Stealing money in the name of affordable housing

An important issue throughout Oregon is affordable housing or the lack of it. What is truly driving the cost of housing? Cites around Oregon continue to dream up new “fees” (taxes) in order to pay for their “so called” infrastructure needs. This is just another back door tax that is hurting home buyers. Recently, a local city stopped a family from purchasing a home because of an unpaved road fee. This is a fee that requires those who do not live on a paved road to pay a fee that sometime in the future the city can pave the road for them. The other option is for the homeowner to pave the road. When the home owners pay into the fee they have no idea or time line in which the city will pave their street.

Elected officals truly don’t care at all about affordable housing they prefer to campaign about to get elected. Here is one another fee adopted in Central Oregon. It is called the affordable housing fee (tax). For every building permit that gets pulled in the city the permit buyer needs to pay .33% of additional fee to help pay for affordable housing. So the city is increasing the cost of housing while trying to pay for affordable housing.

So do governments truly care about affordable housing?