Recently, Bend YIMBYs went to a hearing to say “YES!” to housing.
I wish everyone could go to a few hearings like this. You would come away with a better understanding of our housing crisis and why it exists.
I do not like public speaking. I really do not like public speaking in a room full of people jeering at me. But housing is important, so I do it anyway. I’m very thankful to have been there with fellow YIMBYs Will, Kathleen, Ian and John.
Take a look at that room. The developer’s representatives are in the front left seats. Behind them, our small YIMBY group. Everyone else is there to say “NO!” to housing.
It’s really a microcosm of “why we do not have enough housing” – and not just in Bend. The same scene plays out over and over, day in and day out across the entire country, with some local variations. Oregon is probably not as bad as other places, because we’re a bit less discretionary in terms of how these things work.
Here’s how it went, which is pretty typical:
- The whole thing took place at 10AM on a weekday. So when we talk about “workforce housing”, the people who might actually live there can’t show up to say anything about it because, well, they’re at work.
- The hearings officer introduces themselves and before beginning, as part of the process, asks if anyone thinks they can’t be impartial. Someone invariably asks “probing questions” implying that the hearings officer is probably best friends with the developer if not worse. But there’s never anything really relevant, so the hearing proceeds.
- City staff has a highly technical presentation, usually indicating the project should proceed with a few tweaks here and there – otherwise, the applicant would probably ask for time to respond/correct anything and we wouldn’t be at the hearing. Only people DEEP in the weeds of land use code and law even understand much of this, and most of it is not really of much critical interest to the public. We’re not talking about safety codes like how electrical wiring must be done, but about whether a setback (the distance from the building to the street) must be one arbitrary round number or another.
- The Applicant (aka developer) presents their project, maybe mentions a few areas where they don’t quite align with city staff for the hearings officer to decide.
- Public comment. In favor usually goes first. It’s supposed to be about the highly technical conditions of approval, but neither the pro or con side usually has much of that, because most pro people just want to say “we need the housing!”, and the anti people “not in my back yard!”. And while the officer isn’t supposed to weigh that, they are human. A TV journalist also showed up to the hearing, and because YIMBYs were there, the story was “people speak, for, against housing” rather than simply “neighbors oppose new homes”.
- Many of the negative comments fall into the “what about the CARS?” category. Well, maybe we could build homes for people to live in and businesses, but let’s consider the cars first and then if that works out, perhaps we could add some homes and businesses.
- Usually the naysayers are a large, kind of loud and somewhat lacking in decorum bunch of people who can afford to show up at odd hours of the day to say ‘NO’ to housing. The stereotypical person there is a wealthy retiree.
And all of this because of an apartment building that some people do not like! It’s 40 homes, and we have a deficit in Oregon of thousands and thousands, and yet we replay this same type of scene over and over again.
And at the same time the neighbors talk about the housing not actually being affordable, all these months and years of process just to build 40 homes drives the price up.
Yes, we’re talking about years:
An earlier version of this project was stopped when the neighbors discovered that it included ground-floor parking, rather than only commercial space, which was apparently the Bend city code requirement. At the very same time, they were complaining that the project did not include enough parking. In other words, they used the technicality as a cudgel, simply because they don’t want the homes to be built.
Subsequently, when a code change came before the city council that included an obscure bit about garage heights (which was relevant to this project) people turned up at the city council meeting to speak against it. Fortunately, it passed anyway, but it shows the lengths that some people will go to in order to try and stop housing. Imagine spending your evening at a city council meeting complaining about garage heights in the city code just to try and stop some homes from being built because you don’t like them.
Our job, as YIMBYs, is to flip the script:
People showing up to oppose housing is not a new narrative, but when we show up to say yes, at the very least we’re showing there’s another side to it, and that some people view building more housing as a great answer to a housing shortage. The news coverage of this hearing, rather than simply talking about the people complaining about the housing, talked about people speaking for, as well as against the homes.
Bend YIMBY 