Street roots., April 13, 2018, Page 8, Image 8

Page 8
Street Roots • April 13-19, 2018
Rural Housing
Oregon
BY AM A N D A W ALDROUPE
S T A F F W R IT E R
BEND, OREGON - Sarah Kelley is
exponentially busier than she was four years
ago.
Kelley is the executive director of Thrive
Central Oregon, a nonprofit based in
Redmond that helps impoverished people
access services they need to become more
self-sufficient, including free clothing for
school-aged children, emergency food boxes
to help food stamps stretch, and providing
assistance with utility payments.
When Thrive opened in 2014, Kelley saw
less than a dozen clients a month. The
nonprofit now helps 175 people each month,
Kelley said, and 80 percent of Thrive’s work
now revolves around a single issue: helping
■ clients find affordable
housing.
The majority of
Thrive’s clients live on
tight incomes: seniors
and disabled people on
fixed, monthly Social
Security benefits,
single parents, and the
working poor - people
who have one or
multiple jobs, often on
minimum wage, getting paycheck to
paycheck.
Ten years ago, Kelley said, she could find
a studio apartment that would rent for $400
a month. Even seven years ago, she could
find such an apartment.
That is no longer the case.
“We rationally plan out their
homelessness,” Kelley said.
That sounds cold-hearted, but Kelley is
being pragmatic.
n Central Oregon - Deschutes, Jefferson
and Crook Counties - the recession
brought construction to a halt, and workers
in the industry moved away. That stagnant
housing market was followed by rapid
population growth and a booming economy,
pushing housing costs to far beyond wages.
The vacancy rate for both rental and for-sale
housing is estimated to be between zero and
1 percent. Between 2011 and 2016, Bend
and Prineville had some of the fastest
growing rents in the country, with average
rental increases of 54 percent and 46
percent, respectfully.
For decades, Central Oregon has
undergone demographic and cultural
changes of breathtaking magnitude. Since
I
Poverty - with a view
I
grew by 8.1 percent. Wages grew by 3
percent.
The economy has diversified, with growth
in construction, manufacturing, health care,
high tech, biotech, brewing and distilling,
and the construction of Facebook data
centers. Oregon State University continues
to expand its Cascade campus, and Bend’s
downtown core, like Redmond and Sister’s
main streets, bustle with residents and
tourists alike visiting breweries, restaurants,
art galleries and coffee shops.
But the benefits of those changes are not
available to everyone.
Part One: The Cities in the Desert
Once a rural timber and agricultural
region, Central Oregon is now beset with
a housing shortage and an increase in
homelessness. How will the region
respond as it continues to grow?
the 1990s, Deschutes County has been one
of the nation’s fastest growing counties, with
more than 100,000 people moving to the
area between 1990 and 2015. That’s a
population increase of 230 percent.
The region is no longer completely rural
and dominated by a timber industry. New
residents are drawn to the region’s quality
of life, natural beauty and recreational
activities. Bend, with a population
approaching 100,000, acts as a hub to the
smaller, still rural towns that are all
interdependent.
City governments have been aggressive,
enacting multiple policies to incentivize
more housing construction, but there is still
a shortage: Bend alone lacks 4,700 units
affordable to households earning less than
$25,000 per year. Government and public
policy officials vocally fear that if that
shortage persists, Central Oregon will
become a place where anyone who is poor
or working-class cannot afford to live.
Homelessness is on the rise, and the lack
of shelters and supportive housing has
forced the vast majority of homeless people
to camp in the juniper forests surrounding
their hometowns.
“We have had housing crunches in the
past, but this is the biggest one we’ve had,”
said Scott Aycock, the community and
economic development manager of the
Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council
(COIC), an interregional governmental body.
“It’s getting everyone’s attention.”
COIC’s most recent five-year
Comprehensive Economic Development
Strategy, approved in August 2017, identified
housing affordability and availability as the
region’s top priority in order to ensure
sustained economic growth.
Today, the Great
Recession is a thing
of the past. In 2016,
,
according to the
most recent data
-
from the Bureau of
Economic Analysis,
the local gross
;
domestic product
About this series
This article is part of Street Roots’ Housing Rural Oregon series,
and is the first in a package of stories looking into Central
Oregon. Street Roots received funding from Meyer Memorial Trust’s Affordable
Housing Initiative to develop dedicated reporting on rural housing issues. Read
previous articles from the series at news.streetroots.org/ruralhousing
W " at does it mean to rationally plan out
V V a person’s homelessness? To Kelley, it
means looking at the different options
available to each person.
It can take up to two years for someone
on the waiting list to receive a Section 8
voucher, which pays two-thirds of the rent
for qualifying low-income people. That,
Kelley said, becomes the “long-term plan.”
In the meantime, she sits down with
clients and asks - can you get into a shelter?
Is there family you can live with? Could you
find a housemate on Craigslist?
According to the 2017 point in time count
published by the region’s Homeless
Leadership Coalition, there are 1,455
people living homeless or “precariously
housed” in the Central Oregon counties of
Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson. One out of
3 are unsheltered, meaning they camp or
live in their car.
Still, those figures are widely considered
low. The count’s methodology relies on
people appearing in person at social
services agencies, food kitchens and other
places homeless people
frequent on the days of
the count. So, the
count’s numbers do not
necessarily reflect the
large numbers of
people thought to camp
in the outskirts of town,
including the estimated
400 people thought to
be camping east of
Antler Avenue in
Redmond.
There are few shelter
options available for Central Oregon’s
homeless. The Bethlehem Inn and the
Shepherd’s Door are the only year-round
shelters in Central Oregon, and both offer
less than 100 beds a piece. The homeless