Rob Davis – GOVERNMENT Excerpts from Propublica article Sept. 30, 2026, 10:32 a.m. PT Full Article
KEY POINTS
Oregon lawmakers plan to introduce legislation to repeal a law that hides how taxpayer money is spent on subsidized housing.
The move for transparency comes after a ProPublica report highlighted the secrecy and rising costs of low-income housing projects.
Oregon’s spending on low-income housing has reached $1.4 billion since 2021, with the average cost per apartment nearly doubling.
Two Oregon lawmakers want to end an unusual exemption in the state’s records law that has kept the public from learning how hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money is spent on subsidized housing — and the effort has already landed key industry support.
The southern Oregon Democrat said she didn’t realize the documents were being kept secret until reading about it in a ProPublica story. She said previous leaders of her committee told her they were also unaware.
“I think this is an issue that will have very broad interest,” Marsh said.
State Sen. Khanh Pham, a Portland Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development, said she also wants the Legislature to tackle the issue in its next session.
Kevin Cronin, a spokesperson for the group, Housing Oregon said Oregon can increase transparency around development costs “while still protecting genuinely proprietary or competitively sensitive information.”
“More consistent reporting of costs and outcomes will help policymakers, providers, researchers, and the public understand where the system is working and where it needs improvement, Cronin, said.
Since 2021, our story noted, Oregon has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each low-income apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for another $850 million in future state funding, and costs are expected to continue rising.
ProPublica highlighted Oregon’s secrecy around low-income housing in August.
“We are spending, as you said, a lot of money on the development of affordable housing,” Marsh said. “We really need to understand what it is that we’re funding, how much it costs, why it costs that much, and be able to justify the investments that we’re making.” . . . .
Oregon Housing and Community Services, the state housing agency that persuaded lawmakers to create the records exemption in 1997, cited the law in redacting major sections of developers’ cost reports that ProPublica requested in May.
The agency’s current executive director, Andrea Bell, told ProPublica in July that she is committed to transparency but that the agency is following the law as it stands today.
Asked to comment this week about whether the agency would support efforts to change the law, a spokesperson said by email that state agencies don’t take positions on bills. “OHCS appreciates the opportunity to review the legislation” that’s introduced in 2027, the spokesperson wrote.
