or nurture our parents at assisted living - or people who are our parents. This housing is for <br />neighbors who fix our cars, put paint or siding on our homes and assist our doctors. The <br />residents will be our family members and current neighbors. <br />I could take up your time with a splendid array of statistics that demonstrate the shortage of <br />affordable housing and the hardships that result. The adopted Consolidated Plan is a great <br />source of data. I'm going to trust that you are familiar with the gist of the data. So I'll limit it to <br />just this: <br />The Consolidated Plan documents that there are 31,055 low-income renter households <br />in Eugene and 78% of them experience a housing cost burden (paying over 30% for <br />housing), overcrowding or substandard conditions. In fact, 51 % of low-income renters <br />spend over 50% of their income on housing. <br />No one is disputing the need. <br />I want to point out that most of us at the table perhaps all of us are or have been <br />homeowners. By and large we are more financially comfortable than the half of our community <br />who rent. We view the world through the lenses of our own experience. So, we have to remind <br />ourselves at times how absolutely hard it is for people who try hard but barely get by. My own <br />children and their spouses share that monthly struggle where one new problem ( a broken car <br />or a child's sickness) puts them into a financial panic. So, in many ways I am familiar with it first <br />hand. <br />The construction of low-income housing is very challenging. I know this from my years of work <br />in the field. Unlike private for-profit developers who build market-rate housing, numerous <br />funding sources, many competitive, all with their peculiar applications and regulations have to <br />be obtained and pieced together. It's an expensive, frustrating and time consuming process. <br />What every funder wants and demands is certainty. The idea that there is a a big question <br />mark about what looms in a future government process is a project killer. Based on experience <br />I'm sure that is exactly what some neighbors want. I don't want to believe that it is what the <br />planning staff want. I'm sure it is not what the publicly adopted goals and policies are in place <br />for. They are in place to make low-income housing a priority. <br />For many years I was the person from the City who attended neighborhood meetings to discuss <br />and defend a proposed low-income housing development. I read every word of testimony and <br />heard every argument almost all fear-based and typically based on assumed facts that <br />weren't facts at all. <br />What I consistently heard at virtually every one of these very well-attended neighborhood <br />meetings was that low income housing was important, supported, but this is the wrong location. <br />always heard that the proposed location is better suited to be a park. Those who made these <br />arguments were transparent then and yet the developments invariably got built thanks in no <br />small part to the political support of our elected officials. <br />2 <br />