The BulleTin • Friday, FeBruary 12, 2021 A5
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Veterans Village
is well on its way
but still has hurdles
I
ndividual tiny homes for 15 veterans with support for them.
It may sound small, but it’s an extraordinary leap forward for
this community’s efforts to find answers for the homeless.
The Central Oregon Veterans Vil-
lage broke ground last month. It’s on
a plot of Deschutes County-owned
land near the Sheriff’s Office off U.S.
Highway 20 on the north end of
Bend. It could have its first residents
sometime this month.
That’s what can happen when
dedicated volunteers, staff, local of-
ficials and the state Legislature work
together.
On Wednesday, another hurdle was
squashed. Bend’s Affordable Hous-
ing Committee voted unanimously
to exempt the project from city of
Bend system development charges of
$130,597.40. It then passed a second
motion asking the Bend Park & Rec-
reation District to do the same. Those
charges are $88,890.
Don Horton, the park district’s
executive director, said the veterans
village is “a unique opportunity.”
“Our SDC ordinance on afford-
able housing does allow the board to
consider project like this and gives
them the discretion to approve,” he
told us Thursday in an email. “Staff
is planning on bringing this project
to the board.”
Let’s hope the park district can
do it.
So many others have chipped in
to make this development happen.
A critical piece was House Bill 4212,
sponsored by House Speaker Tina
On Wednesday, another
hurdle was squashed. Bend’s
Affordable Housing Committee
voted unanimously to exempt
the project from city of Bend
system development charges of
$130,597.40.
Kotek. That bill swept away the land
use hurdles that can make siting an
emergency shelter so challenging.
Former state Rep. Cheri Helt helped
ensure this development would fit
under HB 4212. Deschutes County
commissioners granted the project a
10-year lease on the county land —
for free. And they threw in $150,000
to help with construction and a com-
mitment of $100,000 per year to help
provide the vital services to help the
veterans improve their lives. It’s really
the Bend Heroes Foundation and
Central Oregon Veterans Outreach
that have led on this project and
vowed to make it a success. There are
many, many more who have contrib-
uted we are not listing here.
The project will continue to
face needs for volunteers and fi-
nancial support. Check out
centraloregonveteransvillage.org.
See what you can do to help.
When the snow comes, it
comes with strings attached
B
y the time you read this, if the
weather forecast was right,
Bend has a fresh dose of snow
and cold.
Most people who have lived in
Bend know the drill. The city doesn’t
keep a full stable of plows to clear
every street quickly. Bend city coun-
cilors seem to revisit the issue after
every major snow event. The answer
is usually the same: Bend just doesn’t
get enough snow to invest in more
snow-clearing equipment and man-
power. It can, though, call out con-
tractors to help.
Residents and businesses are re-
sponsible for clearing the sidewalks
that border their property. Busi-
nesses have six hours after the snow
accumulated. Residents have 24
hours. And though the city does not
fine people indiscriminately, it did
fine some repeat residential offend-
ers $200 in 2019. Businesses can face
$400 fines. A good thing to avoid.
The city also has what it calls
emergency snow zones. Those are
certain important streets where
on-street parking and snowfall can
mean traffic can have real trouble
getting through. If there is a declared
snow emergency, the city wants the
streets cleared of parked cars. It may
tow your car.
Emergency snow zones are:
• Wall Street (Portland Avenue to
Colorado Avenue)
• Bond Street (Wall Street to Col-
orado Avenue)
• Chandler Avenue (Mt. Wash-
ington Drive to Century Drive)
• NE Courtney Drive (27th
Street to Conners Avenue)
• NE Conners Avenue (27th
Street to Courtney Drive)
• NW Broadway Street (Franklin
Avenue/Riverside Boulevard to Col-
orado Avenue)
• NW Tumalo Avenue (Riverside
Boulevard to Broadway Street)
• 17th Street & Troon Avenue
(Galveston Avenue to Mt. Washing-
ton Drive)
And one last thing: Some people
are just not fit enough to shovel their
own driveway, let alone their side-
walk. If you can, please help them
out and make sure they are OK. If
you know of someone who might
need shoveling or other help, you
can also call the city’s volunteer co-
ordinator at 541-388-5579.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
Housing solutions Bend should consider
BY KARON JOHNSON
B
end should study how other cit-
ies deal with “missing middle”
housing: homes middle-class
wage earners can afford.
