The City of Bend’s HOME Committee has released its housing recommendations, which will be presented to the City Council during its August 12 work session.
Nothing has been adopted yet, but several proposals could significantly affect rental owners, tenants and taxpayers.
During the city’s current two-year planning period, ending in 2027, Bend has set a goal of permitting 3,942 housing units, including:
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1,818 deed-restricted affordable units
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826 middle-income units
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1,298 additional market-rate units
There are parts of the committee’s plan that make sense.
Reducing financing expenses, infrastructure costs, property taxes and system development charges could help projects move forward. These strategies address some of the actual barriers preventing new housing from being built.
But there are also significant questions about cost, scale and who ultimately pays for these programs.
The committee discussed a voter-approved housing bond of approximately $50 million to $100 million. Over roughly 10 years, the bond could support an estimated 350 to 1,000 homes.
The city’s goal covers two years, while the bond estimate covers approximately 10 years, so the two numbers cannot be compared directly. However, the projected output shows why public subsidies alone cannot solve Bend’s affordability problem.
The report’s examples from Portland and Metro required approximately $98,000 to $139,000 in bond funding for every home produced or preserved. Subsidies may help individual projects, but they are expensive and difficult to scale across the broader housing market.
The committee also recommends creating a mandatory rental registry and charging landlords a registration fee.
Why does the city want a rental registry?
The city says a registry would provide better information about:
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The number and location of Bend’s rental units
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Property ownership
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Local rents and vacancy conditions
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Code compliance and housing-preservation needs
Registration fees could also generate ongoing revenue for tenant education, landlord engagement, rental-market analysis and other city housing programs.
The argument is that better data will produce better housing policy.
My concern is that the registry does not directly create a single new home. Instead, it creates another expense and compliance requirement for the people already providing rental housing.
The fee would generally apply to all rental units, including market-rate properties receiving none of the proposed subsidies. Those expenses will become part of the cost of operating a rental property and will eventually be reflected in rents.
Smaller landlords may also decide that the growing fees, reporting requirements and regulatory exposure are no longer worth it. If owners sell, move their investments outside Bend or remove homes from the long-term rental market, Bend could end up with fewer rental choices and more pressure on tenants.
There is a clear contradiction here: the city wants to subsidize the creation of a limited number of new homes while adding costs and regulations to thousands of rental homes that already exist.
A residential vacancy tax was also studied, although it was not included among the committee’s final preferred recommendations.
The stated purpose of a vacancy tax would be to discourage owners from leaving homes empty, encourage properties to be rented or sold, and raise additional housing revenue.
However, Bend would first need a comprehensive registry to identify and track potentially vacant properties. The proposed rental registry could therefore become the administrative foundation for a future vacancy tax.
A vacancy tax would also require the city to decide when a home is truly vacant. Properties may be unoccupied because of repairs, renovations, tenant turnover, probate, construction or an active sale. Creating fair exemptions and enforcing them would be expensive and complicated.
My bottom line is simple: Bend cannot regulate and subsidize its way to meaningful affordability.
If the city wants more housing, it should reduce development costs, expand infrastructure, accelerate permitting and make it easier—not harder—to provide rental homes.
What do you think? Is Bend addressing the real causes of housing costs, or creating another expensive system that will ultimately be paid for by property owners and tenants?
Reply and let me know.
Parker Vernon
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