I believe that housing is a basic human right.  This is not meant to be a controversial statement.  It’s an acknowledgment that without a roof over your head, it is challenging to move beyond survival mode, to think about your health, education, employment, or involvement in the community.  

For more than a decade, I have served as the Executive Director of Homes for Good, the public housing authority serving Lane County residents.  We build and manage affordable housing and we administer rent assistance programs, which currently provide a home to over 5,000 households across Lane County.  We currently have 168 new units under construction and we’ve added 284 units of Affordable Housing to our community since 2019.

In August of 2022, we had the grand opening ceremony for The Nel.  This 45-unit apartment community was built to provide a home for people experiencing homelessness.  The celebration was full of heart, with many community leaders attending and speaking alongside me.  Afterward, I was reflecting on why there are so many people experiencing homelessness, started studying our housing market, and came to the conclusion that our housing market is very unhealthy.  For the past 30 years, we simply haven’t built enough housing to meet the needs in our community or keep up with population growth.  The result is that lower-wage workers are paying too much of their income on rent and when these lower-wage workers can’t afford to pay rent, they are becoming homeless at an unprecedented rate. 

The shortage of affordable housing in Lane County is acute.  We have watched rental prices increase by 40% between  2017 and 2024 for 1 and 2-bedroom units. At the same time frame, home sale prices skyrocketed, and the average cost of buying a home increased by $215K or 88% over the last seven years. While existing homeowners benefit from having their biggest asset increase in value, those who weren’t lucky enough to buy a house ten years ago struggle to compete in the homeownership market or find a home in the rental market.  At Homes for Good, we experience how unhealthy our housing market is when 25% of the rental assistance vouchers that we distribute are returned because units are not available.

With this background in mind, I began discussions with the Homes for Good Board, the business community, local jurisdictions, community-based organizations and the broader community about what it would take to create a healthy housing market.  We build about 1,000 units of housing yearly in Lane County.  If we want our housing market to meet the needs of our community and not push more people into homelessness, we need to dramatically increase housing production by 500 to 1,000 units per year.

This is what led me to support A.C.T. Now Lane.  For me, having a cross-sector coalition is about creating a unified voice.  Being unified on key strategies that we need to accelerate, on how we work together, on the policy changes needed, and on where additional resources will be directed.  A.C.T. Now Lane has been a table to rumble with tough conversations, find points of collaboration and how we can lift up each other’s work, and dive into the nitty gritty details of how we are going to dramatically increase housing, from mapping out available land to creating a suite of cost-effective models to looking at innovative funding.  

We need affordable and private developers building a variety of housing across our community, while advocating for needed policy change and additional resources.  Working in silos has left us years behind with one of the highest homelessness rates per capita in the nation.  No one entity can do this alone – the size, scale and urgency of this crisis need us all.  

A.C.T. Now Lane is creating a unified voice at a critical moment.  It is providing hope that we can and will do better for our neighbors and community, and I urge you to join us. 

Conclusion

Homelessness is a crisis — but it’s also an opportunity to show what kind of community we want to be. One that turns away, or one that steps up. Your action, however small, helps create the kind of Lane County where everyone is seen, heard, and housed.