Oregon Capital Chronicle
By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle
WEST LINN, Ore.— At a library in suburban West Linn, nursing students, millennial parents and recent high school graduates told their congresswoman they are struggling to reach a slate of traditional educational, professional and personal milestones due to a multi-generational affordability crisis in higher education, housing, health and child care.
“That is not the failure of workers. It’s the failure of our economy to reward work with stability,” said Shelly Santa Cruz of Aloha, a mother of two who works for the nonprofit Neighborhood Health Center.
“The cost of raising children has skyrocketed. Child care alone can rival the cost of second rent payments. Groceries, health care, basic necessities cost more and more every year, while wages struggle to keep up. For many parents, having a child isn’t a joyful milestone anymore. It’s literally a financial gamble.”
U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat representing the group of teens and young adults who live in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, told her constituents she understood their experiences well. She convened them Monday to launch her new “K-30” agenda meant to “address young Oregonians’ most pressing issues: education, jobs and housing.”
Bynum said she hears about these issues directly from her four kids, who are teens and in their early 20s.
“Millions of young Americans have done exactly what has been asked of them, but our country isn’t returning the favor, and you don’t have to take my word for it. You can look at the fact that fewer children ever out-earn their parents, or that the average age of a first-time home buyer is at an all time high,” she said.
Her K-30 agenda includes six housing bills, five education bills, and five jobs-focused bills. At least seven of the 16 bills in the package have bipartisan support, and some have already passed out of the House or advanced from House committees.
Many rely on agencies and programs, such as the U.S. Department of Education and the federal Jobs Corps program, that President Donald Trump and his administration are actively trying to dismantle and eliminate.
Much of the proposed legislation would ultimately make it cheaper and easier for developers and manufacturers to produce housing material and build homes, mostly through grants and federal tax incentives. Others offer piecemeal student debt relief and child care assistance for people in specific industries, or who are willing to go into high-demand fields needed in rural areas, to incentivize workforce growth.
Jobs
When it comes to Bynum’s jobs-related proposals, the most ambitious is the creation of a Rural Service and Workforce Corps, similar to the AmeriCorps program, that would provide student loan relief, relocation and retention incentives and stipends in exchange for a three-year commitment from workers in high demand fields in rural communities. Those include people working in health care and skilled trades, as well as people building energy infrastructure and working with utilities and public works agencies.
Another would provide federal tax incentives to the mass timber industry for investing in more manufacturing plants that produce the glued, multilayered wood building material, growing the workforce and for developers using the engineered wood products in their buildings.
The CHIPS Child Care Act would subsidize child care costs for people training to build semiconductor facilities. Bynum helped to pass a similar bill in the Oregon Legislature in 2024, and hopes to expand it nationally.
Housing
The housing portion of Bynum’s package consists mostly of legislation meant to make it cheaper and easier for developers to build houses, and to boost the number of people in the workforce needed to build them. Many of the housing proposals are endorsed by large industry groups, such as the National Association of REALTORS, The Appraisal Institute and the International Mass Timber Conference.
One proposal would establish a $1.5 billion grant program for developers to cover half the cost of state and local taxes and fees they pay in order to build housing developments, as long as their state and local governments also agree to match the federal grant.
Another bipartisan proposal would fund the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, to produce pre-approved, standardized building plans and designs that could be used nationwide to speed up permitting and home-building.
Two proposals aim to grow the construction workforce and the number of home appraisers.
Bynum’s Homebuilder Corps Act would invest $200 million in residential construction training programs within Job Corps, a 65-year-old program offering education and apprenticeship opportunities to low-income 16- to 24-year-olds. The bipartisan Appraisal Industry Improvement Act would address a nationwide shortage of licensed home appraisers, according to Bynum, by sending money to states’ to expand access to building appraiser certification and licensing education and to lower annual registration fees for licensed appraisers.
The First-Time Home Buyers Match Act would establish a pilot program at HUD matching the home savings of 20,000 low- and middle-income individuals hoping to purchase their first house.
Education
Bynum threw a hodge-podge of education proposals into the package that would fund school bus cameras, allow students to use college savings accounts to pay for their applications to universities and trade schools and expand and reinforce existing federal programs and investments, including federal support for students with disabilities and for at-school mental health care.
The biggest of the education proposals is the IDEA Full Funding Act which would, for the first time, require Congress fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act program for 10 years at Congressionally directed levels. The proposal has bipartisan support and has been endorsed by 50 education and labor groups.
To tackle rural teacher shortages, Bynum is also proposing a program to offer signing and retention bonuses to teachers who agree to work in rural districts.
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