For Your Consideration

A powerful message about the addiction crisis in Oregon from Lake Oswego Mayor Joe Buck’s weekly email message.

Summer Reflection    

Our State’s addiction crisis and its impact on our loved ones and neighbors can feel outside of our local city control. But is it entirely? Oregonians are justified to be leery about the decriminalization of Federally illicit substances. While these efforts have rightly kept those suffering from addiction out of the criminal justice system, they have failed to produce pathways to recovery accessible to the vast number of Oregonians stricken with substance abuse disorder and other accompanying mental health maladies. 

While this disease is now more front and center on sidewalks and in the national media, the health crisis has existed in the families of Oswegans for generations. While street drugs, Measure 110, and the omnipresence of highly potent weed are just targets of our ire, alcohol continues to kill vastly more Oregonians per year, carries an immense social and economic cost, and fosters generational trauma. The need for candid conversations, education, and treatment has never been greater.

Locally we can continue working together to educate students and to ensure our residents have access to treatment, including new methods like psilocybin therapy. While small cities like LO do not control funds needed to establish treatment beds, we can be responsible partners by ensuring drug and alcohol treatment is given siting considerations reflective of centers of health care and healing. Substance abuse is a disease like any other, and those afflicted need the compassionate, informed support of neighbors to enable daylight to come to the dark, shameful corners of often covert suffering. Together we can cease the stigmatized narrative of fear and disgrace and redirect the anger we all rightly feel for the addiction crisis to wholeheartedly support our family members, neighbors, co-workers, and friends who suffer. By providing a safe, supportive community for those who suffer to reclaim their lives, we can, in fact, make a difference locally.

- Mayor Joe

Mutual Aid Spotlight: Symbiosis PDX

A collective committed to promoting the potential of self-organizing within and between communities. They envision a future where everyone's food, water, and shelter needs are met without exploitation and every voice is heard with dignity and respect. 

Their efforts are divided across various domains–truth and reconciliation, consent-based decision-making, social ecology, solidarity economy and mutual aid, gender freedom, and municipality. In short, their vision is to keep shifting our communities from an individualist towards a communal existence that honors our interdependence. 

Learn more and get involved here>>

Oregon's FLEX Downpayment Assistance Program

Oregon recently approved an interesting statewide program accessible to low- and moderate-income borrowers. The state has put together a great FAQ sheet, and Guild Mortgage did a great job talking through the nuances of the program requirements, limitations, and opportunities in this short video. If you're in the midst of or lead up to the home buying process, it's worth learning more about it. Please reach out if you have questions.

Guild Mortgage FLEX program explainer>>

Oregon Flex Lending Borrower FAQs>>

Good News for FHFA Borrowers

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae programs, announced a little over a week ago that they are doing away with the Debt-to-Income Ratio based fee slated to go into effect this August. Under the proposed fee program, borrowers whose house payment and other debts combined exceeded 40% of their monthly gross income would be charged a 0.375% fee on their loan amount.

We were super happy to see that fee go away, as it was going to make it that much more difficult for lower-income borrowers to afford a home.

RMLS Market Action Report

We have access to some new market data snapshots, and we'd love to know your thoughts. 
Let us know if you prefer weekly, monthly, or both>>

Although we continue to struggle with inventory (April's listings were down a whopping 28% from April 2022's already low numbers), we did see a minimal increase compared to the previous month. Also, when I call to schedule photography shoots and staging for my new listings, their lead times are much longer, so I think we will have more to choose from this Summer. Partly, this matches our historic seasonal trends, but if we have learned anything, it is that things are not always reliably consistent.

Pending and closed sales are down 28% and 38%, respectively, so the lack of inventory and higher interest rates have also hit hard on the sales department. That being said, listings priced appropriately continue to attract multiple and sometimes over full price offers, as the market is hungry for quality properties. 

View the most recent market action report here>>

Yards Are Great (if you're into that kind of thing)

Photo by Jason Long on Unsplash

We are deep into spring, and Portland is officially in bloom. It's that time of year when trees are flush with greenery; there are petals just about everywhere, including the sidewalks, and many of us get excited about gardening. Drive by any nursery or garden center on a sunny Saturday morning, and you'll see their parking lots full of cars because this is the season for every gardener, not just the dyed-in-the-wool variety. Even I got swept up in the excitement this year and decided to start some tomatoes from seed, something I haven't done since probably third grade.

Last week I told one of my clients about my little gardening project and how much delight I've gotten from seeing each small transition from seed to sprout to leaf development. Upon hearing this, my client reminded me of something she was thankful I'd said to her and her partner over a decade ago when we were in the thick of the search for their first home. At the time, they lived in a small apartment without any outdoor space, and one of the things they were sure they wanted was a nice big yard.

One morning we walked through a property with a substantial outdoor area that she was excited about, and I asked her if she had gardened much before. When she said no, I offered that some people I knew had started their gardening journeys with a couple of raised beds so they could gauge how much they enjoyed spending their free time doing yard work. The property they bought months later had less yard space, and she admitted that she is grateful for that now. Over the years, she's come to understand that while she enjoys gardening, she also enjoys many other things. So whenever there's an uptick in yardwork, she feels a bit put out. 

When you haven't owned a property before (and even if you have), it can be challenging to know precisely how you will feel about the various kinds of work involved in updating and maintaining the inside and outside of a home. When we are inundated with images about the joys of gardening or backyard entertaining, those ideas can make it a little bit harder to imagine what other experiences are possible and connect with our desires. 

Of course, not everyone with a large yard is an avid gardener. Some homeowners hire people to do that work for them, which is great if that's within your budget. In much the same way that we encourage folks to inquire about utility costs for a property, we think it's a good idea to consider, and even ask about, annual landscaping costs, too, including estimates for an arborist if there are any large trees on the property. Yard maintenance is one of the many expenditures of money and (or) labor involved in homeownership that you want to examine within the context of your current lifestyle and budget.

If you already know you love spending time outdoors but don't like digging, pruning, or mowing, you might consider investing in a low-maintenance xeriscaped yard with a seating area like a patio. You may also be perfectly happy so long as you can see trees from your windows and walk to a park in under twenty minutes. Everyone is different–that's the beauty of it. Our goal, as always, is to support you in finding the homeownership situation most compatible with your needs and lifestyle. 

Drop us a line if you want to talk through your outdoor ambitions>>