In April, I sat in on a meeting of the Downtown Eugene Coalition, a stakeholder group organized by the Eugene Chamber of Commerce. The facilitator told the room there was “a person in town” ready to give “shovel-ready money.” Asked where it should go, most of the room wanted more public safety enforcement, more cleanup, more outreach to people presumed homeless or in mental health crises.

Weeks later, the “shovel-ready money” landed as a summer pilot program covering 12 downtown blocks through September, paying for about two dozen workers to assist businesses with property issues, enforce trespassing rules and offer safety escorts.

I argued for something else at the meeting: finish funding for the stalled downtown housing projects, the planned apartments at 1059 Willamette St. chief among them. No one builds housing downtown on private money alone — the rents don’t cover the cost — so only public subsidy closes the gap. And once the public funding crosses a certain threshold, Oregon’s prevailing wage adds a surcharge: the union-scale pay the state requires on public construction.

Two months later, at a June 23 Neighborhood Leaders Council meeting, I asked Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner what more he could do to improve the public’s perception of downtown.

“We’re not going to change the perception of downtown until we have people living downtown,” he said, adding that “the downtown core is the most heavily policed area in Eugene.”

Enforcement has improved crime numbers. But it hasn’t moved residents’ and visitors’ perceptions. And it can’t, because the core still has higher office vacancy, underutilized properties, and gaps in activation and safety that policing alone doesn’t fix.

Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson campaigned on adding 1,000 housing units downtown, 200 of them in the core. Since she entered office in 2025, downtown has added 130 market-rate apartments at the Portal apartments on the riverfront, and 57 units of permanent supportive housing at the former Red Lion Hotel on Broadway. The core itself has added nothing.

Several projects in the pipeline all need a Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption to pencil at all. Obie Companies’ Station House, approved for the parking lot next to the Old Spaghetti Factory in the Market District, will add 130 units. Two more Atkins Dame buildings on the riverfront — part of a 2018 city-backed redevelopment that’s already delivered Heartwood and Portal — are stalled: the state Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled the site a single “public works” project, a call made under then-Commissioner Val Hoyle, now Eugene’s congresswoman. The developers’ attorney, Dina Alexander, said the wages “are simply not high enough when compared to prevailing wage rates to render the projects economically viable.”

Consider the “Montgomery” apartment project at 1059 Willamette (the site of the former Lane Community College downtown campus). For years, the City of Eugene has worked with developers deChase Miksis and Edlen & Company to keep the public contribution below the $750,000 threshold to avoid triggering the prevailing-wage law. But high interest rates, rising construction costs and limited returns for investors left the 133-unit project unable to attract enough private financing, Economic Development Manager Anne Fifield said, and the developers appealed to the City Council for additional public assistance. That additional public money — Downtown Urban Renewal funds — crossed the $750,000 threshold, triggering the prevailing-wage law, and the funding gap grew from between $1 and $3 million to $8.66 million.

During the state’s legislative short session earlier this year, Oregon Senator Dick Anderson and Representative Vikki Breese-Iverson filed Senate Bill 1566, which aimed to exempt certain affordable housing projects from paying prevailing wages. The bill pitted linchpins of the Oregon Democratic Party against each other: nonprofits and affordable housing developers against trade unions. It was referred to the Senate Committee on Labor and Business. Even though the bill had broad support, Anderson said Democratic leadership told him it would not get a work session. It never got one, and when the session adjourned in March, the bill died there.

Sixty-seven parties testified on the bill: five city governments, the Chamber, and more than a dozen housing and tenant advocacy groups supported it; 10 labor organizations — including the Oregon AFL-CIO — opposed it. Labor interests prevailed, unsurprisingly. In Oregon Democratic politics, labor’s endorsement is decisive: Hoyle was the Oregon AFL-CIO’s Legislator of the Year in 2011, the federation backed her run for labor commissioner, and when Peter DeFazio retired after 36 years — with a 94 percent lifetime AFL-CIO rating — he endorsed her for his seat.

So what Salem won’t fix, Eugene is left to manage however it can, at whatever it costs.

No new MUPTE application has arrived since November 2024, two months before Knudson took office.

Meanwhile, the downtown pilot program ends September 30, and about two dozen workers leave when funding runs dry. The Montgomery won’t open for years. The city spent $8.66 million to close its funding gap. Of that, the development team estimates $5 million to $7 million is the prevailing-wage premium alone — money that can go only downtown, to the buildings no one else will build. I don’t know whether anyone will ever set down the harder number: what the premium actually costs, counted in apartments that never get built.

And if Chief Skinner is correct, the public won’t see downtown as safe until the housing gets built. Right now, none of it is.

Joshua Purvis is a civic strategist in Eugene. He is co-chair of the city of Eugene’s MUPTE Review Panel and co-chair of the Southeast Neighbors Association.