r/Eugene • u/ShastaPlaster • 26d ago
How would YOU solve the housing affordability crisis in Eugene? jiggly
If you ask me (and this should be nationwide as well) - It should just simply be made illegal for one person or entity to own more than a few single occupancy houses. I'm not sure why we need companies owning thousands of units and charging huge premiums to squeeze the lifeblood out of people just so they can have a roof over their heads. Part of the change in the last 50 years has been the massive accumulation of housing by private corporations in concert with mortgage lending by national banks.
Forced divestment, imho. I'd like to see the city council take some kind of bold action on this, since it's obvious that "we've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas!" and the status quo and just talking about it ad nauseum isn't working.
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u/FerretBytes 26d ago
Is there any actual basis in the US for 'making it illegal for a person or entity to own more than one home'?
Because it reads as: *hits bong* You know what what be great, brah? Like... if there were no landlords...
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u/drevilinside 26d ago
Increased property tax scale based on number of homes owned. You can own multiple homes it just becomes prohibitively expensive.
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u/G_Platypus 26d ago
Prohibitively expensive for the renters, yeah
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u/lakidakidoo 26d ago
Unless you make tax exemptions for people renting out their homes with long term rentals. More so, if they are low income renters.
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u/Princess_Lorelei 26d ago
They already do that. You get hella benefits on your first mortgage and a lot of tax benefits for occupying the home you own.
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u/stinkyfootjr 25d ago
I haven’t been able to deduct anything on my mortgage and property taxes since Trump upped the personal deduction, we just go for the basic. On the other hand, if I owned rental property (which I don’t), I would be able to deduct all the costs associated it with plus be able to depreciate the property over 30 years.
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u/BlackFoxSees 25d ago
Depending on conditions at the time, I think there are bigger inequities if you're able to buy. Having your monthly payment for housing fixed at the same level (effectively shrinking over time) for the whole time you live there, for example.
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u/Holiday-Aardvark1166 26d ago
With increased taxes like anything else comes more loopholes to work down the taxes.
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u/Fuzzy_Aspect1779 25d ago
Tinkering around with a property tax incentive that every state (and the District of Columbia) already has in place (in some form), is not the solution.
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u/TangerineBrave985 26d ago edited 22d ago
I think people circle back to it often because in preschool most of us were taught that everyone gets one slice of cake before anyone gets seconds...
hits bong "But like, what gives them the right to extract our labor while they just kick back and vacation/invest?"
Genuinely, I don't understand how people are justified in owning excess of what they NEED and charging a premium to people who actually NEED it. If you don't have enough food, I can understand some level of stinginess... But having multiple homes when there are so, so many people living in sub par conditions, sounds like a great way to earn your place in hell.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
I feel you, and the answer is "make a law" or at least make a law that penalizes those who own multiple single family houses and bring antitrust suits against those who are monopolizing.
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u/fazedncrazed 25d ago
Is there any actual basis in the US for 'making it illegal for a person or entity to own more than one home'?
Speaking as an avowed stoner, you should maybe put down the bong and check out what our reps merkley and wyden have been up to, bc its precisely that.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/08/19/bill-prevent-profiteering-low-income-housing
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u/TormentedTopiary 25d ago
Now that you mention it; no landlords sounds pretty damn good. It's all stolen land anyhow.
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u/band-of-horses 26d ago
Build more housing? Though that's also somewhat unrealistic, because no one wants sprawl, and most peopel don't want to bulldoze neighborhoods to put in concrete jungle highrises. And making housing more affordable locally just invites more people to move here and drive pricing back up.
But I don't think banning people from owning more than one home is going to do much either. People renting existing homes will be kicked out that way, and many renters won't be in a financial position to buy a home even if they wanted to, so where are they all going to go...
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u/Low-Obligation7326 26d ago
Keeping Air BnBs in check, and a limit on rental homes owned by a single person/corporation would be a good start. Greedy landlords driving up the unrealistic rent need to be stopped.
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u/RedditUser934 25d ago
because no one wants sprawl, and most peopel don't want to bulldoze neighborhoods to put in concrete jungle highrises.
Eugene is full of surface parking lots, especially downtown. Make those housing. Turing single family homes into row houses would do a lot as well.
Increasing density does not mean concrete jungle high rises. It means less big yards and parking lots, and more 3-6 floor buildings.
It probably also means less car dependency and more transit.
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u/C43CE 26d ago
Sprawl is coming whether anybody wants to cry about it or not. The urban growth boundary is the problem. I do agree with your point that banning people from owning more than one house won’t do squat. Every time a new hi-rise goes up, the municipal government pats itself on the back and claims to be providing more housing. Never mind that that housing is for college kids and not permanent residents.
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u/DudeLoveBaby 26d ago
Sprawl is coming if you do literally nothing about it like you're proposing, yes. The UGB is only a problem for the uncreative who see the only answer to be more endless single family residences.
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u/PGY0 25d ago
This is wrong on every level. Every college kid living in a new high rise means more campus-adjacent houses, apartments, condos etc are available. More housing = more housing. The urban growth boundary is what keeps Eugene functional. You can’t allow rapid low density growth and then try to catch up building public transportation, infrastructure, and the likes. It is very cost inefficient and leads to shitty suburban hellscapes. Eugene needs high rise apartments downtown, apartment complexes near campus, duplexes and triplexes in the residential neighborhoods, etc.
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u/Randvek 26d ago
Encourage high density housing that isn’t quads.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
I feel like these days we have more student housing than actual housing.
