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Posted on 08/25/2026 10:07:05 PM PDT by NoLibZone
Oregon's spending on low-income housing has exploded in the past five years. The state has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for an additional $850 million in future state funding. Federal tax credits, which the state oversees, will bring even more money to bear.
Yet one thing has remained constant: The public isn't allowed to see the details of how all these dollars are being spent.
Oregon is one of the only states in the country with a carve-out in its public records law that prevents disclosing the financial details of subsidized housing projects, thwarting researchers and journalists who have tried to examine their costs.
The issue is especially pressing in the Pacific Northwest, where leaders have tied the lack of affordable housing to the region's dire homelessness crisis. Understanding and controlling the cost of construction could make it possible, with the same amount of money, to either build more rent-restricted apartments or to discount rents more steeply.
Margaret Van Vliet, a former director of Oregon's state housing agency, told ProPublica that lawmakers should revisit the exemption. Despite all the state's spending on housing, Oregon's homeless population continues to grow.
"For all the public money, we seem to be digging a deeper hole," Van Vliet said.
In other states, researchers and journalists have used developers' financial records to investigate spiraling costs of subsidized housing.
Los Angeles Times reporters in 2020 revealed that the cost of some low-income housing units in California had grown to more than $1 million each, driven in part by government rules that pushed construction prices higher. The Times found that 12,000 more low-income families could have received homes between 2011 and 2015 had costs been as low as they were elsewhere.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley showed earlier this year that California was spending $300 million a year just in development fees on subsidized housing, enough to have financed another 1,250 apartments each year. In July, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that aims to slash those fees.
A study published last year and co-authored by Jason Ward, an economist who directs the nonpartisan Rand Corp.'s Housing Center, compared the costs of constructing subsidized housing among California, Texas and Colorado, finding that California's highest-in-the-nation prices were driven by requirements to pay "substantially above-market wages and unusually large architectural and engineering fees."
If California had Colorado's production costs, the study found, it could have built four times as many rent-subsidized apartments.
Those types of analyses are impossible to perform in Oregon.
"For all the public money" spent on housing, "we seem to be digging a deeper hole."
Ward said Oregon's secrecy is difficult to defend. He said cost information about subsidized housing is typically public. In his research, he said, he's gotten such data from 17 states and been denied it only in New Jersey.
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It is against the law in Oregon to know how your tax dollars are spent.
Think about that.
You've got to hand it to Jimmy Carter, sweat equity in helping build housing for the disadvantaged, not luxury apartments. Good for you, Jimmah.
There is only one solution. Execute drug dealers and keep eexecuting until supply wanes. Today, the risk/reward is way too favorable for the total ruination of society.
“Oregon is one of the only states in the country with a carve-out in its public records law that prevents disclosing the financial details of subsidized housing projects, thwarting researchers and journalists who have tried to examine their costs.”
Sounds like the USAID scam - using taxpayer money to enrich ‘friends’.
$540k, that’s like 10 basic tiny houses
Interviewer: “So they say that 70% of the homeless have an addiction problem! Is that number really accurate?”
Lady: “No it's not. It is 100%. I was once homeless for some time. I, and everyone else living on the streets, was addicted to something.”
In Seattle they have built apartments, or converted hotels into places where the homeless can live. They are supposed to offer counseling and treatment options, but the few folks that want to use them say they are never around. These places allow drugs and booze to be used in them - “It is their home after all!”
Some people have moved out because of all the garbage in the apartments and hallways and the rat problem is worse than living in the streets or a tent in a park somewhere.
“ the rat problem”
It’s always the ‘Rats.
In simple terms, Oregon Democrats play the political patronage game to an extreme level, quite like California and Washington as well. It about the benjamins and a few selected politically-connected friends.
For decades the media has been covering for them, and now these Democrats want to hide the accounts when accountability comes to call.
Democrats just like spending money!
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