We are told the only way to have
“affordable housing” is building
higher densities, necessarily destroy-
ing our trees and green spaces.
In fact, residents in Bend are never
going to have “affordable housing” be-
cause we cannot compete in a nation-
wide market against folks who can
pay cash. However high the density,
we can’t outbid them. We need a dif-
ferent approach.
Define the terms
“Affordable housing” means hous-
ing in which the mortgage, amortized
interest, taxes, insurance and HOA
fees are no more than 30% of a fam-
ily’s gross annual income at no more
than 80% of the area median income,
or AMI. All affordable housing de-
pends on subsidies or incentives from
government.
“Attainable housing” is unsubsi-
dized, market-priced housing that
meets the needs of those with incomes
between 80% and 120% of the AMI:
$61,300 to $91,920. A family’s maxi-
mum mortgage payment should not
be more than 25% of its monthly take-
home income. “Attainable housing”
means housing for the middle class.
Do the math
Affordable Housing. Bend’s AMI
is $76,600; 80% is $61,300. The high-
est-priced home the family can afford
$257,000. How many homes in Bend
sell for $257,000? “Affordable hous-
ing” will not happen without massive
subsidies.
Attainable Housing. Bend’s me-
dian salary for a high school teacher
GUEST COLUMN
is $59,801; fire fighter, $45,968; po-
lice officer, $55,700. Bend’s median
home price is $560,000. To purchase
a $400,000 home, a family’s income
must be at least $100,000. Given the
present market, there is no attainable
housing in Bend.
Higher density does not
equal cheaper homes
Building to a higher density has not
produced cheaper homes. Recently,
25 significant trees were lost to a ten-
unit, .6-acre development on Roanoke
Avenue; each unit costs $798,500. A
22-unit cluster of cottages was built in
2019; one recently sold for $340,000.
Even in well-designed developments
that emphasize higher density, the
lowest-priced home costs $380,000.
Absent proof that building to
a higher density — with no other
changes to the Bend code — will actu-
ally produce homes affordable by the
middle-class, we should stop destroy-
ing our environment.
Solution No. 1: Eliminate single-
family detached houses
The 6-foot separation between sin-
gle-family detached houses is a waste
of space. Developers are building
well-designed single-family attached
homes that afford the same separation
and privacy. A two-unit single-family
attached building takes up 600 square
feet less than detached and costs
$100,000 less per unit. A recent 15.6-
acre development could have saved .6
acres for trees and green space by con-
verting 51 single-family detached to
attached units.
Presently, Bend requires half of the
homes in a standard-density zoned
development to be multifamily. In-
stead, allowing only multifamily in
medium-density and standard-den-
sity zones would free up acres of space
for trees and green space.
Solution No. 2: Adopt Portland’s
residential infill project
House Bill 2001 allows construction
of multiunit buildings in RS zones
but offers no incentive to encourage
it. Portland’s new code provides this
incentive through the residential in-
fill project, which restricts the size of
a single family detached home to half
the size of the lot.
Multidwelling homes are encour-
aged by limiting the size of the build-
ing and increasing the floor-to-area
allowed for multiunits.
A study by Johnson Economics
demonstrated this new code will ac-
tually encourage the construction
of affordable family homes because
multi-unit homes are cheaper to
build. For example, if a single-family
3,000-square-foot home cost $595,000,
a 3,000-square-foot duplex will cost
$310,000, and a triplex $245,000.
Solution No. 3: Mandatory
inclusionary requirements
Numerous jurisdictions have ad-
opted mandatory “set-aside” formu-
las, which require developers to build
a fixed percentage of affordable units
in each development.
In short, Bend needs to consider
what other cities are doing. Presently,
we’re destroying our environment
without creating middle-income
homes.
