Tina Kotek Fails Miserably on Housing Promises

Tina Kotek, Governor of Oregon, made a campaign promise to more than double housing production. So far, she has failed miserably over the last two years. In her first year in office, the state saw just shy of 18,000 building permits.

So far this year, less than 11,000.

That puts Tent City Tina at less than 30,000 homes—more than 40,000 homes short of her goal. So, she has hired not one, but two new captains for her Titanic housing program.

Joel Madsen ran one of those ridiculous affordable housing government bureaucracies. Yeah, that should speed up housing. Tony Rocco used to work in the private sector but has spent his most recent years as “structural program chief for the state of Oregon’s Building Codes Division.” Ask your favorite private sector contractor if either of those two is likely to inspire more housing construction.

Tony Rocco claims he knows all the things in building codes that slow things down. If so, my second question to him would be: how many of those barriers did you eliminate while working in the bureaucracy? I would guess zero, but if I’m wrong, I’d love to hear about the massive red tape cutting he has done.