Making room vs growth for growth’s sake

Occasionally, we get accused of being “developer shills”.

We aren’t. We recognize that Bend desperately needs more homes, and developers are the people who build homes, so as far as that goes, we need what they make – but we are not in it to see them get rich.

There are people and businesses that benefit from Bend growing. The more people that move here and the faster the city grows, the better, from their point of view.

All things considered, growing is better than stagnation, but YIMBYs are not promoters of growth. We just want there to be enough homes for everyone. We want Bend to accommodate the people who are working in Bend – which we clearly are not from the morning traffic in to and evening traffic out of town. We recognize that in a bidding war between someone from Seattle moving to Bend with money, and a single mom working two jobs, the person with money is going to win. So we need to make room for everyone – by the time it comes to a bidding war, the single mom has already lost. We want to make room for both the mom and the family from Seattle.

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