The median price of a home in Eugene is $451,000, according to an affordable housing advocate. And that’s just one factor holding residents back from purchasing homes.
Kaarin Knudsen of Better Housing Together shared her data during the Eugene Chamber of Commerce’s latest annual economic summit. She said currently, 40% of Lane County residents are cost burdened by housing, meaning they spend 30 percent of their income on residential expenses.
Knudsen says there are other challenges.
“Underbuilding on average since 2010 while having our population change, while having our demographics change, that absolutely has a direct relationship to the extraordinary changes that you’ve seen in values of homes locally and the inaccessibility of housing, locally. Last year, home prices increased almost 20 percent in one year alone.”
Knudsen said a minimum-wage worker would need to put in a roughly 80-hour work week in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Eugene.
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