We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it...
....Joel William M (aka Billy Joel)

            Although there’s little doubt among anyone in Bend, the statistics back up that summer of 2021 is a scorcher for the archives.
            A look a daily weather temperatures for June and July this year compared with 2020 and 2019 shows how dramatic temperatues have risen year over year.
            There were 24 days out of 31 with highs of 90 degrees or greater in July this year, compared with 12 in that range in 2020 and only seven in 2019.
            July was no slacker in the heat index, but June of this year was especially notable. There were 15 of  30 days above 90 degrees, compared with only two in 2020 and just a single day in June of 2019. Of June days above 90, there were five reading more than 100, including a record 111 on June 29.
            August of 2021 is also showing its muscle on the heat index, with eight of the first 12 days above 90, two of those topping 100. Through the same period of August 2020, only five days were 90 or more, and none of 100 or more.
            The first 12 days of August 2019 was hotter than 2021 with seven days above 90, although none reached 100.
            Escalating summer heat is unpleasant, but the accompanying consequence of more frequent and catastrophic wildfires is making summers in Bend and much of the West more an excercise of enduring smoke-filled and dangerous air quality.
            This summer Bend had remained mostly smoke free, although wildfires to the northwest near Sisters, on the Warm Springs reservation north of Madras, south around LaPine burned in July—along with the mammoth Bootleg fire northeast of Klamath Falls all burned.

Air quality map August 13, 2021

            But as August began. smoke from various blazes, including Calfornia’s largest Dixie Fire in the northern Sierras, joined other pollution emerging with new fires from Roseberg north along the Cascades to create numerous days of unhealthy air.
            Checking the thermometer each morning is now even secondary to a look at the Air Quality Index to see if we’ve dropped back from very unhealthy to just unhealthy, with hopes that we’ll see the moderate yellow graphic shade some time.
            Coupled with the intense heat, smoke has rendered nearly empty at times the normally busy offleash dog parks and the city’s outdoor soccer and pickleball courts.          
            Then came resumption of statewide indoor mask mandates prompted by surging Covid cases and hospitalizations straining the region’s healthcare provider. This has forced restaurants and retail businesses back in a position of last winter and spring when the virus especially hammered the lodging and food service sectors.

Bend AQI: 251 August 14, 2021

 

           The noxious smoky air has impeded restaurants from maximizing outdoor dining, putting owners back into a position of having to police indoor visits from Covid and mask weary customers.
            Anyone walking along town streets was as likely to see more people masked to avoid the hazardous wildfire-fueled smoke as to stave off the relentless virus.
            Besides the temperature data for this summer, all along the west coast the wildfire and smoke hazards have extended to the Rockes and beyond, with reports of pollution carried thousands of miles to cities of the nation’s Northeastern metropolitan corridor.
            One of the most dramatic examples of fires around the globe is available in an online world view showing the west coast of the United States and raging wildfires in the taiga of Siberia, with its vegetation that once served as a buffer to capture ozone-depleting carbon.
           

Global hotspots: US West coast and Siberia

Fire in the normally colder, Siberian boreal forest is in one sense beneficial, releasing heat-induced cone seeds in a natural cycle to replenish the landscape. But instead of approximately 50-year major fire events, the cycle is now recurring almost yearly. The same phenomenon is being replicated in Alaska’s boreal landscape.
            Scientists also say the more frequent fires potentially unleash what is known as “legacy carbon,” from a thick layor of organic material that burns less frequently. And warming Siberian temperatues have caused erosion in the area’s permafrost regions with similar effect.
            Any time there’s a debate about climate change, the dialogue often devolves into whether statistics verifying a overheating planet are indicative of typical rotating“weather” patterns or a larger trend of “global warming.”
            As with much in the United States these days, the preponderance of scientific evidence often comes up against a political wall built on a foundation of disinformation, questionable statistics and cries of don’t take my “freedum,”  fitting a narrative often designed to defend fossil fuels or some elusive and fading thread of a patriotically perfect American history.
            The dialectic could be comparable to the eschewing of science that supports masks and vaccines as weapons against the deadly coronavirus – transferred to a resistance to recognize and support measures that might help solve the pandemic and climate challenges.
            “No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it,” as Billy Joel wrote.
            True, we may not have started the metaphorical looming disasters of the song.      
            Nevertheless we – government, science, industry and individuals – now own them. And by proximity and circumstance we now have an obligation to continue fighting for solutions.

