Over in Hermiston, privately financed construction of single-family houses is booming with 101 permits issued in 2020. This was driven by the strong growth in living-wage jobs, made possible by a plentiful supply of both water and power considered essential for strong industrial development, and the city’s emphasis on providing the required infrastructure.

During the same period, Pendleton issued 77 single-family building permits, a 10-year record. A major portion of our local economy revolves around the hospitality sector, a sector that provides notoriously low-paying minimum wage jobs requiring more low-income housing. Projects the city has supported with financial backing; Pendleton Heights, the Ivanhoff Project on Westgate, conversion of the old Forest Service building to apartments, and the replacement of housing destroyed in the recent flood have all languished. Even the proposed 70-unit Horizon project is just that, a proposal. Low-income housing intended to replace units in Riverside destroyed in the flood are not due to be completed for 2-3 years. That provides little comfort for those who were displaced.

Accolades praising the selected contractor were followed by timetable for construction. Weeks, followed by months, and finally, in some cases, years passed with broken promises and little progress. These delays accompanied by rapidly escalating material prices will ultimately add thousands to the costs of the projects, and adequate financing will continue to be a major stumbling block despite past claims from City Hall that all was well.

Developers are in the business to turn a profit. Low-income housing projects are not a priority simply because, despite those generous incentives, a substantial return on their investment is just not there. The approach our city management has taken to spur housing development has just not worked. It mirrors the failure of “the road to nowhere” when the project began with no assurances from local utility providers that adequate service would even be available. It goes to the question that developers continue to ask, why make a major investment in a piece of property without the required infrastructure? After two decades, city industrial property along that road continues to sit undeveloped, lacking basic utilities.

City Hall has tied our future economic prosperity to the development of additional dog parks rather than the infrastructure sought by developers. Without a significant change in thinking at City Hall, the stagnation will continue.

Rick Rohde

Pendleton