‘We need every type of housing’: City of Bend offers look at housing units created over the past 20 years, recent trends

(Update: Adding video, comments from the city of Bend)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The city of Bend recently shared numbers on the city's trends in housing production, a presentation on the number of new housing units created and of what type for each year, dating back 20 years.

"We need every type of housing on that spectrum produced so that housing is attainable to our community, not just affordable," Racheal Baker, the city's affordable housing manager, said Wednesday.

The graph below was produced by the city of Bend's housing group and was presented at a recent city council meeting.

It compares how many single family units and multifamily units have been developed.

In 2005, there were more than 1,000 new single-family units and 501 multifamily units. The latest numbers in 2023 show more than 600 single-family units and more than 700 multifamily units.

The number of multifamily units decreased sharply from 2010 to 2015.

Baker said, "We were recovering from a recession, and so it took that long for our community to be able to return to building multi-family housing, and after that the 2008 'Great Recession.'"

Baker said city leaders continue to explore policies to increase affordable housing opportunities.

But she added that right now, its difficult to construct multifamily housing because of rising construction costs and interest rates.

She said, "We need to make sure that we're continuing to incentivize multifamily development so that we're not hitting those lulls that we had in the 2010s."

By releasing the numbers, the city aims to be transparent about the issue with the community, and hopes it promotes more discussion about housing production.

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