Dear Next Governor: Let’s Talk About Housing
Coos Bay is working on affordable housing one unit at a time.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece is a part of our #GovernorGoals series. Learn more about it here. Send your goals on one of the selected topics to theway@or360.org for potential publication.
Dear Next Governor of Oregon:
Greetings from Coos Bay! I was raised in this county, went away to college, became an attorney, and came back to take care of my dad. Between graduating from high school and moving back, I lived all over the Pacific Northwest. I thought that it would be easy to find a place to live when we moved back to Coos Bay. Yet even with a good job and a good rental and credit history, housing is a challenge everywhere in Oregon.
When my family and I moved back to Coos County fifteen years ago, we thought that housing would be cheaper. We thought that we could take our two professional income salaries and find a lovely place to rent while we sat back and assessed where we wanted to buy our forever home.
Few apartments were available, and they were not big enough for a family of five with a new baby. We moved on to houses. It was clearly a landlord’s market. We looked at one that had a completely full garage. It was full of things that belonged to the previous renter. The landlord said (as if it was a selling point) “Keep what you want, and haul the rest off to the dump.”
We eventually found a lovely place that suited our family for two years until we found a place to buy. The rent was a lot more than we expected to pay. However, we were fortunate, and we realize that. Others are less so. In the last ten years, I have hired employees that have lived in their vehicles until they found a place to rent. I have also hired employees that lived in hotel rooms until long term rentals became available. It definitely makes it a challenge to recruit new employees.
We have underinvested in housing for years and are seeing the consequences. There is no single factor that is keeping us from having attainable housing in Oregon. We have high land prices, a shortage of contractors, high prices on raw materials, and a shortage of stock.
In rural Oregon, we are solving this problem one unit at a time. I believe we have an opportunity for innovative partnerships to address the issue. A few years ago, an abandoned contaminated former school site burned down. Coos County foreclosed on the site for back taxes, and we worked with the City of Coos Bay to remediate the site. As the site has been cleaned up, we have partnered with a Northwest Housing Alternatives to redevelop the site for multifamily housing.
Oregon is a beautiful place to live. In the last two years, many people have found that they are not required to live where they work. There is a whole new level of choice available. In rural Oregon, this is one of the best economic development opportunities we have seen in decades. We can attract and retain professionals that are able to work from home, and want to live in a beautiful place. With housing and fast, reliable internet, we could see a complete economic rebirth of our communities. The federal and state government have made the investment into broadband and infrastructure. That just leaves housing.
We need to make finding a place to live that fits your budget and your family’s needs an easy choice, and not a challenge. I am confident that you, as the new governor of Oregon, will make the investments needed to solve this housing crisis. This is an opportunity to make a real investment in economic development in rural Oregon, at a time when this type of investment is critically needed. We need to buy down the costs of development and make it cheaper for entry level homeowners to buy their first home. For years, the costs of development have been reduced through property tax exemptions, which put the entire burden on counties, cities, and special districts.
The state must be an equal partner on solving the housing crisis. In addition, this is the time for the state to make any vacant land that they own available for development as low income and workforce housing. Through these opportunities and others that are identified on a community by community basis, we can solve the housing crisis together.
Melissa Cribbins is a Coos County Commissioner, Attorney, Mother, and lifelong Oregonian.
Well Ms. Cribbins- you say you lived all over the PNW; what about the PSW, ever live there? I have.
When you build low rent housing, aka “Projects” you are inviting very undesirable renters. Ever hear of Nickerson Gardens in So Central LA? Look it up! Even the police won’t enter that place, they are out manned and out gunned!
Yes, if you build this place I guarantee you will live with that legacy…good luck with that! 😂
There are similar situations throughout Oregon, driving an intense real estate market in rural areas, especially those near desirable outdoor recreation. Solving the housing crisis EVERYWHERE, not just in urban areas, would do much for the state.