Guest Column: We can have healthy communities and affordable housing

LandWatch’s Director of Urban Planning wrote a guest column for the Bulletin published on Sunday, February 28, 2021. You can the original article published in the Bulletin here.

Guest Column: We can have healthy communities and affordable housing

By Moey Newbold

Whether it’s the Zoom Effect or the curse of being a region known for its unsurpassed livability, Central Oregon is feeling a housing crunch. Affordable housing is almost nonexistent and available inventory is at all-time lows.

There is a pervading narrative that the way to solve these issues is to simply bring more land into Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) or to allow for more housing in our rural communities. Doing these things will not solve our housing affordability issues and instead come with real and lasting consequences.

Where and what we build matters. Haphazard sprawl takes a toll on our communities. High infrastructure costs, negative health impacts, and environmental degradation are the price of hastily attempting to solve one problem without considering the long-term impacts on the people you are trying to help.

The places we live have a direct effect on our health. What is your neighborhood’s air quality like? Do you have child care and health care nearby? Are your neighbors welcoming and supportive? How long is your commute? The answers to these questions make an impact on how long people live and what quality of life they lead. Studies show that the location of our homes determines up to 80% of our personal health outcomes.

When we build housing further away from community centers, we push people away from job opportunities and services. While longer commutes add to overall traffic and pollution (including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change), they also have profound health impacts. A longer commute reduces life satisfaction, physical, and mental health — so much so that workers who commute 31 miles or more can expect to die sooner than people who live closer to their jobs. Expenses go up when owning and maintaining a car is required for living in far-flung locations.

Developing housing in community-oriented settings means people aren’t required to spend 20% of their income and a good chunk of their time driving to access the jobs, parks, schools, health care, and services they need. Housing prices and demand are typically higher in neighborhoods that meet these needs — just look at walkability scores touted by Realtors. But across Oregon, people with low-wage jobs are priced out of living in these vibrant, mixed-use areas with safe transportation options. It isn’t that these types of neighborhoods are inherently more expensive to build (in fact, the opposite is true when infrastructure is accounted for); it is because there are not enough of them.

Central Oregon’s approach to housing should balance health equity and affordability. We know that the past century of racist and exclusionary housing policies barred Black and Latino people from the neighborhoods that offered jobs, good healthcare, safe transportation, and well-funded education systems. In many places, basic city services like lighted sidewalks and clean water were not provided. As a result, people living in high-poverty neighborhoods today have poorer health than their peers in affluent (often predominantly white) neighborhoods. We can’t risk replicating planning that increases inequity and separates families from the social and environmental fabric of a thriving community.

The answer to the housing crisis is not to continue with outdated models of sprawling suburban development. Instead, we should add more housing and transportation options that prioritize health and equity. Oregon’s statewide land use planning system provides a framework for cities to grow this way, and encourages the creation of compact and thriving cities and towns that leave rural areas open and intact for farming, recreation, and wildlife habitat.

We need to tackle the housing crisis with real solutions that don’t sacrifice community well-being. Instead of adding housing in places where jobs and services don’t already exist, we can improve the fabric of our cities and add homes to make more complete communities. Before hastily jumping into rushed expansion, let’s consider what we want our community to become and ensure our plans lead us there.