Opinion
A4
BAKER CITY
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news@bakercityherald.com
Saturday, August 27, 2022 • Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
The housing
challenge
A
survey released last week has some daunting
data about the lack of affordable housing in
Baker County, and in particular in Baker City,
which has about 60% of the county’s 16,800 residents.
Although the survey, for which New Directions
Northwest received a $44,000 state grant, focused
on housing needs for people who have a behavioral
health condition, the findings show a wider problem.
About 250 people responded to the New Directions
survey between March 1, 2022, and May 31, 2022.
Among the responses excerpted in the survey:
• “There are substantial barriers. Landlords have
unrealistic goals for new renters believing it will weed
out the bad ones — it doesn’t. When someone lives
month to month on SSI/SSDI for $900 a month, and
the landlord wants first/last/deposit/pet fees, coming
up with close to $3,000 just to move in is literally im-
possible. Then you have to pay an application fee. A
property gets 100 applications with a $35 application
fee, they are making big money. Me having to apply
for 10 homes just to get no reply is even more.”
• “Want 3x the rent for rental, at $1,200 a month for
a 2 bedroom; no one can afford that.”
• “There is NO affordable medium income hous-
ing available. ... same as the previous five years of this
question are being asked and still nothing being done
... vouchers only work if there are houses, apartments,
duplexes, studios available and built!”
The survey report also notes that federal data show
rental rates in Baker County have increased substan-
tially in Baker County over the past year, to about
$1,200 per month for a 3- or 4-bedroom home.
Home prices have also risen, and some homeown-
ers have converted rental homes to temporary vaca-
tion rentals or sold their homes to take advantage of
the rising prices, further reducing the supply of long-
term housing.
The news isn’t wholly negative, however.
New Directions recently received a $1.4 million
state grant, money the nonprofit intends to use to
buy a modular home and two other homes that will
be available for people with behavioral health issues.
New Directions also plans to open a service center
where people can get help figuring out their options
for housing, including financial assistance.
A La Grande developer plans to build a 13-unit
housing development for veterans near the Elkhorn
Village apartments. And a 12-unit apartment complex
is planned on Midway Drive near the hospital.
That’s a start, but only a small one. According to a
2021 study by the Oregon Housing Alliance, Baker
County needs about 265 “affordable” housing units.
The study also found that about 63% of renters with
very low incomes are spending more than half their
incomes for rent.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Reforms vital after CDC’s
fumbling on COVID-19
EDITORIAL FROM THE
MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE:
A
North Dakota native
has been named to a
new and vital health
care post. The nation ought to
wish her well because the task
before her is daunting: over-
seeing the overhaul of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) after
its frustrating response to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Mary Wakefield, who was
born and educated in Minne-
sota’s northwest neighbor, is a
nurse and veteran health care
administrator who served as
acting deputy secretary of the
U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services under former
President Barack Obama. Last
week, Wakefield was tapped
to serve in a new role at the
CDC: leading a team that will
determine fixes to problems
identified by two reviews of the
agency’s flawed COVID-19 ap-
proach.
Wakefield will bring a prag-
matic Midwestern sensibility
to the role, according to those
who have worked with her.
Even so, the task she faces is
monumental.
Long considered one of the
world’s premier public health
assets, the CDC turned in a
fumbling performance at a time
when the agency’s best work
was needed. The stumbling be-
gan early with the bungled de-
velopment of COVID-19 test-
ing — a failing the Star Tribune
Editorial Board sounded the
alarm about on Feb. 6, 2020.
Unfortunately, the CDC
failed to find its footing after
that. While the agency is staffed
with world-class scientists, they
never gelled as a team.
Early chaos surrounding
supplies of personal protec-
tive equipment for health care
workers was one result. But
communication to the public
was particularly problematic.
For much of the pandemic,
COVID-19 trackers built by
The New York Times and non-
profit organizations filled in
information gaps about cases,
hospitalizations and deaths.
The information the CDC
did provide was often slow and
written for a scientific audience.
Adequate explanations were
missing when public health rec-
ommendations evolved. While
these changes reflected expand-
ing knowledge of the virus and
other developments, too often
they felt arbitrary.
