Hillary Clinton dropped into a half-finished subdivision in this small town two hours south of Portland on Friday. She came to chat on camera with a few locals and to spotlight the housing crisis undercutting America's economy.________________________________________________
The cameras and the locals showed up exactly as planned, unlike the housing crisis, which has spared Oregon the full destruction it has brought to bear on states across the Sun Belt and Midwest in the form of free-falling home values.
While home prices fell by about 20 percent in those regions over the last year, values in the Portland metro area dipped slightly. Only Charlotte fared better among major cities. A builder at the Junction City event told Clinton he knew of no Oregon projects that were halted by market woes, though construction has slowed appreciably statewide.
Economists and real estate experts say Clinton and other politicians focused on housing could learn from Oregon, where they credit land-use restrictions and a late-blooming economy with keeping housing prices afloat. While other cities confront half-built or half-empty housing developments, Portland's longtime fight against sprawl ensured that the supply never got too far ahead of demand.
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