Platform & Initiatives

Housing

Eugene has a housing shortfall driving up prices for everyone. By proactively addressing decades of underdevelopment by saying yes to a diversity of projects – market rate and affordable – we will catch up and relieve pressure on the market.

We can’t wait for developers to get us there, and we can’t be held hostage by a fluctuating market. We need to identify and incentivize key projects and get shovels in the ground. And it should have happened yesterday.

In addressing our housing shortfall, I’ll be prioritizing:

• Consider our environmental footprint and avoid additional pressure on the urban growth boundary by focusing on tall, dense, and diverse housing in our downtown core and along major transit corridors.
• Ensure newly-available infill policies are financially sensible for homeowners who choose to take advantage of them by reviewing systems development charges and other fees associated with ADU construction.
• Take advantage of the recently-passed Senate Bill 1537 to create grant programs through state loans for local development.
• Identify specific parcels for redevelopment. Conduct outreach with parcel owners and meet directly with contractors to understand what programs and policies can get dense housing built.
  • Some folks worry about the city picking winners and losers when prescribing development, but if we aren’t being proactive about our housing shortfall, we’re only picking losers, and that loser is Eugene.
• Find creative ways to help folks own their home, like right of first refusal. Concerns about disappearing rental units are unfounded. The underlying cause of unmet demand in the rental market is out-of-reach primary home ownership, which is many Americans’ single-greatest vehicle toward creating wealth and a stable retirement.
• Expand home improvement incentive programs, allowing homeowners to invest in their existing property, reduce blight, and deter disinvestment in neighborhoods
• Create policies that minimize the displacement of existing tenants during the redevelopment of areas
• Enforce existing policies designed to punish bad actors among landlords rather than develop new policies that simply make it more onerous to be a landlord. We must balance these efforts to avoid inadvertently consolidating rental properties under large, out-of-state conglomerates and driving up rents for those we’re trying to keep housed.
• Reduce red tape that deters local developers from taking on local projects
• Prioritize local labor on construction projects
• Get 1059 Willamette development underway
  • UPDATE: Groundbreaking is anticipated for November 2024. I’m excited to see this happen.
• Overcome the funding gap on the steam plant project, or identify a new partner for the project
  • UPDATE: The City has approved Urban Renewal funds to bridge this gap. A great use of those funds.

Homelessness

Homelessness is the single largest issue facing Eugene, especially in Ward 1.

Too many conversations are spent talking past one another, lumping folks with varying viewpoints into over-simplified buckets. Those experiencing homelessness themselves are lumped together as a monolith.

And at the end of these listening sessions, as committees disband, we pat ourselves on the back as though we accomplished something.

Homelessness must be addressed through consideration of the diverse population mired in it. Nuance and pragmatism can get us to solutions.

• Homelessness is a result of a lack of housing writ large, and it should not surprise us that those who live with addiction and mental illness are the first to become unhoused. Continue to create more housing of all kinds. See above.
• Support sensible drug policies that connect those suffering from addiction to services and support, rather than leaving them on the street.
• Support state and county efforts to address our mental health crisis.
  • Support the co-respondent model currently being explored by EPD, putting behavioral health specialists alongside law enforcement responding to calls.
  • Invest in non-traditional, diversionary criminal justice programs like Community Court.
  • Properly support CAHOOTS
  • Create a YIMBY culture around where and how housing and services are established
  • Pressure the state and county to develop economic incentives for mental health professionals to come to Oregon

Safe & Welcoming Public Spaces

While violent crime is objectively low, the perception of safety is gone in many parts of Eugene. Swaths of the Park Blocks, Monroe Park, the lobby of the Eugene Library, and other public spaces, especially downtown, are occupied by the addicted and the mentally ill, who are perceived as unpredictable and threatening and desperately need services.

Meanwhile, Eugene’s true safety shortcomings manifest as quality-of-life crimes like vandalism and retail theft. Calls on these types of crime often don’t get a response and are subsequently under-reported. My own downtown business, Porterhouse Clothing & Supply, suffered a broken window last year, while the 5th-Street-area store my wife works at lost a cash register to a break-in. The reality in these situations is that we don’t plan on being made whole, and don’t really believe in a justice system that will make us whole. What we really want is for it to never happen again.

Community safety is not defined solely by laws on the books. It’s defined by a social contract that some individuals in Eugene have decided to, or been driven to, no longer subscribe to.

We don’t need new laws on the books or harsher penalties for offenders. Rather, let’s:

• Ensure that police, or alternative law enforcement representatives, can respond appropriately to all calls that come in.
• Continue to diversify EPD’s response model for calls where an armed and uniformed officer is not the best fit.
• Prioritize recruitment and staffing over specialized and potentially infrequently-used equipment in police budgets.
• Enforce laws already on the books, including mundane things like smoking in downtown or parks, to deter unwanted behavior and set a precedent that everyone is subject to the same rules.
• Support discerning hiring practices and continuing education policies in place at the Eugene Police Department that ensure we’re employing responsible and trustworthy officers.
• Support oversight and accountability programs like the Civilian Review Board.

Address Deficit

We’re facing down a $15 million+ budget shortfall as a city. I don’t believe, as a city, we should have to choose between our library, fire stations, sidewalk repairs and animal welfare, to say nothing of funding housing, getting a hospital back open on our side of the river, and potentially building a sports stadium.

In the short term, we have to prioritize our projects and spend efficiently to balance the budget. In the long-term, I believe we have a revenue problem that must be addressed. We’re under-invested in ourselves for a city our size.

Unfortunately, a lot of city funding is tied up in statewide revenue models that need to be addressed as well. Eugene’s city council can’t fix that, but we can:

• Codify an economic development plan that directs our efforts to attract employers to our area who pay into our tax system while being good stewards of our community through living wages, good benefits, and business practices that respect our community’s values around climate.
• Ensure our city’s expenditures are efficient, focused, and investment-oriented. There will be short-term cuts until we solve our revenue problem.
• Press our partners at the state and county to look closely at statewide revenue models to ensure our tax system is progressive, not regressive.