In January, newly sworn-in Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson declared a push by the city to build 1,000 new units of downtown housing over five years.
We’re now one year into that effort. And it’s clear something needs to change.
No new downtown housing is close to breaking ground as the calendar turns to 2026. That’s not the fault of Knudson or any individual policymaker. And it’s not because of a lack of demand: Seven large apartment buildings are in various stages of preconstruction planning, from the downtown core to the riverfront to the 5th Street Public Market. Building all of them would add roughly 800 housing units, leaving the city just a project or two away from its goal…