Oregon’s Housing Crisis Burdens Nearly Half of the State’s Renters

By Khushboo Rathore
February 19, 2026

Gov. Tina Kotek and state lawmakers have tried to solve Oregon’s affordable housing crisis with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and new programs, including a bill moving through the Legislature that would expand mobile home communities for older residents.

“Too many older Oregonians are one emergency away from losing their housing,” Kotek told lawmakers earlier this month.

In all, half of Oregon’s 620,000 renting households are “rent burdened,” meaning tenants pay more than 30% of their pretax income for housing. Far worse, 1 in 4 rental households spend 50% of their income on housing, according to a 2021 report by the Oregon Law Center.

People who are rent burdened not only struggle to make ends meet, but they suffer in other ways, including higher rates of premature death, according to a report by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

“As rents rise, families cut back on other spending, including on essentials for health and well-being,” the researchers wrote.

Oregon’s affordable housing crisis, caused by renters’ income not keeping up with rising housing costs, plays out differently across the state.

In Benton County, which includes Corvallis and Oregon State University, more than 60% of renters are burdened, the highest rate among Oregon’s 36 counties.

In Sherman County, the state’s most affordable place to live, only a quarter of renters are rent burdened.

People living and working in the coastal counties face another threat: Their economies rely largely on seasonal tourists, who occupy homes converted to short-term rental properties or own vacation homes outright. That decreases housing available to people who hold typically lower-wage hospitality jobs.

“We pay a premium to live here, and oftentimes the cost of living and the annual wages don't cover that,” says Karen Rockwell, executive director of the Lincoln County Housing Authority.

As a result, coastal employers across many industries struggle to hire workers.

Heath Curtiss, a lawyer for Hampton Lumber, which has mills in the coastal cities of Tillamook and Warrenton, says, “It's difficult because we'll be hiring them from a long way away often and…there may not be a house suited to them.”

Tillamook County is trying to fix that problem. The county restricted new rentals in 2023—limiting growth to a 1% increase in rental licenses each year as a way to slow the loss of affordable housing.