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u/BearUmpire 25d ago
Dorms are exempt from landlord tenant law. To me, student housing is dorms. (And also assisted living facilities)
Everything else is real housing, and you have rights under landlord tenant law.
Quads are stupid, but non students definitely live there.
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u/Neat-Buddy-2b 26d ago
China stopped this shit by declaring "houses are for living in, not speculating" and well, that's China. Here its supply and demand economics, except when the market is artificially manipulated
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u/CheeseGraterFace 26d ago
That’s rich, considering you can’t own a house in China at all. You lease them from the government and they cost basically the same as they do here. And by house, I mean shitty high rise apartment with poor construction.
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u/O_O--ohboy 26d ago
Yeah but the leases are for 70 years and they're on the land itself, not the buildings (and no one knows what happens at that point because the first batch will be up in 2050.)
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u/O_O--ohboy 25d ago
It is sort of sketchy in the sense of uncertainty but could also represent a strategic benefit. Let's say that an area of China is experiencing greater impacts of climate change than others in 2050. Would it make sense to revoke the land use rights in a high impact area and have those people transferred to one of the ghost cities with vacancies in a safer area, renewing the leases there? That seems like a benefit that we don't have in the US. Who knows if they would use it in that capacity but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.
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u/Neat-Buddy-2b 26d ago
You're agreeing with me, you just don't want it to sound like it
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u/duck7001 26d ago
An easy step would be for the City to reduce the permit barriers to build. The permits in eugene are insanely expensive and take for fucking ever to obtain. As it stands right now, permits for a 2,000 SqFt house new build can easily run $30-40,000
I understand that this is a source of revenue for the city, so it doesn't seem that reducing the overall cost to build would make much sense on its face... but if by reducing building costs, you are spurring more development that would not otherwise take place in a higher permit cost environment, then you are possibly taking in more money overall.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
I feel pretty fair in saying that there's a whole lot of NIMBY types who are dead set on keeping the suburbs expensive with those high taxes and fees on building so that they can 1. Protect their "investment" (aka the place they live, honk honk) and 2. Keep out the "undesirables".
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u/duck7001 26d ago
Reducing permitting fees to help spur a building spree isn't going to tank their home value.
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u/fizzmore 25d ago
The suburban NIMBYs usually care more about the quality of the neighborhood than propping up home values, while the urban NIMBYs love regulating development to the point it's prohibitively expensive to do so.
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u/Powerful-Grape-1792 23d ago
But then a housing crisis causes 'undesirables' to live on the street, thus tanking their home value
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u/EfficientYam5796 26d ago
Permit costs are bad, but excessive regulations add even more expense to build than the permit costs.
For instance, rain comes down from the sky, lands on your roof, down to your gutters, and out to the rain drains. But hold on Cowboy, you can't let that water run into the storm drainage system, you have to clean it first. You know, because it got so dirty on your roof. So you have to build a $5000 stormwater treatment system on your property to clean the water. Oh, and by the way, you have to maintain that forever now too.
Just one of many excessive regulations that adds to cost.
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u/Powerful-Grape-1792 23d ago
For commercial buildings? I certainly don't have this on my house
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u/EfficientYam5796 18d ago
All new homes in Eugene.
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u/Powerful-Grape-1792 8d ago edited 8d ago
So on new construction? 5k isn't that big an expense to also have salmon in our rivers. And yes. roofs are a source of pollution, especially around here where people often put zinc sulfate on them
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u/EfficientYam5796 8d ago edited 7d ago
Dissolved minerals still go to the river. The treatment systems are designed to remove the dirt.
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u/Powerful-Grape-1792 7d ago
Why would it? it isn't water soluble it's part of the dirt.
The dirt is what kills spawning salmon...
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u/rollerroman 26d ago
I build houses for a living. If you think houses are too expensive, come build houses with me! Your answer will explain basic market forces and why houses are expensive.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
When you say you "build houses for a living" what exactly are you talking about. Are you a carpenter? Drywaller? Or a financier?
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u/rollerroman 26d ago
I'm a general contractor who specializes in building new houses. My company is currently building 7-10 houses. I employee carpenters.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Then I've got no qualms with you. It's the corporate entities and the people buying and renting them en masse that I have a problem with.
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u/rollerroman 26d ago
I'll take that as a "no" you do not want to build houses with me and thus increase your pay while also reducing housing costs. Got it!
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u/mynameizmyname 26d ago
build more housing. they did this in Austin, tx and rents miraculously dropped 15%. Sitting at 100%+ occupancy is only good for landlords and money interests.
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u/griffincreek 26d ago
Laws and regulations drove many "Mom and Pop" landlords out, and a lot of them sold to the corporations. The same type are less willing to invest their retirement into 1-4 unit properties anymore, which leads to corporations as the major player.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Well the corporations need to be regulated even harder. That's basically what I'm arguing. That said, I don't really care about "mom and pop landlords" either.
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u/griffincreek 26d ago
Pro tip: The more you regulate corporations, the more expensive it will be to the end user, they pass on all costs to the customer. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be laws and regulations, but don't expect those costs to come out of the CEO's pay or the shareholders dividends. And limiting the number of units owned by a single entity will be futile, they'll just distribute properties under new LLCs. But maybe what you're talking about is abolishing private property under some form of Marxism or Communism.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Regulate them to the extent that they cannot pass on costs because they're forced to divest. Simple as.
Go after people trying to skirt the system. It's not hard to audit those things.