Masking is one example.
There was early equivocation
about the value, but later the
agency embraced masks as part
of the strategy to stop COVID-
19’s spread. It felt like a switch
had flipped, and the abruptness
helped feed the rebellion against
their use.
The agency’s communication
struggles have continued during
the Biden administration.
Officials seem to have a tin
ear when it comes to pleas for a
second booster shot from those
who aren’t currently eligible —
essentially, healthy adults under
50. Many are concerned about
variants and worry about previ-
ous shots’ waning protection.
The first step toward im-
provement requires acknowl-
edging there’s a problem. For
that, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle
Walensky merits praise. She
stepped into that role in early
2021 as a presidential appointee,
and it’s to her credit that she rec-
ognizes the need for reform.
“I thought she called it out
like real leadership does,”
Andy Slavitt, a former Minne-
sota health care executive who
served on President Joe Biden’s
COVID-19 response team, told
an editorial writer. Slavitt also
was the acting head of the Cen-
ters for Medicare & Medicaid
Services during the Obama ad-
ministration.
Slavitt applauded the move to
have Wakefield oversee reforms
at the CDC. He worked with
her at the federal level and said
she’s focused, practical and “lis-
tens before she talks.”
Minnesota infectious disease
expert Michael Osterholm also
lauded Walensky’s reform ef-
forts. Implementing change will
be challenging though, he said,
adding that the “devil is in the
details.”
In an interview, Osterholm
called on Congress to ensure the
CDC has the funding and other
resources it needs to carry out
its vital mission.
The Star Tribune Editorial
Board agrees and would like
to see Minnesota’s congressio-
nal delegation at the forefront
of this.
The CDC has many critics.
With that comes a responsibil-
ity to right this ship. Everyone
has an interest because dis-
ease threats continue, as mon-
keypox’s spread and polio’s
re-emergence illustrate.
As to the importance of get-
ting CDC reforms right, Os-
terholm said, “If this were on
a scale of 1 to 10, this is about
a 12.”
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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est. Customer complaints about specific businesses
will not be printed.
• The Baker City Herald will not knowingly print
false or misleading claims. However, we cannot
verify the accuracy of all statements in letters.
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and legal reasons.
Mail: To the Editor, Baker City Herald,
P.O. Box 807, Baker City, OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.com
COLUMN
Focus fails, and a new book mixes humor, grammar
M
y eyes began to fail me along
about the second grade,
which strikes me as an aw-
fully premature deterioration for such
vital organs, especially considering
the rest of me was likely to stumble
along for several decades more.
Literally stumble, what with the af-
fliction of astigmatism.
Indeed this seems to have been the
case, as I’m still around more than 40
years after finishing second grade. Al-
though I blame a general lack of bal-
ance, rather than my eyesight, for my
occasional tumbles in the ensuing
years.
Yet even though most of my other
original accessories retain a gratifying
percentage of their peak function, my
visual decline, after more than a quar-
ter century of relative stability, has re-
cently accelerated.
It’s almost as though my eyes are re-
living their childhood, so to speak.
Three years ago, an optometrist who
had just given my corneas a good going
over assured me, with what seemed a
certain smugness, that this fuzzy future
was inevitable.
He acted surprised, and possibly was
even a trifle skeptical, when I told him
that, at age 48, I didn’t have any great
trouble reading a book without hold-
ing it at arm’s length.
But it was true.
In 2019.
The accuracy of that earlier state-
ment, to my chagrin, has gradually
shrunk ever since, to the point at which
tion eyeglasses, which I wear mainly in
the evening, when my contacts some-
times leave my eyes feeling a bit dry
and scratchy. The adjustment to wear-
ing reading glasses wasn’t especially
kernel of truth, so beloved by prevari- wearisome.
cators, can today be measured in ang-
The optometrist suggested I buy
multiple pairs, a recommendation that
stroms.
irked me slightly. He said something
Indeed, my arms are scarcely long
enough to keep any reading material at to the effect that it’s easy to misplace a
pair of spectacles, which I suppose is
a suitable distance.
