I was a recent visitor to your area while helping my daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren try to find housing in your area, as my son-in-law had a great job offer there. They had sold their nice large home and wanted to rent something comparable until they could buy or build. I have never seen such a dearth of housing as we found in your town. All we could find were old run-down, unlivable, worn-out trashy houses in horrible slum, drug-infested neighborhoods where you would not feel your children would be safe. Nowhere for them to play, ride bikes or skate unless they fell off a hill, or played around garbage dumps or drunks. Nothing updated, cleaned or spruced up at all.

Has anyone in your town ever considered driving around and taking a good long hard look at what you have to offer, and at double and triple the rental or selling prices of any other area, even Hermiston? Pendleton looks like it needs a big bomb dropped on it and a big fire to make it habitable for professional people. You advertise yourselves as a real western town and you certainly are. So far out of date with modern conveniences, it should make you all ashamed. I realize you have a prison there and maybe a prison population, but even those families need something good to rent. Pendleton doesn’t even have apartments for ordinary people. We found several, but since they were all low-income they were totally unavailable for professional people.

I understand Pendleton is trying to bring in more business for more jobs. Why? There will be nowhere for them to live. There is nothing even priced for minimum-wage earners, not to mention most people want clean, modern, updated homes with yards and garages. And as well as children, they quite often have beloved, well-behaved family pets that seem not to be allowed anywhere in Pendleton. Why can’t a new modular home be placed in nice area instead of put way up on top of a hill in an area for mobile homes? They have changed over the years too.

Needless to say, my family decided your area was not for them and took their business elsewhere, where they would be welcome. I am from an area that is supposed to be depressed, but in reality is far more advanced than Pendleton could think of being.

You are truly a 100-year-old western town with 100-year-old dumps – a real trashy, dirty town that is trying to play old and modern at the same time and is still really stuck in the past.

Kathryn C. Hutchinson

Socorro, N.M.