I'm not a Marxist either, not even close. I just know that as it currently stands, no one can afford a home and it's not getting any better just letting the free market keep people a few breaths from drowning.
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u/griffincreek 26d ago
Why on Earth would any non-government entity want to invest in new housing units that they couldn't pass on all costs to the customer? And over-regulations of existing properties with the intent to force divestment would most likely be unconstitutional, unless you believe that there is a small enough number of individual corporations to prove a monopoly, which is highly unlikely.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Builders will still make money, but the large scale corporations that are the bannermen of setting costs would be deposed. It's that simple, basically. Reduce regulations but make it harder for a small group to own an outsized amount of homes.
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u/elementalbee 26d ago
Build up….and build a lot. Right now we’re putting in shit tons of low income housing and I don’t know that’s the solution. We need more housing and we need building permits.
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u/DudeLoveBaby 26d ago
Build up in areas that are not just Downtown. I don't mean giant 20 story behemoth buildings like on Franklin, but 4 storyish apartments sprinkled in various neighborhoods would help.
Hate how many people I'm suddenly seeing pushing for removing the UGB. It's one of the best parts of the area. Sprawl is never the answer and pushing for removal of the UGB is directly pushing for sprawl even if that's not your intention.
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u/pegonreddit 25d ago
Absolutely agree!
Start building now on the Old YMCA lot. How many years will this massive, flat, buildable lot in a residential area with easy public transit and in walking distance to schools sit empty? How many people are sleeping in cars within 1/2 a mile of its chainlink fences?
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Sprawl isn't great but there's always going to be some amount of expansion if we get more people housed and affording homes. It's a small price to pay for the benefits we'll see and I'd hope we'd be able to find some kind of middle ground, with things (as you said) like more medium occupancy units.
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u/divisionstdaedalus 26d ago
That creates a manifest problem. If you restrict the ownership of homes like that you will reduce demand for ownership. You will reduce landlord profits. You will also reduce rents. I believe the last is your goal.
The issue arises when it comes to construction. Do you build houses? Does your grandma? No. You buy houses from people who built them.
Oregon has developed a strong antipathy to housing developers, but the only other option is to have the state build new units. I think that will be the disastrous.
The other issue is that if you do that, landlords will come up with all sorts of fun ways to hide their multiple ownership. Those methods will cost a lot of money, which in turn drives up rent.
Finally, I think you really underestimate how many people can afford to own. Houses are expensive because you need to pay expensive people to come and do things to maintain them. If investors can't make money on real estate, a lot of it will fall apart. Doubly so if you successfully reduce the value of homes.
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u/GarmBlack 26d ago
I wouldn't say ban owning more than 1, that seems somewhat excessive as rental homes should exist. I would however limit it at some capacity (3 maybe?) We also need to build a ton more housing g, but that's hard with urban growth boundaries. I would personally love for out of state ownership to be banned. If you wanna be a rental owner here, you need to have yoir primary residence or business headquartered here. Any money for housing costs should stay in our community.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
I agree that there's probably wiggle room for more than one but it certainly can't be more than like, five.
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u/Educational_Duty179 25d ago
Simply making it illegal to own x number probably is unconstitutional. But you could Tax the fuck out of it after say 4-5 units
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u/GarmBlack 25d ago
Thr tax would just go into higher rents though. I'm sure you could limit corporate access to single family homes, at least.
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u/Educational_Duty179 25d ago
Corporations are people so the 14th amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. Good luck getting that one past this Supreme Court 😀
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u/TheOldPhantomTiger 25d ago
“Property” isn’t defined in the constitution, and the only rights regarding property enumerated in the constitution are that property can’t be seized without due process, and that any property taken for public use must receive “just compensation.”
I think there’s a LOT of room there to craft a law and follow all constitutional requirements.
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u/Educational_Duty179 25d ago
Denying someone a right or privilege protected by the Constitution is.
The 14th amendment guarantees equal protection under the law
Property rights: The Constitution protects the right to own property, which could be interpreted to include the ability to own multiple homes, although this is not explicitly stated. Zoning regulations: While a blanket ban on multiple homes might be problematic, local governments can use zoning laws to regulate the number of dwellings on a property based on factors like density and land use. Equal protection concerns: A law that only restricts certain individuals from owning multiple homes could raise concerns about discriminatory practices, potentially violating the Equal Protection Clause
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u/TheOldPhantomTiger 25d ago
There is no right to own any and all property that one might want, or a right to own unlimited amounts. Again, the only explicitly stated rights regarding property in the constitution is the right to due process before seizure and the right to just compensation is taken for public use. And just like all rights in the constitution there are a bunch of different ways they could (and have) been interpreted.
Even a cursory look at property law over the history of this country will show innumerable ways to limit ownership of property that have been entirely constitutional.
If the social values of a given district (whether city, county, state, or federal) support limiting the number of residential properties an individual or corporation could own, it would be very easy to pass such a law that passes a constitutionality test (assuming you have someone writing it who actually knows how to craft it rather than OPs generic form). Of all the rights mentioned in the constitution, the right to property is historically the easiest to fiddle with BECAUSE it is not defined or directly named and because two specific clauses about it only provide weak government restrictions.
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u/TangerineBrave985 26d ago
Why should rental homes exist? Seriously? I do not understand...
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u/GarmBlack 26d ago
Because some people need more space than an apt for myriad reasons, but are not in a place to afford a home, or even if they can, are not intending to stay in a place long enough for a purchase to make sense. What of a college student and spouse with three kids and a dog? They don't want to stay in Eugene after the student graduates. Where do they live? A rented house is the perfect place for such a family.
