Pettigrew Rd. in Bend, Ore., on Dec. 16, 2024.
Kathryn Styer Martínez / OPB
Linda Maddox, 71, was walking around her Bend neighborhood with her husband on a gray Monday afternoon. They walked just shy of a mile, sometimes on sidewalks and sometimes in the middle of the road. Maddox doesn’t drive much and walks often — to the library, nearby green spaces or the senior center.
If it’s snowy or icy, she said, it’s nice to be able to walk on a sidewalk, but it’s the lack of pedestrian-friendly road crossings that really concerns her.
“They’ll kill you before you get there,” she said of navigating busy intersections in her east Bend neighborhood, like Reed Market or Pettigrew Roads.
Incomplete sidewalk networks and perilous road crossings plague much of Bend, but the city is trying to fix that in certain areas.
At a recent meeting of the city’s affordable housing advisory committee, members recommended funding be provided to build sidewalks and pave roads near affordable housing projects in town. But the proposal still needs to be approved by the city council in May and federal funding for it might be at risk next year.
Image provided by Sarah Hutson. Proposed locations for sidewalk and street repair.
Courtesy of Sarah Hutson
The project would fix five sidewalk and road sections near affordable housing developments and use $383,000 of Community Development Block Grant funds. Those are administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and are among the programs President-elect Donald Trump unsuccessfully proposed cutting during his last administration.
In Bend, where Census data show the median home value is more than twice the national average, people often don’t have basic amenities like sidewalks. When a new house or development is built, sidewalks are a requirement, but for existing homes, they aren’t.
As a result, Bend has a patchwork network of sidewalks and unpaved roads. City officials recently identified 64 areas where sidewalks need to be built or repaired.
Charles Schroder lives on one of the gravel roads that could be paved through the improvement project. He said the uneven edge where the dirt and pavement meet is hard on cars. In the summer, it’s dusty and in the winter, it’s full of puddles and potholes.
SEvCleveland Ave. in Bend, Ore., on Dec. 16, 2024. The gravel road has been identified to be paved as a part of a infrasctructure improvement project.
Kathryn Styer Martínez / OPB
This forces pedestrians into traffic, everyone from children on bicycles learning to ride and caretakers with babies in strollers, to wheelchair users and elders with walkers or other mobility assistance devices.
Maddox likes that the city is thinking about sidewalks, but would rather see unsafe crossings addressed first.
The Pettigrew segment, around the corner from her home, would include an enhanced crossing in the city’s latest plan for improvements.
The Bend City Council could make a decision to support the proposal in May, while city planners are wary of potential federal funding shortfalls.
Throughout his first administration, President Trump proposed dramatic cuts to HUD, though Congress did not ultimately approve cuts to Community Development Block Grants. Still, the program is likely to be targeted again.
During his most recent campaign, Trump disavowed the controversial, conservative policy wishlist known as Project 2025, but lately, the president-elect has chosen some of Project 2025’s key architects for cabinet positions, raising questions about the future of funding for HUD.
Project 2025’s section on HUD was written by the department’s former head, Ben Carson, and calls for, among other points, a “reset” of the agency, the “immediate redelegation of authority to a cadre of political appointees” and a transfer of “Department functions to separate federal agencies, states, and localities.”
Earlier this year, Bend received a $5 million grant from HUD for affordable housing programs.
The agency’s Community Development Block Grants must benefit people with low and moderate incomes. The sidewalk and street improvements city officials are proposing now are all located on the east side of Bend near affordable housing projects. If the city doesn’t get this federal grant, its application states it “will not be able to create these sidewalk sections for the foreseeable future.”
There are unpaved roads and neighborhoods without sidewalks on the west side of Bend, but there are far fewer affordable housing developments, according to city maps.
