On Saturday, June 4 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., the Bend Livability Conference will have some interesting housing sessions on affordable housing. The conference will have many speakers including representatives from local government addressing the urban growth boundary and related issues, the need for affordable housing, and even a session on tiny homes, cottage […]
affordable housing
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Affordable Housing via Community Land Trusts
Community land trusts develop affordable housing on land held in trust by a non-profit housing organization. Portland has such a program called Proud Ground that has provided affordable housing since 1998. Many of us are familiar with community land trusts that are conservation oriented, but the housing ones are conservational to the extent that often […]
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Dear Tenant, You Must Vacate the Premises
Many fear homelessness awaits them
In a quickly gentrifying neighborhood in northwest Bend, just a few blocks from Newport Avenue Market, the 44 people who call the Fireside Lodge Condominiums home will soon be without a basic human need: shelter. Bend’s affordable housing crisis is no longer down the road somewhere in the distant future for them. As market values […]
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Oregon Legislature Adjourns
Minimum wage increase is hallmark of 2016 legislative session
SALEM – The Oregon Legislature adjourned the 2016 legislative session “sine die” yesterday, three days before the March 6 constitutional deadline for adjournment. House Speaker Tina Kotek (D – N/NE Portland) released the following statement: “It has been an honor to serve Oregonians as the Speaker of our House of Representatives. Our elected leaders stepped […]
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City Moves Forward with SDC Exemptions for Affordable Housing
Side Notes 8/12-8/19
At its August 5 meeting, Bend City Council voted to move forward with an incentive plan aimed at encouraging the development of more affordable housing units. In its second and final vote, Council approved an ordinance that will waive some system development charges—the fees that help pay for infrastructure costs associated with new developments—for affordable […]
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Building Bend’s Future
Does the Urban Growth Boundary hold hope for affordable housing?
Bend has a housing problem—or, more precisely, with rental vacancy rates less than half a percent, an affordable housing shortage. And some city leaders believe that loosening up the Urban Growth Boundary could provide some relief from that chokehold. It is a basic theory that makes sense: Opening up more land for development will provide […]
Posted inOpinion
Letters 5/19-5/26
COUGARS AND DEER I’d like to address the recent cougar shootings in town. It seems that very little effort is being put toward the cause and too much into the symptom. Bend has a deer problem. I routinely have deer in my yard (I live on the west side of town near downtown). They never […]
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Tell Us How You Really Feel: Affordable Housing
It’s not news that Bend has a seriously lack of housing—especially of the affordable variety. But not everyone is in agreement about how to address the problem. We have some opinions of our own, of course, but we want to know what you think. Take our poll below, and if you have ideas not represented […]
Posted inOpinion
Letters 5/5-5/12
LOUD BIKES SUCKLoud bikes suck. If you ride one, you are trash. We should all be pestering the Bend City Council to enact and enforce an ordinance to target loud bikes. There will be the “hard to enforce” excuse for not acting. But, really, it’s as easy as requiring and enforcing the presence of the […]
Posted inOpinion
Building the Big Picture
At last week’s City Council meeting, the debate over how to manage short-term rentals began to take more focus when City Council voted unanimously to support the first reading of ordinances that include a new short-term rental licensing program and changes to land use code that limit the concentration of what are frequently referred to […]