Equitable, safe and accessible housing, as well as how Eugene is developed, should be a concern for everyone.

For decades, citizens have fought for better planning and development because the need for more affordable housing should be in tandem with protecting the value, stability and character of the single largest repository of wealth a city’s taxpayers have: the neighborhoods they invested in, bought into, scraped together down payments and stretched budgets for, accepting decades of mortgage payments, betting their financial futures on a location — not merely on four walls and a roof, but on the stability of the neighborhood surrounding those walls.

Thanks should go to citizens who have opposed dangerous developments successfully, to the benefit of everyone. Left to rubber stamp prodevelopment efforts at all cost, Eugene’s priority is no longer the safety and well-being of its citizens.

Much of the Laurel Hill Valley neighborhood’s opposition to building so many units on Floral Hill Drive is the location. Shouldn’t development contribute to the well-being of neighbors and future purchasers instead of exploiting opportunity for profit at the expense of both?

Who will be stuck accepting the risks of building high-density housing against a wildland urban interface in an area with aging infrastructure never intended to serve that many residents, on a historically unstable slope with only one ingress/egress, doubling the amount of traffic on a road that doesn’t even qualify for “alley” status by today’s standards, is not on or near a bus line nor close to services focus communities would find valuable? 

Where are amenities such as green space, community rooms and supportive services such as on-site childcare? Who will have to live with the shortcomings of a low walkability score and no ADA access to or from the subdivision for over a one-mile radius?

Gretchen Whitt 
Eugene