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Tackling community issues. Celebrating local voices.
Eugene’s housing crisis isn’t abstract. It’s measurable – in rising rents, dwindling vacancies and the growing number of people who can’t afford to live in the community they serve. But too often, our political response remains symbolic: well-meaning rhetoric paired with procedural hesitation.
Over the past year, the Eugene City Council has faced key decisions on housing that align with the city’s own stated goals: infill near transit, density in job-rich areas and incentives to unlock private development where costs are otherwise prohibitive. Yet again and again, progress stalls – not just because of overt opposition, but from what Tobias Peter and Major Ethan Frizzell at the AEI Housing Center call “policy-induced underbuilding.”
Their recent report, Displacement by Design, outlines how exclusionary zoning, misaligned incentives and discretionary review processes create systemic barriers to housing – especially for working- and middle-class residents…