Oregon has significantly increased its investment in low-income housing over the past five years, allocating an unprecedented $1.4 billion to developers. Despite this substantial funding, the public remains unaware of the detailed financial breakdown of these projects. This lack of transparency is particularly concerning given the region’s homelessness crisis and the urgent need for affordable housing solutions.
The state’s public records law includes a unique exemption that prevents the disclosure of financial details for subsidized housing projects. This exemption has thwarted efforts by researchers and journalists to examine the costs and efficiency of these developments. Understanding the cost of construction is crucial for maximizing the impact of public funds, whether by building more rent-restricted apartments or offering deeper rent discounts.
Oregon’s Secrecy Compared to Other States
Margaret Van Vliet a former director of Oregon’s state housing agency, has called for a revisit of the exemption. She notes that despite the state’s substantial spending, Oregon’s homeless population continues to grow. For all the public money, we seem to be digging a deeper hole Van Vliet stated.
In contrast, other states have made significant strides in transparency. For instance, Los Angeles Times reporters revealed in 2026 that the cost of some low-income housing units in California had soared to over $1 million each. The investigation found that 12,000 more low-income families could have received homes between 2011 and 2015 if costs had been lower. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley discovered that California was spending $300 million annually on development fees alone, enough to finance an additional 1,250 apartments each year.
A study published last year, co-authored by Jason Ward an economist at the Rand Corp.’s Housing Center compared the costs of constructing subsidized housing in California, Texas, and Colorado. The study found that California’s high costs were driven by requirements to pay substantially above-market wages and unusually large architectural and engineering fees. If California had Colorado’s production costs, it could have built four times as many rent-subsidized apartments.
The Origins of Oregon’s Exemption
Oregon’s Legislature approved the exemption in 1997, when the state housing agency had a much smaller staff and budget. During a public hearing, Lynn Schoessler then the deputy director of Oregon Housing and Community Services, expressed concerns about revealing detailed financial information. She argued that disclosing such information could make developers vulnerable to takeovers or buyouts, potentially compromising their financial stability.
Lawmakers almost unanimously agreed to exempt these records from disclosure. However, not all details about subsidized housing in Oregon were made secret. The Portland area’s regional government, which manages a local low-income-housing bond, publishes the costs of projects the bond has funded, showing some units have reached $900,000 apiece. Fine-grained cost information may also be obtained if the project is run by a public housing authority like Portland’s. But these account for just 20% of the subsidized housing units that Oregon is building.
The Push for Transparency
Despite the state agency’s willingness to divulge how much a developer said a project would cost when it applied for funding, it redacts the itemized expenses. These expenses include the costs of construction materials, contractor profits, and fees paid to lawyers, brokers, loan agents, developers, and the state agency itself. A spokesperson for the agency stated that while they know the cost per unit, per square foot, and per bedroom for each development they have subsidized, this information is not subject to disclosure.
Charlie Fisher co-chair of Oregon’s sunshine committee, which reviews public records exemptions, has called for an examination of the low-income housing carve-out. He emphasized that verifying how public dollars are being spent, especially at this scale, is one of the fundamental reasons why people should have access to public records.
The secrecy mandate in state law shrouds more than just the financial details of a project. When requested financial records for three apartment projects around Portland, the agency redacted a list of languages spoken by the tenants that a developer hoped to attract. It also redacted the plan for translating tenant outreach brochures from English and blacked out an explanation of any financial risks the project might face, along with the developer’s plan for covering cost overruns.
In response to these concerns, Andrea Bell the state housing agency’s director, stated her commitment to transparency. However, she also emphasized the agency’s responsibility to comply with the exemption in Oregon records law for housing financials. She noted that the cost of construction is a topic of growing interest and that the agency will consider ways to proactively share construction costs so that they are more readily available to the public.
Transparency hasn’t slowed development in other West Coast states. In California, where the financial details of housing projects are public records, the funding remains highly competitive. A spokesperson for the California state treasurer’s office stated that they have not encountered any difficulty in developing affordable housing because those documents are public. Similarly, in Washington state, officials have repeatedly released financial information about the housing projects they’ve funded to developers, researchers, media, and other members of the public.
