David Buntjer was 18 when he died in September 2022, five months after welcoming the Statesman Journal into his Salem apartment to talk about the work he and other teens were doing to help other homeless youth.
On Wednesday a crowd celebrated the opening of a new transitional shelter in Monmouth bearing his name.
David’s House initially will provide transitional housing for five Polk County youth, and eventually house up to 10. Teens will be able to stay up to two years or until they graduate high school and turn 18.
It will serve as a stopgap between emergency shelters and permanent support. On-site staff will support the youth 24 hours a day, including helping with homework and chores or giving rides to appointments.
“Every kiddo deserves to grow up in a neighborhood,” said Christopher Lopez, associate program director at Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance.
In 2022, there were an estimated 1,500 youth in the Mid-Valley experiencing homelessness at any given time. Buntjer was one of them.
During the sentencing of the man convicted of shooting and killing his father a couple of months before Buntjer died, he said his father’s death was the hardest thing he had gone through and his difficulties with housing and feeling secure. In an earlier interview he recalled being threatened with a machete after asking older people if he and his peers could sleep near them.
Buntjer was part of Backbone, a youth advisory board involved in the implementation of Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project funding via a $3.7 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant to the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance.
Backbone members are experiencing homelessness or youth at risk of experiencing homelessness and they provided input for a 2022 Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance plan to to end youth homelessness.
David’s House will be the first program of its kind in Polk County
The Monmouth property was purchased in 2023 for $650,000. Repairs and updates of the property followed before a Wednesday ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Lopez said the location of the home was intentional. Services are often concentrated in more urban centers and youth are traditionally forced to travel to Salem for services. That removes them from the communities where they live.
“That induces trauma,” Lopez said.
David’s House will be the first program of its kind in Polk County.
“This is a big deal,” Polk County Commissioner Jeremy Gordon said Wednesday. “We want to take care of people where they are.”
Jimmy Jones, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, referred to the youth-specific shelter as a “very, very rare thing.”
Megan Perez, program manager at MWVCAA, said the goal is for the house to feel like a home setting rather than a facility.
There’s a resource room upstairs where youth will be able to find clothes and decor so they can make the space their own. A large deck is available in the backyard along with garden boxes. There are donated acoustic guitars in the living room.
Buntjer’s family has remained involved in the development of David’s House. They donated bikes and other supplies because they knew how passionate Buntjer had been about opening spaces like this, Perez said.
Two portraits of Buntjer greet visitors and residents at the home. Friday, MWVCAA will host a vigil to honor David and other youth.
Dianne Lugo covers the Oregon Legislature and equity issues. Reach her at dlugo@statesmanjournal.com or on X @DianneLugo
Five years ago, when a real estate agent advised my wife and me to make an offer on a house we had seen only once − at night − and were unsure about, I thought she was being ridiculous. Today, I concede that she was being pragmatic because buyers significantly outnumbered sellers.
We bought another home before it was listed, happening to spot the “Coming Soon” sign out front. That was my preview of the housing shortage. Then COVID-19 supercharged the national housing crisis.
You may know the rule of thumb not to spend more than 30% of your income on housing. Redfin calculated that only 15.5% of homes bought last year would have a mortgage costing less than 30% of local median income, a record well below the pre-pandemic norm.
A new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that in 2022, a record half of U.S. renters were “cost burdened,” spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. About 27% of renter households spent more than half of their income on housing.
The root cause of this financial hardship is a shortage of homes, although some housing advocates question or deny that reality. But the housing shortage is a literal shortage. We can see it from various pieces of evidence.
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Housing price index is at near record high
America built far fewer homes in recent years. U.S. private home construction crashed before the 2008 mortgage crisis (measured in total units). Only in late 2021 did it climb back up to its pre-Great Recession peak.
Homebuilding is rebounding, but we have a lot of catching up to do. The Case-Shiller housing price index sits near an all-time high.
The median age of first-time homebuyers also is near a record high, at 35.
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Investment firms have owned many multifamily buildings for decades. They now are buying a significant number of houses because they expect a continued shortage to boost those properties’ values.
Economists argue about inflation and minimum wage laws, but they overwhelmingly agree we have a housing shortage. “Place the Blame Where It Belongs,” declared a recent Urban Institute report on the shortage. Economists are still figuring out how to measure it, but various estimates place the national shortage of homes in a broad range, from 4 million to 20 million.
Rising rents trigger increase in people without stable housing
It was a moment, not a number, that finally convinced me of the housing shortage. I started an all-volunteer housing advocacy group in 2021 and about a year later was invited to tour a homeless shelter. A staff member explained that rising rents had increased the local population without stable housing, and that the shelter struggled to find available homes to place its clients in.
I have since heard the same thing from staff at other shelters in my state. I have also heard chilling stories about residents of my city living in unsafe, overcrowded conditions.
Low supply lets landlords jack up rents. It prevents people from leaving abusive partners. It forces California college students to sleep in their cars.
The housing shortage is all too real. Only building many more homes will make housing affordable again.
Luca Gattoni-Celli is a Young Voices contributor and the founder of YIMBYs of Northern Virginia. Follow him on X @TheGattoniCelli