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KLCC s Brian Bull reports on the economic officials of Springfield and Eugene announcing ways they ll work to improve loan access and business support for communities of color.
Anne Fifield is Economic Strategies Manager for the City of Eugene. She said the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted disparities, so her staff is exploring how to balance things out, including loan programs.
“Financing has traditionally excluded the Black community because you need collateral to take out a loan. What community is less likely to own their home, that’s the primary source of financial capital to borrow money to start your business? The Black Community.”
This City Club program is the second in a three-part series on local housing issues.
From the City Club of Eugene:
Oregon’s Legislature took the historic step to re-legalize traditional “missing middle housing” in 2019, but the work to build housing diversity and more inclusive neighborhoods has just begun.
One promise of “missing middle housing” is that it can deliver “affordability by design” that per-unit development costs can come down when we design more efficient housing units and share land costs among multiple homes. In Portland, where the City’s missing middle housing implementation was ahead of Oregon’s new state law, some community members raised the objection that affordability was not guaranteed by the policy changes. In response, housing advocates crafted Portland’s “Deeper Affordability” code amendments: an affordable housing density bonus equivalent to a $150,000 subsidy for each project. It turns out that accomplishing affordability is abo