Business
AgLife
B
Thursday, January 20, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Summit
explores
state’s
wealth
gap
By JULES ROGERS
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — The Black
and Latino homeownership
rate is lower than average
across every age group, and
Black and Latino house-
holds see less generational
wealth, affecting indi-
vidual net worth. This is
true across the nation and
in Oregon, according to
industry experts.
This was one takeaway
from the 2022 Housing Eco-
nomic Summit, which fea-
tured nationally recognized
speakers as
well as local
experts in
the areas of
housing, regu-
lation and eco-
nomics and
Lee
a variety of
issues that will
impact housing
in Oregon
in 2022 and
beyond.
At the
Phan
summit, pre-
senter Alex-
andra Lee,
economist
with Zillow,
said that racial
disparities in
housing and
Vickers
wealth have
persisted for decades. Lee
said her research shows the
Black and Latino home-
ownership rate is about 30%
lower than white and Asian
homeownership rates in
Portland, and persists across
every age range.
“Because homeowner-
ship is lower in minority
households, that means less
opportunities for families to
build wealth through gains
in home equity,” Lee said.
“The lower homeownership
rate and home values among
Black and Latinx house-
holds to begin with further
contributes to cycles that
contribute to lower wealth
across generations. While
the wealth of white house-
holds continues to increase
significantly after primary
productive years, Black and
Latinx households see much
smaller gain across age.”
Homeownership makes
up a larger share of Black
household total assets, at
an average of of 68%, com-
pared to white households,
whose homeownership
makes up about 58% of all
assets, her research found.
“This means Black and
Latinx households have
a lot to gain, but a lot to
lose from continued dis-
parities because a lot of
their wealth is tied to their
home,” Lee said.
Lee’s research shows the
wealth gap between white
and Black households is at
$3 trillion.
“Those disparities are
in large part because of
disparities in the market,”
Lee said. “People of color
are more likely to be vic-
tims of predatory lending,
or not have credit history
at all. Credit history is the
No. 1 reason home loans
are denied to Black appli-
cants. Credit could be a
main driver in closing that
wealth gap.”
Lee said some insti-
tutions buck this trend,
and small lenders had
much lower denial rates
than medium and large
institutions.
See, Summit/Page B2
Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock/TownNews Content Exchange
The Biden administration plans to significantly expand efforts to stave off catastrophic wildfires that have torched areas of the U.S. West by more aggressively thinning forests
around areas called “hotspots” where nature and neighborhoods collide.
WILDFIRE FIGHT
Biden administration plans to
significantly increase efforts to stave
off catastrophic wildfires that have
been torching areas of the U.S. West
By MATTHEW BROWN
The Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. —
The Biden administra-
tion plans to significantly
expand efforts to stave
off catastrophic wildfires
that have torched areas
of the U.S. West by more
aggressively thinning for-
ests around areas called
“hotspots” where nature
and neighborhoods collide.
As climate change heats
up and dries out the West,
administration officials
said they have crafted a
$50 billion plan to more
than double the use of con-
trolled fires and logging
to reduce trees and other
vegetation that serves as
tinder in the most at-risk
areas.
They said work will
begin this year and the
plan will focus on regions
where out-of-control
blazes have wiped out
neighborhoods and some-
times entire communities
— including California’s
Sierra Nevada mountains,
the east side of the Rocky
Mountains in Colorado,
and portions of Arizona,
Oregon and Washington
state. Homes keep getting
built in fire-prone areas,
even as conditions that
stoke blazes get worse.
“You’re going to have
forest fires. The question is
how catastrophic do those
fires have to be,” Agri-
culture Sec. Tom Vilsack
told the Associated Press
in advance of a planned
public announcement of
the administration’s wild-
fire strategy at a Tuesday,
Jan. 18, event in Phoenix.
“The time to act is now
if we want to ultimately
over time change the tra-
jectory of these fires,” Vil-
sack said.
Specific projects weren’t
immediately released, and
it’s not clear who would
pay for the full scope of
work envisioned across
almost 80,000 square miles
— an area almost as large
as Idaho. Much of that area
is privately owned or con-
trolled by states or tribes.
Reaching that goal
would require an estimated
$20 billion over 10 years
for work on national for-
ests and $30 billion for
work on other federal,
state, tribal and private
lands, said Vilsack spokes-
person Kate Waters.