 

Whoopee !!! : A small but welcome inventory rise

             It’s not exactly a seismic market shift. In fact, looking at a chart it might take a magnifying glass to detect any movement.
            Yet, in a Bend and Central Oregon real estate environment, where most change has been steadily rising housing prices, even the slight shift to more homes available for sale was notable.
            Until the numbers for July were tabulated, actively listed homes in Bend had been stuck at inventory levels of 0.2 to 0.3 fractions of a month. Then, according the Beacon Report, by Beacon Appraisal, inventory ticked up to an entire month, the first time at that level since July of 2020 as the pandemic unrest infected and spread across the housing industry.
            From the end of July 2020 the inventory dropped steadily to a low of only 0.3 months in December and January, 0.4 months in February, then has stumbled up the availability chart to July of this year.

Source: Beacon Appraisal from MLS of Central Oregon database

             The monthly median price for 246 Bend home sales in July was $650,000, up from the 247 sales at a median of $640,000 the previous months.
            One metric that bears watching is the continuing growth of listings at more than $1 million. As of month-end July there were 58 listings agove the arbitrary “luxury” benchmark, comprising more than 26% of the total 221 listings. Another 17 homes were listed agove $900,000.
            But a few random checks of high-end listings in Bend’s more expensive west side of the Deschutes River shows, albeit anecodotally, that sellers and listing agents may be responding to a cooling of the superheated buying binge that Bend and elswhere have experienced.
            As one example, the price of a West Hills home initially listed at $1.3 million on July 12 was dropped $130,000 to $1.170 million less than a month later on August 10.
            Another home in the Heights of Bend neighborhood on the east side of Awbrey Butte was initially listed at $929,000 June 11 and went to a pending sale June 27. However, the sale did not go through and the property came back on the market July 7 at $929,000, $20,000 below the original price.
            Among a number of factors facing the Bend market, and others nationally, is concern over a resurgence of the pandemic, which could have a contrary effect on real estate unlike the generally recognized stimulus the virus provided in the past 18 or more months. What was a buying frenzy may now have been braked by prices having reached perhaps unsustainable levels that outstrip buyer financial capability or interest.
            More veteran market observers recall a smaller boom that occurred after 9-11, 2001, terrorist attacks spurred buying outside more populated areas. That effect was boosted in large part by easy lending standards that eventually contributed to loan defaults and what has been termed, “The Great Recession,” of the early decade of the new century.
            This time around real estate has been intertwined with a continued economic recovery that has run with few interruptions for over a decade, accompanied by low unemployment, robust corporate earnings and a long bull run of the stock market.

           

Trading golf for homes: Rivers Edge proposal raises future housng issues

            “I said don’t it always seem to go
            That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
            They paved paradise, put up a parking lot...”  Joni Mitchell         

            As written and sung by Joni Mitchell in the early 1970s the lyrics from her Big Yellow Taxi might be revised slightly to reflect the angst and anger of residents in one of Bend’s oldest golf communities.
            In this case the “paradise” in question could be the decades old Rivers Edge Golf Course, and the "parking lot" a proposal to raze it for 372 housing units.
            A conceptual site plan filed with city officials in mid-March includes 71 of the 142 acre golf course to remain open space. But the remaining acreage would be split between 47% for 175 single family homes and the other 53% for 197 townhomes.
            Now there is a brewing legal battle involving residents who say prominent Bend builder Pahlisch Homes, and entities controlled by the Wayne Purcell and family which developed the golf course, will violate their propety rights if the course is closed and used for housing.
            Pahlisch and Purcell announced the builder’s plans for the course on April 27 of this year, more than a month after filing the conceptual plan to the city planning department.  County records do not show a sale or change in ownership as of early August. Also pre-application documents titled The Uplands-Community Master Plan are in the city planning database as filed by Rivers Edge Investments LLC, whose Oregon business registration is in the name of Wayne Purcell.

