03/06/17 City Council Agenda Packet

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capital is going to give them a profitable return on their investment. Investors and developers are focussed on making a profit. In many cities, land prices and construction costs lead to high-rent housing. These expensive housing costs are driving out people working in the local economy, because they can’t afford housing prices. We have a growing “unhoused” population problem. On one hand, we have people living in desirable neighborhoods that residents want to preserve, protect, and enhance. Many of these neighborhoods contain the most “affordable” “workforce” housing in Eugene. On the other hand, we have folks like WE CAN that want to change residential zoning so that more housing can be fit into existing neighborhoods. They see a lack of the “missing middle” of cluster housing, row houses, and townhouses. WE CAN is a coalition of developers, architects, city interests, renters and property owners and not neighborhoods working in tandem. The renters believe that if sufficient surplus housing can be created then rent prices will come down. This is a fantasy that will never be realized, because investors are never going to build more housing than there is demand for, or build inexpensive rental price housing, because that is contrary to their best interest, which is to make the largest possible return on their investment. The developers want to change residential zoning because they can make money from apartments built on that valuable space, which is now tied up by smaller affordable houses with yards. It is called gentrification and will only increase our unhoused population. Do we choose to preserve, enhance, and protect the desirable qualities of neighborhoods, by integrating change thoughtfully? Or do we cram multi-story housing in C2 zoning, like Amazon Corners, adjacent to an existing residential neighborhood greatly compounding the existing traffic problems on Hilyard St & 32nd/30th Ave, the main transportation corridors? Large new projects proposed for the Coburg Road area will make traffic problems in that area worse than they are already. Allowing commercial projects to use the streets, which are the public commons, for parking and increased traffic, to benefit their profit is bad public policy and it is socially immoral. Those who favored the South Willamette Special Area Zone cannot tolerate thoughtful examination of planning solutions for the area, as would be done under a refinement plan for the South Willamette business corridor. These opponents of the proposed refinement plan are determined to force zoning change into the surrounding residential areas. I believe that looking at what greatly increased density has done in other cities should give support to thoughtful planning that is sensitive to what we presently value about our city. The “happy talk” language in Envision Eugene and in TSP 2035 makes it seem that Eugene City Planning is giving consideration to neighborhood livability, but the recent approval of the Amazon Corners project (yes, C2, good to go, but the traffic impact analysis that was done clearly overlooks the effects of this project on the surrounding neighborhood.) Do we need to embed neighborhood residents in the Planning Department to provide “common sense” to Planning decisions? It is difficult to get beyond the belief that “special interests” have more input at the Planning Department than does the “public interest”. Lowering the Level of Service (LOS) to grade E for all of Eugene (see Table 4.1) in TSP 2035 intentionally creates and encourages traffic congestion, which gives cover to mindless densification. I encourage decision-makers to reject city-wide downgrading the level of service (LOS) to grade E and to support citizen-led efforts to thoughtfully plan for the future. It is fairly easy so see the difference between decisions that are made in the “public interest” versus those made to benefit “special interests.”