What's the most promising solution to Bend's affordable housing crisis?

2 Comments

  • Dave Morgan - 9 years ago

    Other options include aggressive Urban Renewal for larger areas of town. Make urban renewal projects mixed-land use - going up, not out so much. Cities are legion for focusing urban renewal on highly tax lucrative commercial and industrial land uses. That helps CITY HALL, landowners and developers. But it doesn't do squat for meeting the demand for affordable housing. By including affordable housing in mixed-land use urban renewal projects - affordable housing can be managed by a 501C3, and make affordable housing dollars go farther. Playing with SDC's just come back to bite you bad. And forgiving SDCs doesn't help that much anyway. We need to use public financing for affordable housing...not just with the left-overs from private sector funds. Inclusionary zoning is okay but it's more of a band-aid than a real commitment to providing housing for a VERY LARGE SECTOR of our community. We bond for roads, we should also be setting aside some of that bonding capacity for affordable housing. Those bond proceeds could be leveraged with other private and public funding sources. And the design of public housing needs to be give an innovative push. Not just cheap boxes that are hard on the senses. We can and must do better. It's done intelligently elsewhere in the country and in many cities and towns around the world. We just have to find the will to commit to it.

  • Anon - 9 years ago

    Inclusionary housing aka inclusionary zoning.

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