Just about any time government gets behind funding large-scale private real estate ventures, it should give voters pause, but the recent decision by the Pendleton City Council to buy up property at Pendleton Heights to kick-start a development plan was a good one.

At its essence, the elected board ended its relationship with Newberg developer Saj Jivanjee — who initially built 32 townhouses at the Heights in 2016. The relationship between the elected board and Jivanjee soured after the developer requested modifications to his incentive agreement.

Since 2016, the project stalled.

The council gave a green light to a plan to buy the property from Jivanjee for $500,000 by using monies from a $7.5 million emergency package from the Oregon Legislature to recover from the Umatilla River floods in February. The city will then sell the property to Chrisman Development, which plans to create an 80-unit housing development.

The city will lose $6,000 from Jivanjee’s debt from an infrastructure cost-sharing pact. That’s not good news, but from our vantage point it is hard to see what other choice the elected board could have chosen. If the overall goal is to create more housing locally — which appears to be the case — then the decision by the council was a good one.

Now, of course, the spotlight will be on the new developer, but more so on the elected leaders who approved the decision to break from Jivanjee. The quest to find more, affordable housing across rural Eastern Oregon is a difficult one. Communities across our region face many challenges, but affordable housing is at the top of the list.

To be a destination place for people there must be adequate housing. That means places that are affordable and well built. Part of the American dream is to own a home in a nice community, raise children and retire there.

That’s why the decision by the council is really an investment in the future. It may not seem so now, but the city’s elected leaders really showed some vision with the decision and, maybe best of all, a commitment to solving one of the region’s major hurdles.

The proof, as the old saying goes, will be in the pudding. Yet, we believe that the council made the best — and right — decision based on the available information. As an investment, new housing is a good one and can prime the well, so to speak, for future development.