Hood River is facing a severe housing crisis, one of the worst in Oregon. People are being priced out and that harms our community. Our schools are losing funds as families are forced to move away. Critical professions like firefighters, nurses, and police can’t afford to live here, reducing their connection to the community and making it harder for them to respond if we face an emergency or a crisis. We want this to be a community where all types of people can live and raise a family.

The bond is paid for by property taxes, a rate of $0.39 for each $1,000 of assessed value. Note that assessed value is usually significantly less than market rate. The median home in Hood River would pay about $8.82 a month and there is a tax calculator on the city’s website you can use to estimate the tax you’d pay.

We appreciate that things are tight right now – that is part of why housing costs so much. Addressing the housing crisis has clear benefits for helping local employers strengthen our economy and reducing traffic congestion. The bond will also be used to leverage additional funding for housing, meaning only a small portion of the overall investment would come from our tax dollars. 

For comparison, the bond will cost about $8.82 a month - that’s less than the price of two lattes or parking for the day downtown. But I understand that things are tough right now and that everyone has to make their own decisions about what they can afford.

In Hood River, 120% of Area Median Income for a family of four is roughly $128,000.  Even people making that amount are struggling to find homes in the community. We want to make sure we are adding housing for moderate-income households because there is real need at this level, particularly given the amount of new low-income housing being added through the Mariposa Village project.

We appreciate people are paying higher taxes. But we also appreciate that housing has become a crisis in our community. The longer we put it off, the more people are going to be priced out and the harder it will be to catch up to the amount of affordable housing that is needed. The city is putting this bond forward because of the urgent need in our community.

The reality is that the market is not producing housing for lower- and middle-income people. Developers can make more money off luxury housing and that is why we are facing the challenge we are in. Using public funds to fill that gap will provide big benefits to the community and help get our housing market back on track. Additionally, the city of Hood River is responsible for housing plans under new state housing requirements, which this bond will help fulfill.

A policy can be a good policy even if it doesn’t solve a problem completely. Both Portland and Metro's housing bonds significantly exceeded their goals for adding new homes. At the same time, housing and homelessness issues continued to grow - driven by the pandemic and the fentanyl crisis. We know these bonds are an effective way to accelerate home creation in our community, which is urgently needed.