Readers Respond to Labor Costs for Low-Income Housing

“Workers deserve to make a good living; that is what keeps people out of homelessness in the first place.”

RAINY WOODS: Homeless Astorians camp in the town forest. As the unhoused struggle to find safe places to shelter, they set up camp in the forested areas around Clatsop County, such as this one in the hills behind Astoria, Ore. Abandoned camps leave large amounts of trash and stories of struggle in their wake. (Morgan Heim)
By WW Staff

A budget is a moral document, yes—but what happens when the moral imperatives don’t all fit on the balance sheet? That’s the question explored by the Oregon Journalism Project last week in a story about the escalating costs of constructing workforce housing in Astoria (“A Little Off the Top,” WW, April 2). Nigel Jaquiss challenged why Christina Stephenson, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries, was requiring prevailing wage on so many affordable housing projects as Oregon tries to climb out of a homelessness crisis. Readers contended that this was a false dilemma when their favorite villains (land developers) were standing just out of frame. Here’s what they had to say:

SlyClydesdale, via Reddit: “Jaquiss loves to stir the pot in misleading ways.

“Pressuring the BOLI head could easily be interpreted as an unconstitutional executive overreach by the governor.

“Perhaps Kotek could direct the state to change the 1959 law that BOLI is enforcing. Perhaps the Democratic Legislature could propose changing the law, too.

“But in this era of unprecedented billionaire power, worker automation, and continuing threats to organized labor, is that a fight the governor and Legislature should be picking right now?

“Can’t the funding shortfall get addressed in other ways so that the development can proceed, house the most people possible, and pay the folks doing the work appropriately?”

Aesir_Auditor, via Reddit: “It seems that BOLI has a strong NIMBY streak where they don’t believe that upzoned housing is actually housing. Rather commercial space that seems to have housing by mere chance.

“This is a stance that needs to change. Not only do prevailing wage jobs cost more, they also take longer because the requirements are stricter for staffing and work.

“In a starved housing market, we cannot afford to keep throwing up barriers like this on bullshit legal interpretations.”

Garth Bachman, via wweek.com: “Why would a developer be interested in building low-income housing? TO MAKE MONEY! As this article explains, prevailing wage means getting paid a decent wage, having health insurance benefits, and pension benefits. Clearly, the developers do not want to pay these things as was described in the article. They clearly want to pay substandard wages and benefits to the people that build these projects and blame the unions for making projects expensive. I think we should follow the money like many have stated. The money flows to the developers who do not want their workforce to make a livable income, and that is where the money flow stops. Workers deserve to make a good living; that is what keeps people out of homelessness in the first place.”

OREGO’S HIDDEN BENEFITS

I recently signed up for OReGO [“Supercharger,” WW, April 2] because I think pay-per-mile is the right way to fund our roads—but it wasn’t easy. The registration renewal letter sent by the Oregon Department of Transportation had no information about OReGO. I had to search online to figure out how to sign up. I knew about the program. Most people don’t, even if they’d be interested.

The online web pages don’t explain how OReGO works. One key point is that you pay 2 cents per mile for the distance you drive, and get a credit of 40 cents per gallon that OReGO assumes you must have bought. For example, if you have a Prius that gets 50 miles per gallon, then you get $2 back per 50 miles, and pay 40 cents. The break-even point is at 20 miles per gallon, where the 40 cent gas tax matches the 40 cent OReGO charge. Presumably that’s why you can’t sign up for OReGO for cars that get less than 20 miles per gallon.

To me, it looks like OReGO is a failure because ODOT does a terrible job of advertising it. Before giving up on OReGO, we should give it a real chance.

Mark Linehan

Southeast Portland

IT IS A WAR ON GAZA

Jerome Chicvara’s letter [Dialogue, WW, March 26] asserts that the phrase “Israel’s war on Gaza” illustrates “progressive media bias” and goes on to make the preposterous claim that Israel is not waging war against the Palestinians. As a Jew, I call bullshit.

Two things can be true at once: (1) Hamas is a despicable terrorist organization and their vicious Oct. 7 attack on Israel resulted in atrocities and the murder of a great many innocent civilians. (2) Israel’s response has gone far beyond any rational, strategic, or even remotely targeted effort to root out Hamas, to a level where it can be viewed as nothing short of ethnic cleansing, an attempt to make Gaza completely unlivable. Nothing else can explain the apparent disregard for civilian lives, not to mention the deliberate destruction of orchards, cemeteries, and unoccupied mosques, schools and universities.

Add to this Israel’s toleration of routine settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank; its razing of homes, destruction of water systems, tearing up of streets and bulldozing of olive groves in West Bank Palestinian communities not run by Hamas; and the apartheid system that constrains the rights of Palestinians within Israel, and what I see is a state that has forfeited its claim to U.S. support, if not its legitimacy as a member of the community of nations.

Randy Tucker

Southeast Portland

Letters to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to:

P.O. Box 10770

Portland, OR 97296

Email: amesh@wweek.com

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