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u/gingerjuice 26d ago
The County and City governments need to loosen up the regulations and make the fees affordable for builders to develop. Also the state could make it easier for smaller businesses to hire employees.
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u/EfficientYam5796 26d ago
If it were easier to get houses and apartment built I would invest a ton of time and money into it. If it were easier to be a landlord, more people would do it. As it sits now, the regulations both to build and to own are so onerous that I don't want to do it.
It's really all a supply and demand problem. Make it hard to increase supply and the price and scarcity go up. Not complicated. If nobody could own more than one property then there would be no more properties available than those that could be bought. Goodbye rentals, hello sleeping on the street.
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u/BearUmpire 25d ago edited 25d ago
I've worked in housing development and tenant protections for a long time. I've passed new laws in Eugene and at the state level.
The way we finance new rental housing projects is incredibly inefficient. Rental assistance and vouchers set a price floor and result in increasing government expenses and a wealth transfer to landlords. Vouchers can't go away, but we need to go in a new direction.
I strongly believe in resident owned communities. This was pioneered in manufactured home parks in Oregon. Residents pooling money form a coop and buy their land.
Square One (local non-profit) took this concept and paired limited equity cooperatives with community land trust, and created an ownership model that's affordable and relatively fungible between occupants. Square one keeps their costs per unit low and has brought substantial philanthropic capital to each project, ultimately reducing the final financing payments, keeping the ongoing carrying charge low for the resident. The coop functions more like a HOA than anything else.
This model can be replicated, especially if more moderate income people bring their own capital to a project, as to not rely on philanthropy. (I'm talking residents bringing a larger down payment to move into their home).
In Austria, you see a social housing model that has residents bring some capital to a future project and pair it with a subsidized loan (1% interest or so) from the state. This is funded by a 1% income tax.
Oregon already has the subsidized loan program guaranteed by future oregon income tax revenue. (LIFT for Homeownership is a 0% loan) This program sets a maximum profit for the project developer fee (7%). It was impossible utilize this program for limited equity coops, but it seems that for the 2025 funding rounds, those barriers have been removed, making these types of projects possible. I can go in depth on this if someone really wants.
Another thing to throw into the mix is free land. Our local governments and special districts should work together to make surplus land available to these projects. Lands can be a huge expense, and everything you don't have to finance will lower the end residents' monthly housing payment. Government land banks holding the land will minimize long term risks to the developer.
We need a local source of money to fund these types of projects. LIFT for homeownership is expected to be very competitive, so the more we get local money, the more we can these types of projects on our own without the state helping.
These projects are made easier with good zoning and expedient permitting and friendly neighbors.
So yeah, I've become a Dan Bryant disciple and would go hard on Limited equity coops on community land trusts, and raise as much capital for the LIFT program as I could.
Tldr: reject vouchers. Embrace Homeownership. Make homeownership accessible to lower income people by subsidizing their down payments. Use cheap state backed loans to spur development. There is a ton of Homeownership developers in Oregon willing to build with a max 7% profit.
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u/dangerfielder 26d ago
One way is taxes and permits. Tax new McMansions and give tax breaks for affordable housing, effectively making affordable housing as profitable for developers as luxury housing.
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u/zz0rr 26d ago
there's already a tax for this, I know because I paid it recently (to build housing in my low income neighborhood... go figure)
https://eugene-or.gov/DocumentCenter/View/46871/Affordable-Housing-Construction-Excise-Tax-FAQs
there's also an this exemption
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u/dangerfielder 25d ago
Interesting. Do you think it’s working?
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u/zz0rr 25d ago
I never looked into what the money was spent on, it would depend
just looking at the effects of the tax, I'd say it's a bad idea to tax development in low income neighborhoods. I curtailed the scope of my project a little bit because of the contribution to the total budget it added
"if you want less of something, tax it" comes to mind
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u/dangerfielder 25d ago
Seems to make more sense to tax luxury builds to fund tax breaks for lower income builds. I think that builders would be happy to build at the lower end if it was just as profitable.
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u/lindagovinda 26d ago
Not everyone can or wants to own a house. So renters would just be fucked.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Sure, but more people moving into homes would mean lower occupancy for renters in apartments, and the supply side would increase and you'd see lowered rents due to competition.
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u/lindagovinda 26d ago
Do you own a home?
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
I rent
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u/lindagovinda 26d ago
So what would you do if there were no landlords? I agree prices are way too high. The fact my adult daughter had to move back home last year makes it glaringly obvious to me. But not having landlords will not solve the problem. Corporations buying out properties is evil for sure. That shit should be restricted. But you kind have to blame people who sold out to them too. It’s a very complex situation but getting rid of landlords won’t do shit. I was a renter for over 30 years and even when I was young and could afford a house in my hometown I didn’t want that responsibly or to be tied down. I kick myself now because that city is the most expensive city that not on a coast. And now I can’t afford to move back. It’s greed that’s ruining our country. The fact that businesses made record profits the last two years says that. It’s gonna get a lot worse too. You think housing is expensive now? What til those tariffs what’s his name is taking about will make it so much worse. Lumber will be at record highs along with all other building materials. We’re definitely are in the end stages of capitalism. It’s not sustainable at this point. The Midwest is full of cheap towns, maybe moving is the solution.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
So what would you do if there were no landlords?
I'm not sure what this question means. Can you be more specific?
It’s a very complex situation but getting rid of landlords won’t do shit.
