The BulleTin • Thursday, June 17, 2021 A13
Fed
Continued from A11
“We are a ways away from
substantial further progress, we
think,” Powell said Wednesday.
“But we are making progress.”
For the same reason, the
chairman said, it’s too early for
Fed officials to discuss when
they might raise their bench-
mark short-term rate from its
record low near zero. But he did
note that many of the policy-
makers think the central bank’s
goals “will be met somewhat
sooner than previously pro-
jected.”
In his remarks, Powell drew
a mostly positive picture of the
economy. The inflation spikes
of the past two months, he said,
will likely prove temporary, and
hiring should accelerate through
summer and into the fall as
COVID-19 recedes further with
Hops
Continued from A11
According to a U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture report issued
June 10, Washington has 60,735
acres of hops strung for harvest,
an increase of 2,094 acres over
last year. Idaho has 9,784 acres of
hops this year, up 516, and Ore-
gon has 7,571 acres, up 467.
The total of 60,735 acres is a
record high, though Brophy said
some of those additions are the
result of pre-pandemic planning,
and not new business.
“A lot of this is based on past
demand,” she said. “The senti-
ment and estimate at this point
is the increases aren’t necessarily
from recent contracts, but ful-
filling ones that were previously
established.”
Michelle Palacios, administra-
tor of the Oregon Hops Com-
mission, said acreage is up in
2021 based on baby hops that
were strung last year but did not
produce a crop.
Unlike Washington and
Idaho, it takes Oregon growers
two years to harvest new hop
plants based on the climate.
Those acres are not included in
the USDA’s annual report.
Palacios said more growers in
Oregon are transitioning their
increased vaccinations, schools
and day care centers reopen,
which will allow more parents to
work, and supplemental federal
aid for the jobless ends.
“There is every reason,” Pow-
ell said, “to think that we will be
in a labor market with very at-
tractive numbers, with low un-
employment, high participation
and rising wages across the spec-
trum.”
The central bank raised its
forecast for inflation to 3.4% by
the end of this year, from 2.4% in
its previous projection in March.
Yet the officials foresee price in-
creases remaining tame in the
following two years.
Fed officials expect the econ-
omy to grow 7% this year, which
would be the fastest calen-
dar-year expansion since 1984.
They project that growth will
slow after that, to 3.3% in 2022
and 2.4% in 2023.
acreage from alpha hop varieties
such as Nugget to more aroma
varieties like Citra and Centen-
nial, driven by increased de-
mand among craft brewers.
“Our (increased) acres was ab-
solutely anticipated because of
this variety transition that we’re
going through,” Palacios said.
“These acres were in the ground
in 2020, but we just didn’t get to
harvest them.”
Craft brewing has been the pri-
mary catalyst for the growth in
hop acres, Brophy said. Brewers
use more hops per glass in beers
such as pale ales that are rising
in popularity worldwide. About
98% of the U.S. hop crop comes
from the Pacific Northwest.
While hop acreage was up in
2020 over 2019, production fell to
104.8 million pounds, according
to Hop Growers of America.
Brophy said the reason was
twofold. First, growers did idle
some acres to account for the
pandemic’s disruption of bars
and restaurants. Mother Nature
was the other culprit, with wind
and smoke reducing Washing-
ton’s yield by 12.56%, and Idaho’s
by 8.8%.
“People are estimating in the
hops industry that it was prob-
ably down about 10%, give or
take,” Brophy said.
Housing
A homeowner
tours his new
home in Wash-
ingtonville, New
York, in July. Two
studies released
Wednesday
found that the
nation’s housing
availability and
affordability cri-
sis is expected to
worsen signifi-
cantly following
the pandemic.
Continued from A11
“The latest data confirm
two things — emergency
rental assistance is very slow
to reach renters in need, and
millions of renters remain
behind on rent and at height-
ened risk of evictions,” Diane
Yentel, president of the Na-
tional Low-Income Housing
Coalition, said in an email
interview.
