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There’s a lot of talk about the American Dream and whether it’s endangered, but there is precious  little conversation about the Oregon Dream.

There is one, and since I’m a real estate broker, I hear about it all the time and it’s not about recycling.

It’s about space, the kind that our ancestors came for, risked their lives for. Land to build a life on.

The pioneers who braved the Oregon Trail came for land, escaping the cities back east for a chance to stake their claim on a rolling piece of green Oregon acreage, build a house for the family and farm a patch for their food and for trading.

The dream is similar now – many Oregonians want that same patch of land, not to go into farming on a commercial scale but to support their families and control some of their food supply. Maybe raise a few chickens, goats and cows and plant some veggies, let the kids do some 4-H activities or just run their legs on the family’s farm.

Nowadays, the grand majority of Oregonians have been fenced out of that same dream by restrictive zoning and resultant high land prices.

And this year, state lawmakers have launched several senate bills that will further restrict country living – including, incredibly, making it difficult to rebuild a house that has been destroyed by fire — and continue the trend of corralling as many people as possible into the cities, where crowding and traffic have redefined what it means to be Oregonians.

It doesn’t seem like too much to ask in a state like Oregon, where 46 million acres of the state’s 60 million acres is agricultural, for families of average income to be able to buy a bit of land to live on. But Oregon’s vaunted land-use laws are so restrictive that buildable acreage is rare and so wildly expensive that most families in Oregon now have to drive out to visit land as a tourist destination.

Every October, hundreds of families load the kids in the car and head out of town to experience a corn maze and pick pumpkins. Similar stampedes happen in December when folks drive out to Christmas tree farms to select a tree. Summer weekends are when Oregonians head out to the forests to camp for a few days and enjoy the country, paying an ever-increasing amount for a small space to pitch their tents.

Owning a handful of acres was within the financial reach of the average family until the 1970s, when Oregon officials began barring the building of farmhouses—or any houses– on acreage.

Most Oregonians are unaware that much of the state’s acreage has been classified Exclusive Farm Use – a zone that requires an owner to demonstrate farm revenues of at least $80,000 a year from farming that land before he can build a house on it. Of course, that means that a hopeful land owner must farm land he does not live on, and do so incredibly well. Average yearly farm income in 2022 was $26,000 in Oregon. Coming up with an $80k crop is a pretty neat trick and not many can do so even when living on the land, let alone living miles away from it.

To date, 15.5 million acres is zoned EFU. Another 29 million acres is classified forest use where you can’t live unless you own a minimum of 160 contiguous acres west of the Cascades or 240 contiguous acres east of the Cascades. Keep in mind that half of Oregon’s land mass is already owned by the state or the federal government and thus off-limits to private ownership.

There are ways to own and live on acreage without committing to commercial farming, but that usually requires inheriting it, or buying a parcel with a house already built that dates from the1970s or earlier and is likely in need of a facelift. And body work.

Housing stock newer than 1980 is seldom priced less than $1 million if it’s within an hour of a town with jobs. For those with those jobs, going further out is just not feasible and once a buyer is retirement age and can live in the outer limits, taking care of a large piece of land is not as attractive.

And so, Oregon voters have some thinking to do. When election time comes around again, they can again elect those responsible for shoehorning Oregonians belly to belly into the cities or they can elect lawmakers who will make the Oregon dream possible again.

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