The Bend planning commission unanimously approved recommendations to the City Council on a housing development called Parkside Place, a concept aimed at increasing affordable housing opportunities.
“The fabric of all that happens in Bend are the folks that do qualify for affordable housing,” said Housing Director for the City of Bend Lynn McConnell. “We want to make sure that is mixed in, in a way that allows for every one of higher and lower income to live in Bend and form a healthy community with resiliency.”
It’s a product of House Bill 4079 — a state bill that allows for the development of 35 acres on the east border of Bend through a non-traditional process.
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“House Bill 4079 allowed for what is considered a streamline of urban growth boundary or UGB expansion for the purposes of developing affordable housing,” said McConnell. “So we have been working with the project applicant Hayden Homes for a number of years on a pilot site.”
That pilot project site, which stretches from Bear Creek Road to Highway 20, includes 346 units of housing, 40% of which are designated for affordable housing.
Affordable means the housing is affordable for a household making up 80% of Bend’s area median income, roughly $72,000 a year.
“There’s going to be a mix,” McConnell said. “Everything from duplexes to single-family homes, townhomes from things that look like cottages, will real a good mix of unit types.”
There will be 139 units that will be considered affordable. Of those, 109 will be rentals and 30 will be available to purchase.
“In order to purchase a home, if you qualify for affordable housing in Bend, traditionally you would be paying about $400,000 for a home, which compares very well to the medium home price in the mid-$700,000s,” she said.
McConnell says the City and Hayden Homes are attempting something no one in Bend has been able to do.
“Hayden Homes intends to develop affordable housing with very limited or on public subsidy,” McConnell said, “That is something that has not yet been successful in the City of Bend and is a really exciting opportunity to see how far we can push the affordable envelope to getting housing built more inexpensively and at scale.”
