 to back the campaigns of eight candidates this election cycle. According to its website, the Cascades East PAC aims to support “pro-housing and pro-business candidates in city and county elections who recognize real estate as a valuable part of the local economy, will fight for the real estate industry, and support private property rights.”

While signing pledge isn’t required, the realtors’ application form says refusing could hurt a candidate’s chances of getting support.

Redmond City Council candidate Tobias Colvin refused to sign the housing pledge from both the affordable housing group and the realtors. Still, he received $5,000 in campaign contributions from the PAC.