Realtors’ efforts paved the way for the dire lack of housing solutions in Josephine County
Grants Pass, the hub of Southern Oregon’s Josephine County, just saw its plan for a short-term homeless shelter collapse under the pressure of community opposition. Had it materialized, it would have been the only low-barrier shelter in the county.
Street Roots has been covering the homeless and housing situation in Josephine County as part of our rural housing initiative, and as we previously reported, this 40-room shelter would have provided respite for dozens of families, couples and individuals. In 2018, there were 650 unhoused people in the county, and a statewide shelter study found that 91% of them were unsheltered. The county’s severe lack of affordable housing is in part why the homeless population has more than doubled to 1,422, according to last year’s Point in Time Count.
Even with a temporary permit, Rogue Retreat, which sought to operate the shelter, confronted fierce local opposition from community members who cited discomfort with the location, concerns of enabling people who made “terrible personal choices” and general fear.
And this past week, they won.
The owners of the property where the temporary shelter was to be housed backed out of a deal to sell the property to Rogue Retreat after a charge to repeal the land use permit surfaced.
The permit was needed because the city decided years ago that it didn’t want people who were homeless to congregate downtown. It barred social service facilities from existing anywhere other than industrial or business park zones outside the city center.
According to reports from The Daily Courier in Grants Pass, the charge to repeal was led by a real estate agent whose office is a few blocks away from the proposed shelter site. She and other business and property owners filed a notice of intent to repeal the decision with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.
Interestingly enough, the Oregon Association of Realtors, of which this agent is a member, has worked to obstruct efforts that would have created new, ongoing funds for local communities like Grants Pass to create the affordable housing so badly needed in Josephine County. With the National Association of Realtors at their back, the Oregon association led the campaign in 2011 for a statewide vote that outlawed, in the Oregon Constitution, transfer taxes on property sales that could have been used to fund affordable housing.
The Realtors have also staunchly fought any effort to scale back the inequitable mortgage interest deduction for the wealthiest homebuyers, including for second homes, even though it would have preserved the deduction for the vast majority of homebuyers and sought to redirect the savings to help homeless families.
The Oregon Association of Realtors also opposed the end of no-cause evictions and limits to annual rent increases above 7% plus inflation. In 2019, the ban on no-cause evictions and the rent increase limits became law, providing critical relief for the state’s renters who have faced housing insecurity and economic hardship against rising rents and gentrifying development.
For the people in Josephine County who are trying to keep warm tonight while sleeping outside, these political machinations mean very little right now. For those trying to get their legs back beneath them without a welcoming shelter room for themselves and their family, the name of the game is survival.
More resources toward shelter, services and housing would go a long way, but they go nowhere without the will to do what’s necessary. In Grants Pass, that will for change has been tamped down by punitive policies that drive out people who are unhoused. The city’s policies were ruled unconstitutional, but it is the conditioning of this us-versus-them mentality that causes long-term damages for our most vulnerable — and the welfare of a community.
Even before the pandemic-related economic decline, Grants Pass acknowledged its housing struggles. More than half of Josephine County’s renters were considered rent burdened, according to 2018 U.S. Census figures. By federal standards, renters are considered rent burdened if they pay more than 30% of their income in rent, drawing money away from food, health and child care, and other needs. The previous year, in 2017, the county commissioners there declared a housing emergency, much like Portland did in 2015, and the state of Oregon also did this past year. Nearly 16% of county residents live in poverty. That the county’s homeless numbers have doubled since 2017 comes as no surprise.
Josephine County is indicative of many communities where punitive policies corrode the will to work together to achieve substantive, long-term solutions. That a temporary homeless shelter for 40 families can’t open its doors in the middle of winter is nothing short of appalling. Excuses count for nothing, and words of concern and compassion for people out in the cold ring hollow compared to actions taken to do something — something completely within the power of a community to do, if it wanted to.
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