Beyond that threshold I can still dis- reasonable.
But it seemed to me he was implying
cern objects with some precision.
Contact lenses — accessories I have that my inability to focus is but a symp-
relied on since my parents allowed me tom of a more general decline, and one
to give up the spectacles I had endured that will erode my mental as well as
for most of elementary school — have physical faculties.
I might as well prepare, his tone sug-
continued to keep my distance vision
gested, to worry not so much whether
relatively crisp.
I can make out the words on the page
Reading a book or scanning my
but whether I can remember where I
phone, by contrast, has become a mi-
graine-inducing exercise in frustration. left the book.
As it turned out I did buy a package
I returned recently to the same eye
doctor. Rather than afford him the sat- of three pairs of reading glasses.
But that’s only because the price was
isfaction of forcing me to concede, by
way of answering his questions, that his just a buck or so more than for a single
prediction had proved true, I told him pair, which struck me as a nifty bargain.
And I’ll have the optometrist know
right off that I needed to buy reading
that I can locate each of the three pairs
glasses.
He accepted this without any obvi-
without taking even a moment to pon-
ous gloating, which I appreciated.
der where they might have gotten to.
(I doubt he remembered our pre-
vious conversation on the matter in
***
any detail, but I imagine my records
— perhaps amended with an asterisk,
I remember rather vividly the morn-
that classic expression of skepticism — ing I met Ellen Jovin. I remember in
mentioned my 2019 claim about undi- particular how normal the episode
minished close up acuity.)
was. It was in late August 2019, on the
I have long had a pair of prescrip-
east side of Main Street in downtown
Jayson
Jacoby
Baker City.
The timing matters because I made
Jovin’s acquaintance before 2020.
Which is to say, we met in those hal-
cyon days when those of us who ar-
en’t virologists, if confronted by the
word coronavirus, would have offered
by way of definition something like “a
hangover induced by excessive con-
sumption of a light Mexican lager.”
(I’m pretty sure that’s what I would
have suggested, anyway.)
Neither of us could have known, of
course, that little more than half a year
later, our casual encounter almost cer-
tainly wouldn’t have happened.
Among much else, the pandemic
temporarily rendered previously mun-
dane events, including a journalist in-
terviewing a subject, rather more com-
plicated.
On that mild and sunny late sum-
mer morning, though, I simply walked
a couple blocks from my office, intro-
duced myself and started jotting notes.
But it’s not only nostalgia that makes
our meeting memorable, nearly three
years after it happened. Jovin was sit-
ting behind a table bearing a sign:
“Grammar Table.”
Jovin, who lives in New York City
and has degrees from Harvard and
UCLA, was touring the U.S. that sum-
mer, setting up her table, with its pecu-
liar sign, in cities big and small, inviting
people to stop by and chat about gram-
matical matters.
I’m no grammarian but I have a
great appreciation for the process of
assembling words into sentences and
paragraphs, a type of construction
which can be as daunting as putting up
a skyscraper or a great bridge.
(Albeit with less potential for ghastly
wounds — a phrase that’s out of plumb
can crumble, to be sure, but the debris
is much less dangerous, to flesh and
bone, compared with chunks of con-
crete or steel girders.)
I figured I would enjoy talking with
Jovin, and I did. She had a palpable
passion not only for proper punctua-
tion, which can be challenging but at
least is governed by specific rules, but
also for the vastly more mysterious
matter of trying to corral thoughts,
which flit about with dizzying speed
and rarely come into sharp focus, and
round them into an order that rings
with pleasant rhythm in the ear.
Jovin was also gathering material for
a book, which went on sale nationwide
on July 19 of this year. In “Rebel With
A Clause” Jovin deftly combines an en-
tertaining travelogue with an eminently
useful guide to grammar — a curious
hybrid that I suspect would have failed
badly in hands less skilled than Jovin’s.
Jovin sent me a copy and I’ve en-
joyed it greatly. It makes a fine com-
panion to the peerless “Elements of
Style” by Will Strunk and E.B. White
and another of my favorite books
about writing — William Zinsser’s “On
Writing Well.”
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City
Herald.