Housing costs hit low-income households

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Record-low vacancy rates, rising rents and a shortage of housing for lower-income people have combined to keep homelessness atop the public issues facing Washington County.

“We are developing market-rate housing to meet many of the needs of employees in the business sector,” said Annette Evans, homeless program coordinator for the county.

“But our aging population and people doing low-income sector jobs need a place to stay, too…”

Meanwhile, vacancy rates that once ranged from 5 to 7 percent have dropped to as little as 1.6 percent in Hillsboro…

“That gap (in affordable housing) has grown every year that our consolidated plan has been updated, and gets bigger,” Evans said…

The plan she referred to is “A Road Home,” which county commissioners adopted in 2008 with a 10-year goal of eliminating homelessness.

The plan has resulted in about $6 million spent annually in the county to cope with homelessness…

We Respond & Your Comments

So there’s a housing shortage in Washington County that’s hurting the poor, homeless, and elderly – people that “Progressives” say they want to help?

As usual, Progressives hurt these people and stick the bill for their foolishness to the rest of us. Let’s look at what they’ve done:

Enforced a Metro Urban Growth Boundary that limits housing. As any non-Progressive knows, limiting housing drives up prices. But Progressives say expanding it would kill trees and little furry critters, warming Earth and killing polar bears. So they cling to their urban density religion – because little furry critters trump poor people;
Increased the minimum wage…”Let’s help the poor by killing jobs.” Yeah – that’s the ticket!
Raised taxes on businesses. If you’re starting a business, where would you go first: Idaho, Nevada, or…Oregon? Jobs? We don’t need no stinkin’ jobs!

And the gap in affordable housing “has grown every year that our consolidated plan has been updated.” Notice a pattern here?

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