Bend’s affordable housing squeeze ‘abysmal’

Affordable housing is one of the High Desert’s most pressing problems.

“Our vacancy rate is still abysmal,” Jim Long, the city’s director of affordable housing, said Thursday.

The group Bend 2030 released a survey on Wednesday with sobering results. A total of 1,149 people participated in the survey.

“Everyone agreed it’s a really critical problem, and they offered some really tangible solutions,” said Erin Foote Marlowe, vice-chair with Bend 2030.

The survey allowed participants also to write down their affordable housing stories.

“And they’re heartbreaking,” Marlowe said. “They are, you know, a family with a mom and a dad who are both working one or more jobs who cannot find a home in this community. They’re not looking for dirt-cheap housing. They’re looking for a $1,200 home a month — and we don’t have it.”

Over the years, rents in Central Oregon have gone up while wages have stagnated. What is the solution? The city of Bend has several apartment projects for lower-income families in the works, but will that be enough?

“You’re never going to have enough affordable housing,” Long said. “We’re always in the process of creating new housing. We’re always going to be in the process of acquiring new land. This is never going to end.”

Nevertheless, Bend 2030’s survey has some specific suggestions on how to alleviate the housing crisis.

“We saw the community say that they would actually be willing to have a small fee on their water and sewer bills to help offset the cost of affordable housing,” Marlowe said. “We see a lot of support of expansion of the UGB (urban growth boundary), and we see a lot of support for more density in the core of downtown.”