The profit incentive on housing and the speculation in properties as an investment is the main reason housing is too expensive for most people. It's a broken system. Solution: Remove that system.
I agree with the rest of your post though. Corporate greed has hit critical mass.
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u/lindagovinda 26d ago
Like who would you rent from? If you don’t want to rent then buy. Like what would you do without being able to rent?
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
You could still rent, but the housing supply would be spread out much more so that there would be a lot of competition among landlords to attract a renter, and that would lower prices across the board for renters.
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u/lindagovinda 26d ago
Also maybe moving out of a college town would work better. Cheaper place just south in Saginaw, Creswell and CG. This town has always been higher because the college. That’s true for most college towns.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Those are also extremely far away and have fewer services and events though. I don't think being a partial college town should necessitate cost of housing being prohibitively expensive, either.
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u/BearUmpire 25d ago
Lol, there are many types of fungible housing that doesn't involve profit seeking entities
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u/lindagovinda 25d ago
Really? Like what?
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u/BearUmpire 25d ago edited 25d ago
In Eugene, we have limited equity coops under square one.
We have other coops too, the Blair housing coops in the whiteaker, the student coops on campus and the walnut st coop. The student coops are the most fungible.
In Lane county, dexter oaks, Filbert Grove, and vita Lea are all coops.
Additionally, we have mission driven organizations that have affordable housing, and a fairly robust housing authority (homes for good) that has still has a public housing portfolio.
None of those are profit seeking housing options.
Edit: ask a question, get the answer, downvote because you're salty about it. 🤣
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u/OOkami89 25d ago
Build up, skyscraper apartments. If you have an overabundance of housing then the cost goes down.
Believing that the government will do anything other then oppress and be utterly incompetent would be foolish.
Disability/SSI isn’t even allowed to make rent without getting dangerously close to losing everything and ending up on the streets.
Everyone looking out for their community is far more likely to give results.
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u/Greedy_Disaster_3130 25d ago
Build more, it’s that simple, there are lots of places with cheap rent across the country but it’s because they have plenty of inventory
There are places like Austin Texas that have seen a significant decline in rents and home prices because they’ve built a ton
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u/PunksOfChinepple 26d ago
That would be an interesting idea, then I could only own one home, and my LLC could own one to rent out, and my other LLC could own one to rent out, and my infant son's trust could own one to rent out, what a great idea!
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
You better believe your ass is getting target audited lol
The serious answer though, is just do the research and check the background so that the kind of mafioso "home-hiding" you're talking about doesn't happen.
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u/CheeseGraterFace 26d ago
We need to build more housing. That’s the answer. And NIMBYs need to get bent.
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u/ElectrickMayhem 26d ago
Give property tax breaks to landlords who lower rents to living wage level affordability. Landlords who rent to those earners would pay less property tax, and the market would stabilize. Boom problem solved. The property tax in the city is why rents are so high. We should incentivize landlords making housing affordable. Also we shouldn't be letting large corporations buy up all the single family homes. Single family homes should be bought and sold on the market by single families. Corporate firms like State street and Blackrock have no business buying all of our homes and pricing hardworking regular folks out of the marketplace. Boom problem solved. But will that ever happen? Short answer: No.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
We should incentivize landlords making housing affordable.
I highly doubt this can be done. The system as it is incentivizes one thing and one thing only: make housing so expensive that it's impossible to move because everyone lives paycheck to paycheck and yet keep renters at the same time keep prices just low enough that you extract maximum occupancy profit.
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u/miscellaneousnorthwe 25d ago
Remove the height cap immediately and start growing the cities urban core. We can’t grow East due to I5/Springfield, North due partially to the river, or South due to the hills. Our only options are West which would destroy vital wetland habitat or start growing taller.
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u/squatting-Dogg 25d ago
It will never happen, people won’t allow building heights that would obscure views of the buttes, try again.
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u/miscellaneousnorthwe 25d ago
F**k the buttes. Our city needs to prioritize affordable housing over sentimentality. Want to go see some hills? Take a hike.
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u/SproketRocket 25d ago
As much as I might agree that larger orgs can raises prices, that's not the issue. Its just supply. more housing & more denser housing: townhomes, apartments, whatever. Sadly that means getting rid of the crappy 20's, 30's and 40's homes that are taking up too much space.
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u/leaky- 25d ago
The thing is that’s affordable housing requires subsidies and is a client base that typically has lower credit scores and thus higher risk. It’s more enticing to build luxury housing as it has a more reliable customer base from a standpoint of getting loans and being able to pay.
We need affordable housing, but need to find someone willing to put the money and effort towards it. We can’t even get EPD to do anything useful with our tax dollars so I wouldn’t be hopeful that the government would efficiently subsidize affordable housing
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u/loligo_pealeii 26d ago
Change the zoning and permitting structure and provide tax incentives for builders to build more mixed section 8/affordable/middle income housing, both apartment buildings and single family homes. Start regulating landlords to make sure units are staying habitable and rent increases aren't coming along too fast. Adjust property taxes to start capturing more income from non owner-occupied units (and provide tax breaks for those units which have committed to remaining affordable). Start encouraging incorporation of new land or adjusting the urban growth boundary to make more space for all this growth. Improve infrastructure to encourage growth. Foster new business development to provide higher paying jobs. Insist the state and feds do their part to assist in addressing the mental health /addiction/other needs of our residents to try and start getting some of the encampments permanently cleaned up, and those people housed and appropriately supported.
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u/Rick_Flexington 26d ago
Build a bunch of rentals and tie the rent price to the wages (or disability, etc.) earned by the tenant. Not whatever the market will bear.
