Street Roots • April 13-19, 2018
R u r a l H o u s in g
Page 9
CENTRAL OREGON
BY AMANDA WALDROUPE
STAFF W R ITER
BEND, OREGON - Nearly seven years
ago, Preston Callicott, the CEO of Bend-
based software company Five Talent
Software, offered a job to a software
developer. The man moved from out of
state to Bend, along with his wife and
baby.
When Callicott asked the employee
how he was settling into life in Central
Oregon, Callicott was shocked by the
answer. The employee had not been able
to find a home that was both affordable
and fit his family’s needs. They had been
living in a hotel for weeks.
Callicott and his family decided to take
an impromptu vacation. While they were
away, the new employee and his family
lived in Callicott’s home while they
continued searching for a home of their
own.
Callicott is not the only employer in
Central Oregon to hear stories of their
well-paid employees not being able to find
housing. The shortage of housing in
Central Oregon has begun to affect the
recruitment and retainment of workers, a
problem that employers and economic
region’s long-term economic health.
people who stay in the shelters must be
sober when they arrive and cannot bring
their pets with them.
So, finding housemates via Craigslist, in a
town where people are used to living
independently “becomes a nice enough
option. Better than shelter, better than
camping,” Kelley said.
Those various options get stitched
together - shelter for a few months, a
housemate situation for a few months, “to
fill the gap between homelessness and their
own apartment,” she said.
“People come in thinking they’re going to
be living in a tent for a year and a half,”
Kelley said. “It ends up feeling hopeful.”
Central Oregon’s current housing crisis
has its roots in the recession.
Unemployment surged to 25 percent.
Nearly all housing construction ceased -
between 2009 and 2012, no permits for
multi-family housing were issued; less than
100 permits for single-family homes were
issued each year in Bend during that time.
The region’s population, however,
continued to grow: 3,100 people moved to
Deschutes County during the recession.
Housing construction began to rebound
in 2012 and the housing
crisis Central Oregon
experiences today is a
classic story of supply
and demand.
Since 2012,
according to a
report by economic
consulting firm
ECONorthwest, the median price
of homes has grown, on average,
by 14 percent each year in Bend.
The median sale price of a home
in Bend, according to the
DESCHUTES COUNTY
“We can’t compete with other regions
that have more housing available or that’s
cheaper,” Scott Aycock, the community
and economic development manager of
the intergovernmental group Central
housing shortage has made COIC realize
that affordable housing is key to
economic development.
“If we care about people’s ability to
stay in their jobs, they need housing,”
Aycock said. “Employers understand that
... if their employees have insecure
housing, the businesses have insecure
employees.”
“Workforce housing” is a term often
used to describe housing, whether rental
or owned, that is affordable to middle
class workers. Typically, workforce
housing is considered affordable to
people who make between 60 to 100
percent of an area’s median, or average,
income. In Central Oregon, workforce
housing is considered affordable for
families who earn between 80 and 175
percent of area median income (AMI), or
between $40,000 and $90,000 a year.
People whose incomes fall within that
range make up the majority of Bend’s
Redmond-based real estate company Beacon
Appraisal Group, was $418,000 in 2017, a 39
percent increase from 2016. In Redmond,
home sale prices increased by 52 percent,
to $306,000. In Sisters, a town with the
population of about 2,600 people, the
median home price is $365,000.
“If you see something (for sale) in the
mid-two hundreds, it’s pending within an
hour,” Brant Kucera, the city manager of
Sisters, said. “It’s nuts.”
According to The ECONorthwest report,
a homebuyer would need to make
approximately $81,000 a year to afford an
average-priced home in Bend. The city’s
median income is $59,400.
“Nobody has that,” Jim Long, the former
manager of Bend’s affordable housing
program, said.
For renters, the prospects of finding
affordable housing are equally grim, if not
more so. Nearly 80 percent of renters are
rent burdened, meaning more than
a third of their incomes go
toward rent.
The vacancy rate is
considered to be less than
1 percent. Rent for a one-
known as “filtering,” in which older
homes, once sold for high prices,
depreciate in value and become available
to middle“ and lower-income earners.
The ECONorthwest report, which
provides an overview of the mid-market
housing landscape in Bend, said that
filtering can no longer provide an
adequate supply of workforce housing in
Central Oregon, given the region’s huge
population increases and rising housing
costs.
The existence of a healthy supply of
workforce housing is considered to play a
lynch-pin like role in an area’s housing
supply, and for good reason: when it is in
short supply, the entire housing market is
pressured: people whose earnings are on
the lower spectrum will likely rent
cheaper housing, which in turn affects
See WORKFORCE, page 11
bedroom apartment in Bend can be as high
as $1,200 a month, exceeding what the
median renter can afford.
ears ago, Central Oregon was a place
where housing was affordable, and even
people in poverty could get by. For families
that have experienced poverty for
generations, today’s housing crisis poses a
new threat.
Jennifer Summerton is an advocate with
the Family Access Network (FAN), a social
service agency that provides basic needs to
school children and their families.
“Everything,” Summerton said. “It’s the
gamut of whatever they face.”
That can be as simple as getting free
school supplies or clothes to applying for
the Oregon Health Plan, finding a doctor or
a counselor, applying for utility or rental
assistance, or finding a new place to live.
Summerton, like other FAN
advocates, works in two schools; in
Summerton’s case, Redmond’s John
Tuck Elementary School and Tom
McCall Elementary School.
She is currently
working with a family of
six - two parents and
four children under the
age of 8 - who live in a
studio apartment.
Both parents work
full-time at
minimum wage jobs.
“It’s what they can afford and
what they can find,” she said.
Y
See RURAL HOUSING,
page 10
Living in poverty: 13.9 percent*
Mean renter wage: $13.06**
Renters paying more than half
their income in rent: 1 out of 4
Homeless: 687
Students experiencing
homelessness: 895 at some point
in the 2016-17 school year (School
counting criteria include couch-
surfers, and others in unstable living
situations)
BEND
Living in poverty: 12.4 percent
Homeless: 659
REDMOND
Living in poverty: 20 percent
Homeless: 329
SISTERS
Living in poverty: 15.4 percent
Homeless: 50
Living in poverty: 21.1 percent
Homeless: 169
CROOK COUNTY
Living in poverty: 17.7 percent
Mean renter wage: $14.85
Renters paying more than half
their income in rent:
1 out of 3
Homeless: 50
Students experiencing
homelessness: 81 at some point in
the 2016-17 school year
PRINEVILLE
Living in poverty: 25.7 percent
Homeless: 89
JEFFERSON COUNTY
Living in poverty: 20.3 percent
Mean renter wage: $11.45
Renters paying more than half
their income in rent:
1 out of 5
Homeless: 34
Students experiencing
homelessness: 140 at some point
in the 2016-17 school year
MADRAS
Living in poverty: 25.2 percent
Homeless: 58
Sources: 2012-16 American Community Survey
five-year estimates, Census Bureau
Oregon Housing Alliance
2017 Point in Time Homeless Count of sheltered
and unsheltered, not including those at risk of losing
housing (numbers are widely considered an undercount)