QuickTake:

Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson outlined a road map for the city that offers potential ways to increase economic development, boost the city’s housing stock and combat homelessness. Knudson’s message, delivered Monday, comes amid turmoil and uncertainty at the federal level. 

Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson knows that the national rhetoric and uncertainty can make people feel afraid.

But despite the tumultuous times, Knudson’s underlying vision for Eugene is of a city where people are connected and working together to confront challenges.

Those challenges are formidable for 2026 and beyond: The city, like other local and state agencies, has a budget that is stretched thin. Eugene, like the rest of Oregon, also faces a homelessness crisis and a lack of affordable housing. 

“It’s probably obvious at this point the year ahead is an incredibly full plate,” Knudson, Eugene’s mayor since January 2025, said Monday, Jan. 12, in the annual State of the City presentation. “We have a lot of work that we are expecting to do for our community.”

Knudson spoke at the 495-seat Soreng Theater of the Hult Center for the Performing Arts. The event also featured a video about the city’s accomplishments and honored the winners of an arts contest. 

Knudson, an architect by trade, focused much of her speech on events from the past year and pivoted to the work ahead. For example, the city has permitted 413 units of new affordable housing, she said. 

Knudson said downtown redevelopment projects, including 1059 Willamette and the Butterfly Lot will add “hundreds of units of mixed-income housing” to a long-neglected downtown district that has not added new residential investments for years.

“I will also work with city council to support actions that are specifically designed to catalyze workforce housing — housing that is affordable to our middle incomes and emerging households,” she said.

Text of Eugene mayor’s 2025 State of the City address

Power of partnerships

For Knudson, partnerships are key — and that’s true across a number of issues, including housing, she said.

With housing, the city has an opportunity to pilot a program through a new state fund for moderate-income housing projects, Knudson said. 

Eugene’s work on this front will take years. A state housing needs analysis has estimated that Eugene needs to add another 26,273 housing units for the next 20 years, more than half of them affordable housing.

On the economic front, Knudson praised another partnership: The Southern Willamette Valley Innovation Corridor relies upon the research muscle of the University of Oregon and Oregon State University to grow the economy and businesses.

“This work can support better connections between downtown and university,” Knudson said. “And it’s also important to supporting our workforce and access to higher-wage jobs.”

Calling the effort a “piece of the puzzle that has been missing,” Knudson said she’ll testify before a legislative committee at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday about how the corridor connects with Gov. Tina Kotek’s Economic Prosperity Roadmap. 

Those partnerships are among the work that Eugene will focus on as it navigates the year ahead, Knudson said. 

Knudson reminded attendees in the packed auditorium that they’ll get a say in issues coming up before the city, including a planned five-year renewal of the library’s levy in May. 

“My expectation for us is that we will be creative and we will be courageous, and we will rise to every occasion and face the challenges of 2026 and the 21st century together as a community,” Knudson said.

In her speech, Knudson contrasted the divisive national rhetoric and chaos of the past year with the Eugene way. 

“It’s been sometimes heartbreaking,” Knudson said of the past year’s rhetoric. “It’s been unjust and unfair and inexplicably unmoored. But closer to home I would describe this year as resourceful, as courageous, deeply caring.”

Knudson said that “in the face of chaos, we have been steady. In the face of dehumanization, we celebrate our diversity with joy.”

A video showcased the city’s accomplishments and work in 2025, including police efforts to combat crime, the city’s public space team’s work to keep parks and other areas clean, and affordable housing under construction. 

After the event, the mayor posed with well-wishers, shook hands and spoke with Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

“We are very committed to the work we have to do: homelessness, housing and economic development and, of course, those are all connected in different ways,” Knudson told Lookout. “But we have incredible partners.”

For two decades, Ben Botkin’s journalism career saw him criss-cross the West, a path with stops in rural Idaho, Las Vegas and, now, finally, Lane County. Ben reported on local government and the statehouse in Idaho before he moved to the Bulletin in Bend and covered education in central Oregon.

Then, for four years, he covered Clark County government, which has oversight over the Las Vegas Strip, and served as the lead political reporter during the 2016 election cycle. During that time, Ben wrote about the county’s child welfare agency, law enforcement, the start of Nevada’s medical marijuana industry and homeland security. His reporting sparked the criminal indictments and convictions of three government officials, including a city animal control supervisor convicted of animal cruelty.

He also covered national stories like the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon and the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Since 2018, Ben has reported on Oregon state government, first for the Statesman-Journal in Salem and then for The Lund Report, a Portland-based nonprofit that covers health care. His reporting on gaps in children’s health coverage led to state Medicaid policy changes.

Most recently, Ben worked more than two years at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered criminal justice, health and human services. His work often incorporates the voices of vulnerable Oregonians from all walks of life.

As Lookout’s Politics & Policy Correspondent, Ben digs up the most intriguing and relevant stories about how Lane County decisions impact residents.