Get rid of Air BNB type rentals.
Allow taller buildings.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
My other thought was long those lines - Make a law that says something like "rent is capped at 35% of income for anyone making less than $100,000 a year" or something like that. Just spitballing.
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u/TangerineBrave985 26d ago
This does seem like a more reasonable approach to hacking back at the predatory rental market than an outright ban on owning 2nd homes...
That said, it's not like people really have a choice, they need housing and being forced to pay more than property tax/maintenance just benefits the douches who already have an excess of resources...
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u/oreferngonian 26d ago
Tax incentives for private landlords to rent to income restricted households to lessen rental barriers for low income families
Establish a program low income renters can apply to give them an advantage in rental searches and expand the rental assistance program in the form of housing vouchers. This program should do periodic housing inspections to continue to assist the household in keeping up on house upkeep and cleanliness. This would give landlords help protecting their property and keep financial stability in the forefront by having the program involved for at least a year to ensure the family stays housed
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u/Greedy_Disaster_3130 25d ago
For a lot of landlords I know this would only work if the city was willing to help cover the risks associated with this type of a program
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u/oreferngonian 25d ago
Obviously that’s what the whole second paragraph is about.
It’s the State that would fund something like this. I worked in income based housing and saw how large corporations receive tax credits housing low income households why not private landlords who can really use the same advantages for the efforts
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u/MasseyRamble 26d ago
When an owner sells a rental, they face capital gains taxes on the increase in value unless they immediately reinvest in another investment property via what is known as a 1031 exchange.
For small landlords - and we can define that as we will - reducing or waiving capital gains for selling to a first-time buyer, for example, would benefit the seller and buyer alike. The government would miss out on tax $, but in my mind that is an investment by the public to prod the marketplace (without giving the large owners a free pass).
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
Another solid idea and one that could be used for divestment. It's essentially about wealth transfer, and taking the burden off of the buyer and renter. Banks are currently making hundreds of billions of dollars in profit every year due to the inflated nature of mortgage fees from exactly those taxes, and the cost is passed on - but if the money is going back into the community in another way through the renter having more to spend, then it's really not a net loss.
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u/Wiley-E-Coyote 25d ago edited 25d ago
Just curious - how is that going to affect the overall price of housing in a meaningful way?
If you force a lot of single-family homes to convert from rental to owner occupant, that will drive down the price of purchasing a home, in the short term. However, it will drive up the price of renting a single family home because the supply will be lower, and either increase or have no effect on the price of renting an apartment.
As far as my answer to the question: build more multi-family housing. Everything from 1 bedroom high rise apartments for single people, to larger family-oriented duplexes and 4-plexes with garages. You can't fix a housing shortage with spreading around the single family houses that already exist in a different way, and you can't fix it by building more of them unless you are willing to have a fuck ton of urban sprawl.
The biggest obstacle to building housing (especially in eugene,) is the strict requirements for construction and all the added costs they bring. Is it reasonable to make someone spend $20,000 dollars on stormwater mitigation because they covered their porch? Is it reasonable to fine someone $10,000 to cut down some shitty fir trees in the street right of way to build a house on the lot? I dunno, but Eugene does...
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u/MoeityToity 25d ago
Publicly-owned and developed housing. If the developer doesn’t have to make a huge profit on the project and a property management company doesn’t have to add on another chunk of profits, rents can be kept much, much lower and even have a low threshold to ownership.
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u/bchicgrl 25d ago
A huge problem is all of the AirBnb and VRBOs sitting vacant unless there's some big event in town. If ppl wouldn't own so many of those, they could go to people who would love to live in a single family home in an actual neighborhood with a yard.
Wish we'd reduce the number of vacation rentals allowed, I'm all for having some, but we don't need 10 different ones in the same neighborhood. 1 or 2 per neighborhood would be sufficient.
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u/Earthventures 26d ago
I agree. The most important step is to get investment capital out of the housing market. Doesn't matter how many new units you build if they just get bought up by investors.
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u/1LTLA 26d ago
Limit 3rd party ownership and build more housing. Incentivize home ownership for tax reasons, like if the actual owners of the house live in the house they get a tax brake. Housing investment firms that use homes as a commodity should be completely banned from the state. That would be a good start. Homes cannot be owned by non us citizens if they do not have someone living in the home that is the owner. i.e. outside investors need to get out.
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u/NoPistonsOnlyRotors7 26d ago
By stopping MUPTE or any form of credits to these developers. It’s not working. To force current MUPTE recipients/developers to use a high percentage of the vast savings/profits from such tax breaks. Into rolling them back into new developments. Or lose such credits. I would be in favor of those in compliance giving such incentives but not at what they are now currently.
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u/BearUmpire 25d ago
I'm happy to get coffee and talk mupte. I've been on the review panel for three years and have some hands on experience that may change your perspective.
I'm also happy to share resources on the basics of housing development.
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u/WorldError47 26d ago
The status quo is the solution that is being implemented. It’s not a problem the city is looking to solve.
It’s not a coincidence that nothing is being done, and the status quo is only a problem for those near the bottom.
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u/ShastaPlaster 26d ago
It seems fair to say that a lot of city council are probably represented by the suburban $100k+ per year class or long-lived NIMBY hippies in south Eugene who have lived in the same dump house for 50 years.
Makes sense that Mike Clark represents Ward 5 (aka the rich NE Eugene suburbs and Valley River Center) and is a former mortgage specialist (lmao) and his goals are "strengthen public safety".