See savebendtrees.com for a copy of
this article with supporting sources.
e e
Karon Johnson lives in Bend and is the land use
chair for the Old Farm District Neighborhood
Association.
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Trump is banned from Twitter forever; he is so lucky
H
BY ALYSSA ROSENBERG
The Washington Post
e certainly wouldn’t think of it
this way. But former president
Donald Trump is lucky to
have been kicked off Twitter.
Trump’s exile from his favorite on-
line platform was made permanent
Wednesday — no matter the result of
his impeachment trial or what he de-
cides about running for president again.
The service’s initial decision to ban him
in January accelerated a fraught de-
bate over what people can say online
and whether the services they use have
an obligation to monitor their speech.
These are important conversations.
But they often proceed as if another
question has already been asked and
answered: Should we be spending so
much time on social media, given what
it appears to be doing to our brains?
Maybe this is a futile consideration:
The internet horse is so far out of the
barn that it has joined a herd of wild
mustangs. Still, those of us who hav-
en’t been forced to stop posting might
reassess our habits nonetheless.
It’s easy to flatter ourselves that we’d
never behave like the former pres-
ident online, spewing bile and im-
bibing brain-degrading conspiracy
theories. But two new novels make a
convincing case that even more ano-
dyne ways of being Extremely Online
aren’t so good for us.
In Patricia Lockwood’s “No One
Is Talking About This” and Lauren
Oyler’s “Fake Accounts,” the inter-
net is predictable and homogenizing,
even — and maybe especially — in its
strangeness.
The right positions on everything
from politics to guacamole are obvi-
ous — or at least, many people behave
as if they were. A distinct language
takes over, studded with absurd words
such as “binch” and “stonks” and sen-
tences structured according to the
cadence of memes. One can hate the
way Trump spoke on the internet and
still end up saying “SAD!” and “fake
news!” with a layer of irony that only
underscores his influence.
There’s no question that social me-
dia can give ordinary people power
they might not have access to oth-
erwise. The #BlackLivesMatter and
#MeToo movements helped millions
see how ubiquitous racist policing and
sexual violence are. Campaigns such
as #EndSars and #FarmersProtest
have amplified the voices of Nigerians
and Indians on an international scale.
But this megaphone is also a neutral
one; it can be picked up by malevolent
actors as well as benevolent ones.
And for all the revolutions and rev-
elations social media makes possible,
as Oyler’s protagonist reflects, it also
“devours importance.” The speed of
social media and the internet, and the
enthusiasms they inspire, lead users
into contradictions: Lockwood’s main
character reflects on the rise of #MeToo
and #BlackLivesMatter and observes,
“We wanted every last one of those
bastards in jail! But more than that, we
wanted the carceral state to be abol-
ished and replaced with one of those
islands where a witch turned men to
pigs.” Social media’s lack of proportion
means, Oyler writes, that everything
“was meaningless and impermanent as
well as potentially hugely significant. …
you were both neurotically tetchy and
quietly demoralized all the time.”
And all so Twitter, Facebook and
other companies can keep us anesthe-
tized as they mine our data and serve
us ever-more-targeted ads. Given
the way social media chews up time
and spits out triviality, the companies
have achieved something remarkable:
hooking users on the process of turn-
ing themselves into commodities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has,
at least, reintroduced the concept of
discretion as a virtue by altering the
risk-reward calculus for sharing ev-
ery detail of one’s life with what has
the potential to be the whole world.
But with much of real life suspended,
social media gives users a way to give
themselves the illusion of informing
themselves or engaging with others.
“Spending three hours on Twitter does
not feel like three hours,” Oyler writes.
“That’s the danger and the appeal.”
Trump, alas, doesn’t appear to real-
ize that the time Twitter gave him by
banning him from the service is a gift.
As the Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng
and Sam Brodey reported last week,
Trump “has resorted to suggesting
put-downs for others to use or post to
their own Twitter.” The rest of us don’t
have to make the same mistake.
e e
Alyssa Rosenberg writes for The Washington
Post’s Opinions section.