The reports by Harvard
University and the National
Association of Realtors come
from different perspectives,
but ultimately reach the same
conclusion: the United States
isn’t building enough hous-
ing to address population
growth, causing record low
home availability, and ris-
ing home prices are putting
homeownership out of reach
of millions of Americans.
Without substantial
changes in homebuilding and
home affordability, both re-
ports say, the result will be a
more-or-less permanent class
of renters contrasted with
what will likely be a mostly
white class of homeowners.
While these problems were
known before the coronavi-
rus pandemic, the economic
impact of the pandemic ex-
acerbated the problem, the
reports say.
A separate study commis-
sioned by the National As-
sociation of Realtors found
Crater Lake
Continued from A11
Workspaces and other
parts of visitor center opera-
tions, such as the Crater Lake
Natural History Association
sales area, are being moved to
temporary sites in the park.
Concession facilities, in-
cluding the Annie Creek gift
shop/restaurant, Mazama
Campground and Rim Vil-
lage Gift shop/restaurant,
are open, with some reduced
food service options.
The Mazama Cabins are
already booked for the en-
tire season. The Annie Creek
John Minchillo/A
Help available in Oregon
Oregon’s moratorium on residential evictions
is set to expire June 30. Oregon renters have until
Feb. 28, 2022, to repay overdue rent accumulated
between April 2020 and this month. But there are
currently no protections for renters who can’t pay
their rent in July and beyond.
The state has $204 million in federal rental as-
sistance available for struggling renters through
its new Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Pro-
gram, but the community agencies charged with
distributing the money won’t be able to get much
into the hands of landlords on behalf of tenants
before July 1.
Help may be found at oregonrentalassistance.
org or oerap.oregon.gov.
Landlords can apply for assistance to cover
80% of their tenants’ past-due rent through the
Landlord Compensation Fund at lcf.oregon.gov.
Applications for the landlord compensation fund
will close Friday. Landlords who accept assistance
through the fund will have to forgive the other
20% of their tenants’ unpaid rent.
— The Oregonian
that the U.S. housing market
needs to build at least 5.5
million new units to keep up
with demand and keeping
homeownership affordable
over the next 10 years. That’s
on top of the roughly 1.2 mil-
lion units built per year on
average, or a roughly 60% in-
crease in home construction
for the next decade, just to
keep up with demand.
“The scale of underbuild-
ing and the existing demand-
supply gap is enormous and
will require a major national
commitment to build more
housing of all types by ex-
panding resources, address-
ing barriers to new devel-
opment and making new
housing construction an in-
tegral part of a national in-
frastructure strategy,” wrote
Kenneth Rosen, David Bank,
Max Hall, Scott Reed and
Carson Goldman with the
Rosen Consulting Group, in
its report to the Realtors as-
sociation.
restaurant has some indoor
seating and an outdoor patio.
The Mazama Campground,
which could open within
days, will be on a reservation
system beginning July 1. .
The historic Crater Lake
Lodge is open but, like in 2020,
the restaurant and great hall
are open only to lodge guests.
Visitors should be pre-
pared for potentially long
lines to get into the park and
finding parking in the Rim
Village area. Additional park-
ing will again be available at
Picnic Hill, the former camp-
ground at Rim Village.
Ackerman said there are
no plans to require reserva-
tions to enter the park, some-
thing that is being tried at
other national parks. Long-
term plans include upgrading
and possibly adding booths
at both the north and south
entrance stations.
Park staff will again be sta-
tioned at the Rim Drive trail-
head to prevent people from
taking illegal items that could
harm the lake’s purity, such as
flotation devices, to the lake.
“We learned very quickly
how to manage that,” Acker-
man said, referring to staffing
the trailhead with rangers last
summer.
He expressed disappoint-
ment with having to cancel
the always-popular lake boat
tours and the increasingly
popular Crater Lake trolley
tours, noting, “a lot of people
have been calling and asking
if the trolley tours are going
to be offered.”
According to Acker-
man, “It’s going to be a
COVID-impacted summer.”
For updated informa-
tion visit the Crater Lake
Hospitality website at
www. travelcraterlake.com.
Other park-related infor-
mation is available at www.
craterlakecountry.com.
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