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u/WorldError47 26d ago
Representation is structured more around wealth than people everywhere in this country.
It’s a feature of capitalism.
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u/letsmakeafriendship 25d ago
Renters vote at a much lower rate than owners. Elected reps don't answer to groups of people people who don't vote or donate to their campaign.
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u/OculusOmnividens 26d ago
In MIT's study on societal collapse, the model we are currently closest to is called 'Business As Usual 2.' The worst scenario, by the way.
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u/Accomplished_Way6723 26d ago
A 2-pronged approach.
Make it much easier to build. We all have something to learn from the other side. One of the reasons it's generally cheaper to live in Texas and Florida even though people keep flocking there is that they make it much easier to build. But in blue states, well-meaning environmental regulation is often weaponized by higher income people and home owners who have an interest in maintaining housing supply scarce. This is often done in the name of maintaining the "character" of a neighborhood. But all it maintains is wealth for people who already own property and an affordability crisis for every one else.
Public ownership. The US in general needs to be much more open to the notion that public ownership of enterprises and of property need not be a bad thing. The city should take it upon itself to build all manner of high-density public housing, from dorm-style to high end. This would require more skyscrapers but also better public transportation. This public housing should be available in the bottom 80-90% of the income distribution. It would provide long-term leases capped at 10% of income for the poorest and up to 25% of income for the richest qualified renters. The goal should be ambitious: building 20-50000 housing units (Vienna has more than 200K housing units) over time to accommodate current and future growth. The buildings should be mixed-use, with the bottom floors reserved for shops, schools, clinics, etc. To qualify, one would have to have resided in the city for at least 7 years, and priority would be given to longer time residents. Over time, the supply of public housing would decrease the value of private real estate by reducing the supply of private market buyers. This would in turn make it cheaper to buy a home. Rents would also have to go down as private landlords would complete over many fewer renters. Public housing would also reduce the number of homeless people. As long as housing remains solely a free market, many people will inevitably be left behind.
The combination of easier private building and public building would dramatically alter the supply of housing relative to the demand, and housing would be much cheaper, even for people who didn't qualify for public assistance.
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u/IronyAndWhine 26d ago
The State builds and manages housing, recouping costs and then dropping rents, cutting out middlemen and profit
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u/I_am_Wayne_King 25d ago
Federally?
- An immediate ban on residential property ownership within the United States by private investment firms/asset managent corporations/etc, as well as foreign investors.
- An expansion to both low income housing and FHA style mortgage loans for individuals with low income/low credit score barriers to traditional financing (so that they could build equity every month instead of paying rent to someone else).
- Mass deportations of noncitizens in the country illegally (the estimated cost of ending homelessness in the United States is around 20 Billion dollars, we spend between 115 and 150 Billion dollars on illegal immigrants on a yearly basis).
- A "New Deal" style program that included training for any able bodied US citizens wishing to enter the construction trade, with post graduation including guaranteed federal jobs building everything from housing to roads to utilities in underutilized areas (financed by the above).
Locally?
- An investigation as to whether zoning expansions for small plot/tiny home housing would be possible without negatively impacting existing neighborhoods.
- Increasing high density housing (or mixed use/prilarily residential buildings) in the downtown Eugene core, built in the footprints of the countless empty businesses we have there (as much as I despise it as a concept this is a perfect usage of eminent domain).
- A massive investment in increasing public transit to mitigate traffic caused by the above.
- Banning the non-private commercial use of residential property (including ADUs) to assfuck airbnb to death.
I think this would be a good start.
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u/ShastaPlaster 25d ago
I'm up for all of this but I'd rather hard close the border and offer amnesty for the other nonviolent illegal immigrants who come forward. Reagan even did it. It sucks but it's almost impossible to extract some of these people from the country and communities they live in these days without cutting off your nose to spite your face and you're almost guaranteed to deport US citizens in the process. That said, I agree that Trump and Biden both failed on the border, Trump because it was based on xenophobia while still being a puppet to corporations that want as much cheap labor as possible, and Biden for simply looking the other way and pretending nothing was happening.
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u/Go_Actual_Ducks 25d ago
I wish there was a disincentive for vacant housing. Maybe it wouldn't make much difference, but I for one have a "neighbor" with a large house that just sits empty and it's been that way for years. He lives elsewhere and just likes to own a bunch of crap that hardly ever gets used, including this house.
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u/letsmakeafriendship 25d ago
It's called property tax and upkeep and it already exists.
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u/Go_Actual_Ducks 25d ago
Yes, I'm aware. I'm referring to something that would only apply to vacant housing, unlike those expenses you mentioned.
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u/Delicious_Library909 25d ago
Yes we need infill of course, and yes we need the city to make it less costly/easier to permit, but we need to dream big to solve the issue. We need someone to step forward and do a moonshot and solve it all at once— After World War II on the east coast, they a developer named Levit built many thousands of single family homes — they were very, very small by today’s standards but offered an alternative to city dwelling. They sold them very cheaply because they were all the same basically and able to be built on an assembly line, and then the government guaranteed that they’d be more affordable for veterans returning from war than renting would be. There are many Levittowns. It was a fast, cheap, and effective way to built for the demand that was there. It took a private builder but also government cooperation to get the right loans, the land permits, etc. There are ways to modernize a small, responsibly-sized single family dwelling with a yard Levittown situation, such as creating responsible, non car-dependent transportation planning and environmentally friendly features. Now I’m a lover of an urban growth boundary as much as the next person, but if we could just have a huge (read: cheap and reproducible as possible in once place, since a lot of the costs of home building around here could be reduced by reproducing and mass production ) plot adjacent to town on many acres, so it might take a one time adjustment of the UGB to strike a deal that would guarantee a 100% owner-occupied 6,000 residents housing (at prob an average of 2-4 people per unit), around 2,000 houses this way. I assume you could do some percentage of them denser in condo or townhouse blocks too to diversify the area. So if some have 1/8 acre lots and some are more dense, so about 200 acres total, maybe less, to create affordable housing for 6,000 more people in a fast amount of time, once the location was determined. This is a great bargain that I am willing to take and would be worth forfeiting a bit of the urban growth boundary for.