Vilsack acknowledged
that the new effort will also
require a “paradigm shift”
within the U.S. Forest
Service, from an agency
devoted to stamping out
fires into one that uses what
some Native Americans
call “good fire” on forests
and rangeland to prevent
even larger blazes.
Forest Service plan-
ning documents indicate
the work will focus on
“hotspots” that make up
only 10% of the fire-prone
areas across the U.S. but
account for 80% of risk to
communities because of
their population densities
and locations.
The recently-passed fed-
eral infrastructure bill put
a down payment on the ini-
tiative — $3.2 billion over
five years that Vilsack said
will get work going quickly.
Wildfire expert John
Abatzoglou said lessening
fire dangers on the amount
of land envisioned under
the administration’s plan
is a “lofty goal” that rep-
resents even more acreage
than burned over the past
10 years across the West.
But Abatzoglou, a Univer-
sity of California Merced
engineering professor, said
the focus on wildfire haz-
ards closest to communities
makes sense.
“Our scorecard for fire
should be about lives saved
rather than acres that didn’t
burn,” he said.
Dealing with western
wildfires is becoming
increasingly urgent as they
get more destructive and
intense. There have been
rare winter blazes in recent
weeks, including infernos
in Montana and Colo-
rado, where a wildfire on
Dec. 30 tore through a sub-
urban area and destroyed
more than 1,000 buildings,
leaving one person dead
and a second still missing.
See, Fires/Page B2
‘It’s happening faster than we thought’: 2021
was Oregon’s fifth-warmest year since 1895
Record-setting heat
in the Willamette
Valley
By ZACH URNESS
Salem Statesman Journal
SALEM — Oregon’s
string of hot years con-
tinued in 2021, which fin-
ished as the fifth-warmest
in records dating back to
1895.
It was also a dry year
— and an exceptionally
dry summer — although
the impact was far worse
on the east side than on
the west side, according to
NOAA data from weather
stations across the state.
Oregon’s statewide
average temperature was
49.2 degrees in 2021,
which is 2.5 degrees
warmer than normal and
adds another recent year to
the list of hottest years on
record.
Of the 12 hottest years
ever recorded, eight have
been recorded since 2000
and six have come since
2010, as climate change
moves Oregon’s weather
closer to California than
Washington.
“What’s most con-
cerning is that this was
a La Nina year, when
we’d traditionally expect
colder or at least histor-
ically normal tempera-
Alex Wittwer/The Observer, File
The La Grande Fire Department offers free water outside its building on Sunday, June 27, 2021. The
La Grande area experienced much warmer than normal temperatures during the month of June,
according to preliminary data received by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
National Weather Service Office in Pendleton.
tures,” Oregon state clima-
tologist Larry O’Neill said.
“Instead, we got extreme
heat in the summer.
We did have somewhat
cooler weather in the
winter, which is why this
year didn’t end up as the
hottest.”
A late December
drenching allowed Oregon
to make up a lot of ground
in precipitation totals, fin-
ishing with a statewide
average of 28.47 inches,
which is 88% of normal
or the 30th driest year on
record in 127 years of data.
The Oregon Coast
was actually wetter than
normal in some areas and
about normal tempera-
ture wise. The Willamette
Valley ended the year
slightly on the dry side —
except in Salem — while
towns east of the Cascades
saw some of their driest
years on record.
“That’s our other big
picture concern,” O’Neill
said. “Both in terms of
observed data and some
new studies, there is evi-
dence that the rain shadow
is intensifying, which
would be bad news for the
east side of the Cascades.
“One worrying thing is
that changes in climate is
happening faster than we
thought. It’s not clear if
this is just a rough couple
of years or becoming a
normal cycle. The local-
scale impacts of climate
change are the hardest ones
to resolve.”
Oregon’s valley cities
generally mirrored state-
wide trends when it came
to heat. Many valley
cities, including Salem,
saw their hottest summer
on record and hottest tem-
perature ever recorded,
with Salem hitting 117
degrees on June 28.
Those extreme highs
fueled Portland and
Eugene to the second
warmest years on record,
at 56.5 and 55.1, respec-
tively, while Salem (55.8)
had its third hottest year.
All three were about 2.5
to 3 degrees hotter than a
normal year.
Out on the Coast,
Astoria was exactly
normal at 51.2 degrees
while east of the Cascades,
Bend (49.5) and Pendleton
(53.9) had their sixth and
12th warmest years on
record, respectively.
Medford, in southern
Oregon, recorded an
average temperature of
57.7, the fourth warmest
on record.
See, Temps/Page B2