I was inspired by the nuanced approach to Eugene’s housing woes taken by Eugene City Council Ward 3 candidate Jennifer Smith during the recent Eugene City Club meeting. She acknowledged that we need more housing options and more building resilience but cautioned against inappropriate development and the extractive nature of our city’s current market-rate housing projects.

The people of Eugene have long invested in the things that make living here so great: our parks, our neighborhoods, our libraries, our schools, our great public spaces, our community. Those investments and values have made Eugene a tremendously attractive development opportunity. But building more market-rate units is not fixing our affordable housing crisis, and our desperation is allowing inappropriate projects with short-term market goals to pollute Eugene’s built environment without improving its quality.

The urban form is a collective expression of our shared values. When our city’s large new residential buildings are just functional extrusions — bedrooms with small or no windows, zero private outdoor space, no units for families — what does “quality of life” here start to mean?

While larger Pacific Northwest cities like Seattle are bringing efficiency to their design review traditions to expedite housing production, Eugene needs to both catch up and follow suit, by adopting a multi-tiered design review process that brings the community on board for projects that shape our city’s future. We need both an expedited review process for “middle housing” low-rise residential projects, with a bare-bones focus on unit livability and neighborhood integration, and a robust, civic-oriented design conversation and review process for the sort of big projects whose lasting impact in Eugene at this point is to look like they won’t last long at all.

Jennifer Smith is the right person at this moment to help our city thread the needle on this critical issue, and I support her candidacy for Ward 3 city councilor.

Abraham Kelso
Eugene