Jonathan Bach covers housing for the Oregonian. He previously wrote for the Portland Business Journal, where he found the inspiration for his first book, High Desert, Higher Costs. In the book, out next month, Bach uses Bend, (Oregon) as a lens into the growing housing crisis throughout the American West, where residents and tourists alike prize access to outdoor recreation, and housing issues have been brewing for decades.
High Desert, Higher Costs began as a cover story in the Portland Business Journal. What motivated you to rework and extend the piece into a full-length book?
I’ve wanted to write a book since I worked at the Salem Statesman Journal, my first job out of college. But I couldn’t find the right topic. For a few years I covered the business of marijuana, still a fairly new legal industry in Oregon when I started at the paper. I considered doing a book about that industry, but the idea didn’t get off the ground.
The PBJ piece on Bend wasn’t exactly an opus—all edited, it landed at just over 2,200 words—but I put my heart and soul into it. After conducting extensive interviews, I wanted to do my adopted hometown and its residents justice.
Once the article ran in a May 2021 edition of the paper, I realized I might have enough to launch into book proposals. And in a phone call, an author friend of mine further encouraged me to get off the sidelines. While other writers had skillfully unpacked the housing crisis in other parts of the United States, I wanted to do something for Central Oregonians.
Why do you focus on housing in this book and in your career as journalist?
My family moved around a bunch, for reasons I relate in the preface. I spent a lot of time when I was a kid hauling boxes into U-Hauls (or, more likely, slacking off and contriving to make my big sister do all the work).
We rented many different types of places—several single or two-story homes, at least one place that was sort of an apartment/townhome setup—and we alternated between living in the city or out in the sticks. Point being, I saw and felt a good portion of the canvas of American residential life. Housing as a foreground topic has been with me since the get-go.
As a journalist, I care about housing for the same reason a lot of residential real estate reporters do: it’s integral to how many Americans accumulate wealth, but it’s also where we live. That strange intersection produces endless stories with far-reaching consequences for everyday people.
While the housing crisis in the American West is impacting a wide population, who do you think is the most vulnerable now and in the near future?
There are several populations affected in a housing crunch, and they are not all mutually exclusive. They can be low-income residents, people experiencing homelessness, seniors with fixed incomes, people of color (researchers point to the racial wealth gap and homeownership gap), renters who spend too much of their paychecks on rent, or homeowners who spend likewise on their mortgages, leaving too little left over for emergencies, savings, or even their daily needs.
Oregon in 2024 issued a “State of the State’s Housing” report showing that, because the state hasn’t kept up with enough new housing, “Rapid rent increases have largely eroded the wage gains Oregon renters experienced over the last five years, with more than 50 cents of every new dollar earned going to rent hikes.” The report underscores that when supply runs low, landlords can charge more for rent.
In High Desert, Higher Costs, you touch on a few solutions to the current housing crunch. What are some of these options or solutions and, how do we implement them?
In the book, I examined the feasibility of some efforts: building townhomes, duplexes, and other so-called missing middle housing to fill a production gap; using taxpayer subsidies to help pay for low- and middle-income housing. But both of these are variations on what economists and officials say Oregon needs: more housing, in order to keep the cost of living in check for a wide spectrum of residents at varying incomes.
Housing is an important issue in the country. In this book you specifically focus on the housing crisis in Bend, Oregon, but is there a region (or regions) where housing is not in crisis or an issue that needs addressed?
I’m not sure about an area where it doesn’t need to be addressed—there very well could be such a place. But Austin, Texas, has gotten a lot of attention in housing circles. Austin came up when I was in New York for a business reporting workshop in January. Some of us got to talking about housing over a meal. A reporter from Texas emphasized the fact that Austin built a ton, and rents soon fell.
He was right: the Texas capital turned its focus toward knocking down barriers to residential construction, allowing for that building boom—and rents dropped a staggering 22 percent from an August 2023 peak, real estate company Redfin recently reported. I will be curious to see the degree to which Austin’s example galvanizes pro-housing policymakers in Oregon to address barriers to new construction here.
These are challenging times for newspapers and journalists. As a working journalist, what do you want your readers to know about the state of newspapers in 2025?
I’m optimistic about the trajectory of local news. Yes, our industry is buffeted by well documented challenges to the traditional print advertising model. Yet from that, both legacy media and new enterprises are taking up the gauntlet. They’re testing fresh ways of doing things, whether that’s leaning into digital subscriptions or starting nonprofit newsrooms.
The common denominator is that all local newsrooms want to find sustainable ways to fund their work. We want to empower readers with stories that help them understand their communities.
High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the American West is available to order and will be released in April 2025.
- Powell’s City of Books in Portland OR will host a book launch event on Tuesday, April 29, at 7:00 pm. Visit powells.com to preorder a signed copy.
- A Bend OR book launch is scheduled for Saturday, May 17, at 5:00 pm at OSU-Cascades’ Ray Hall Atrium. Visit Dudley’s Bookshop Café to preorder the book.
Related Titles
High Desert, Higher Costs
Nestled against the Cascade Mountains, former lumber town Bend, Oregon, entices residents who long to live in a wonderland of sagebrush and forests. But like...