When I was last up there visiting, she made a disparaging comment about the d___ Californians coming up there and driving up all the prices, cluttering up the state with extra people, etc, etc. I thought this was pretty funny considering her background. When I
pointed out that no one from California could buy land or homes in either Washington or Oregon unless there was first a Washingtonian or Oregonian who was willing to sell, she had nothing to say.
Hi Jim,
When you go from 19,000 population to 55,000 in 12 years like we have in the immediate City of Bend, almost all the housing is new construction funded by big-pocketed developers, and propelled by real estate interests.
A significant portion of this 'investment' comes from out of state and out of country.
This growth is 'legitimized' by heavy political spending by people standing to gain through growth. The out-front intent is to affect decisions and rulings that might stand in the way of development.
Recently when a land-use ruling was made forbidding the construction of a subdivision because the road intersections going to it were overburderned with traffic.
A consortium (that included the daily newspaper -so you know what their editorials looked like on this issue) 'loaned' the City of Bend $10 million to construct 7 traffic control circles (roundabouts). Also in this consortium were several major development companies, heavy construction companies and the like.
Now that the traffic congestion problem on Bend's West side is 'solved', we are looking at the approval for another 3,000 new houses. Oh, Joy!
We had a county commission election race where records showed that one victorious candidate received 80% (about $40,000) of his campaign funds from development and real estate interests.
Recently three victorious pro-development CITY COUNCIL candidates won by spending (get this) $21,000, $20,000, and $19,000 on their campaigns. The closest any of the opposing candidates got was $6600! One guess where the big budgets for the pro-growth candidates got their money...
The exodus from California created a second California Gold Rush, and the greed exhibited to exploit this at the cost of quality of life in towns all over the west has been truly appalling to a lot of people. I wish it were just the locals selling houses to Californians... that would be a lot easier to stomach.
Wes Wada Bend, Oregon