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u/letsmakeafriendship 25d ago edited 25d ago
Downvote me all you want, but I wouldn't. Eugene is getting expensive because people realized it's an awesome place to live, so they're moving here and out-competing existing locals for space. If we expand the city via sprawl, it will lose some of its awesomeness and become more like other large cities. If we expand via increase density, that's better than sprawl, but it means Eugene becoming a "bigger city" which at some point also becomes annoying. I like that I can drive 15 minutes to a park and be the only person there.
I'm fine paying more for rent if it means the city stays the same.
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u/letsmakeafriendship 25d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eugene/comments/1eep7mz/want_to_actually_lower_rent_in_eugene_heres_how/
Increasing housing supply or decreasing demand (decreasing migration to Eugene or convincing people to move away) are the only two ways to do this at scale.
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u/squatting-Dogg 25d ago edited 25d ago
It’s a pointless question.
Housing affordability will never be “solved” in Eugene. Ever. Too many anti-growth and anti-business (Corporate) people in this town in power positions. Therefore, it will continue to be a city where only the affluent will own homes.
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u/sumitbafna27 25d ago
lol! Let’s just do away with personal property right. State paid universal sleeping pods for all will solve this once and for all! Just FYI, from property tax to interest rates, as everything is steeper as soon as the house you buy isn’t your “primary residence”. FYI, the state of Oregon generally and the city of Eugene has some of the worst zoning laws in the country. There are way too many interest groups who are over invested in keeping the property prices high. Oregon is one of the largest exporters of timber. Oregon is also sparsely populated, so a lot of open land. There should be, both enough land and enough timber to build a lot of housing. If only the regulations around zoning were not this insane.
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u/BrilliantOwn4527 25d ago
Tax the s**t out of AirBnB's. There are *entire apartment buildings* that are all AirBNB's because it is more profitable to keep them empty half the month and rent them to rich people visiting from SFO who are visiting for half the month rather than rent them as adorable housing.
But, the property owners are in cahoots with the city council, so those taxes are not going to happen.
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u/Wh1ppetFudd 25d ago
The way you fix housing problems nationwide is the same way that you fix poverty nationwide. You don't do it by making new laws that make things illegal. You do it by changing the system and swinging back more towards being socialist and less of this constantly pushing extreme capitalism. Universal basic income, and a government-run housing department that guarantees the availability of low-cost housing to those that need it are the way you deal with both. Do it right, and you can actually trim down the amount of bureaucracy and the number of government employees required to deal with welfare because you could get rid of almost every other department dealing with housing needs, food needs, and emergency income if there was one or two departments that just guaranteed that those problems get dealt with for everybody.
Thing is, this would require the masses to not only be louder than the filthy rich that control the media, but would also require convincing the middle class that they are being gas lit by the filthy rich when they get told that everything that threatens the wealthy also threatens them, like the idea of anybody getting anything for free.
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u/Cabezamelone 25d ago
Fed and State tax credit for renters based on household income and rent (fair market value). All households would (after the credit is applied) pay a fair market rent, adjusted for income. Fed and state governments would then be shouldering burden of run-away housing costs, but are in a better position to implement policies to control the housing market. (Individual renters and home buyers do not have this leverage on their own.)
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u/hobhamwich 25d ago
A Trump administration would never restrict real estate in that way. And it would likely threaten any state that tried. Elections have consequences.
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u/AndydeCleyre 25d ago
Relax any restrictive zoning, and replace most taxes (but especially property tax) with a land value tax.
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u/STL-COUG 25d ago
Bring more big business’ to Eugene! Hynix was the last big one and it was a big fat fizzle.
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u/Blabulus 24d ago
The city/state government should build more rent controlled housing. It works fine, there just isnt enough to go around.
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u/Major-Programmer-894 24d ago
Start voting for independent candidates , the left and the right have driven us into the rocks for decades and we refuse to try anything different.
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u/Ok-Afternoon-8381 24d ago
It will be uncomfortable but give protection and subsidy to old single occupancy that had income rooms. Also allow and give protection for pads to rent to mini homes.
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u/OculusOmnividens 26d ago
This is where I would start as well but it's still only a part of the problem and I am not an expert.
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u/snappyhome 26d ago
I would take the Christchurch NZ approach; radically reduce zoning regulations, throw the urban growth boundary out the window, and build, baby, build!
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u/insidmal 25d ago
Personally I wouldn't "solve" it because it wouldn't be profitable to me and I can't afford to build anything at all on my own let alone at a loss.
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u/Z0ooool 26d ago
Needs to be easier to build. We need more housing. Like, tracts of it. Homes, apartments, low income, luxury. The whole spread. Along with that, more incentives for businesses to come and stay here so the local economy can keep up.
As an added bonus, builders often have incentives that enable first time home buyers to get on the ladder.