I am writing in support of the proposed DevNW affordable homeownership project on Floral Hill Drive in the Laurel Hill Valley neighborhood. I live immediately downhill of the project location, and will therefore be among the neighbors most directly affected by the proposed development.

As is clear, quite a few residents of this neighborhood have organized in opposition to the project. But these neighbors, however angry they may be, are not the only people who will be affected by whether the project gets built.

Also affected will be the great many ordinary working-class and middle class families in this area who would like the opportunity to own their own home, only to find that, no matter how hard they work and save, rising rents and home prices keep pushing their dream out of reach. These families are not well-organized about this project, and most of them may not even know it is being proposed. But they matter too! 

I live a comfortable middle class life, and this is in large part due to the chance my parents had to become homeowners in the 1950s and the similar opportunity that my wife and I had in the 1980s.

If we would like to have a decent society in the years to come, it is important that today’s young families should have the same sort of opportunity. It has to be possible for needed affordable housing to actually get built, and that neighbors, no matter how articulate and organized they may be, are not permitted to have a de facto veto power over development. 

Al Coddington
Eugene