Gray=open space. Yellow SF homes. Other townhomes

            The news release announcing developer plans only referred to an “intention” by Purcell, the top executive of several Purcell related corporations and limited liability companies, to sell to Pahlisch.  It noted a long business relationship between the Pahlisch and Purcell entities including many units built on Purcell property at Rivers Edge.

An "intention" to sell

          “With great intention, our family has chosen Pahlisch Homes as the best fit as the next generation of stewards of the property,” Purcell was quoted.
          The recent legal action filed by a group of homeowners asserts that some of the homes recently built by Pahlisch were listed and sold with the golf course mentioned as an amenity.
            As stated in a  Frequently Asked Questions section (FAQ) of the opponents website,https://saveriversedge.org:   
        “They never told prospective purchasers that once homes along the golf course were sold, they planned to plow up the golf course and fill in the open space with more homes. This amounts to a bait-and-switch that is fundamentally unfair.”
            There are now yard signs urging “Save Rivers Edge” dotting Mt. Washington Drive which runs along the property, and also sprinkled throughout neighboring Awbrey Butte residential areas.
            Key to the opposition’s legal argument is the theory of “equitable servitude,” which is described in the FAQs as, “a legal requirement burdening certain real property (in this case, the golf course) for the benefit of other real propeties" (in this case, the homes along the golf course).
            Through “express and implied representations” that buyers would be part of a golf course community Pahlisch was able to market the homes at higher prices, and Purcell to benefit from higher prices in selling lots to Pahlisch, the opponents argue.
            The controversy erupts as Bend is moving to complete a change in the city code intended to provide more “middle housing” that could open home ownership to more buyers in a critically tight market.
            State legislation, HB 2001, requires the city to provide more multi-family units in traditional single family zoned areas. Rivers Edge is zoned residential standard, or RS, for single family homes.

Higher density and less parking

            Pahlisch’s preliminary proposal could fit the city’s objective for more multi-family units as the code changes are discussed. But some observers caution that the city should be more careful in crafting certain specific requirements given the state has allowed until 2022 to comply with a plan.
            Among the sensitive issues in the proposed city code changes is the size of lots. As now drafted, a quadraplex could be built on a lot as small as 4,500 square feet in a neighborhood zoned for single family homes.
            Another proposed change would reduce offstreet parking requirements from space for 1.5 vehicles per unit to a single space.
            The lower parking requirement has resulted in complaints that it would create heavier use of onstreet parking in many areas already overburdened with congestion even without multi-family units.
            Some proponents have said the opponents are, in effect, falling into the NIMBY (not in my back yard) category. They argue that less parking would encourage alternative transportion including public transit and bicycles.
            But skeptics maintain that Bend has a traditionally car-dependent population, along with  widely dispersed retail, commercial and industrial facilities and a small mass transit sytem with limited routes, mostly along major arterials.

Traffic congestion around Rivers Edge

            Apart from the Rivers Edge plaintiffs who are suing to stop housing construction on the golf course, the project would face considerable obstacles given the already heavily congested traffic along Mt. Washington Drive.
            There are a half dozen streets from residential areas that now access Mt. Washington in the area of Rivers Edge, to the east where the arterial ends at the congested intersection with  US 97/3^rd Street business corridor, the Bend Parkway and Division Street. Often vehicles queue up for delays of two traffic light changes.
            Mt. Washington also serves as a major route to the west connecting that intersection around Awbrey Butte to Central Oregon Community College and several other neighborhoods along the route.
            Pahlisch representatives came to a July public meeting on their golf course development proposal with few details, instead framing the discussion as more of a listening effort for community input.
            The company has outlined general information on the project in a website, www.futureofriversedge.com.          
            Moving forward, “In the coming months Pahlisch Homes will work wth the City of Bend, land-use and transportation planning teams, neighbors, and community members to complete a plan for the future of River’s Edge and the surrounding lands,” the  website FAQs note.