Housing Voices

01/09/2026

Title: Eisenhower Said a Battleship Is Stolen From Schools and Housing | HV14 Short8

Given a magic wand by Bre Irish and asked to change one thing about housing, Dan Spatz doesn't pick a zoning rule. He'd reorient federal spending — stop pouring billions into a military we don't need and wars we don't need to start — and he sends people to the full text of Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech from the 1950s, which broke down the cost of a battleship as a theft from public education, from housing, from public infrastructure.

Marty Fulford connects it to Representative David Gomberg's account from Episode 1 of Oregon's budget problem as a revenue problem. Spatz goes back to the 1960s, when the wealth gap was a fraction of what it is now, and the country built the freeway system, bridges, railroads, schools and hospitals. His closing example is nine feet wide: the 1924 Hood River Bridge, built on consolidated gravel that never reaches bedrock. If a major earthquake hits, that sucker is going down.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/CVoFc_Aneyo

01/09/2026

01/09/2026

Title: Farmworker Housing, and the Workforce Being Deported | HV14 Short7

The Gorge grows extraordinary things, and it needs farmworkers to do it. Asked about farmworker housing, Dan Spatz is careful to mark the edge of his expertise but says the need is real, and that growers face restrictions on developing and maintaining that housing which add cost and complexity on top of an already hard build.

Marty Fulford widens it past the buildings to the people in them — federal immigration enforcement, and what it means when a workforce is targeted for deportation. Spatz agrees, and adds the second-order damage: aside from the human cost to the people themselves, there's a ripple effect through the entire Gorge community from the attacks on that community specifically.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/CVoFc_Aneyo

30/08/2026

Title: Arborvitae Is a Blowtorch, and Nobody Regulates It | HV14 Short6

In a semi-urban setting, wildfire spreads house to house — and Dan Spatz makes the point that no amount of vegetation management around your own home protects you from what your neighbor planted 50 feet away. Arborvitae comes up by name. Marty Fulford's reaction: it's just like a blowtorch out there.

So should the state or the county require more? Spatz says yes — concrete siding, not cedar — and then names the tension he can't resolve: requirements versus affordability. T-111 is flammable, but it's cheap, so where do the regulations land? His example lands hardest close to home. The Gorge Discovery Center, the National Interpretive Center for the Scenic Area itself, has nearly burned twice, and they were meeting that same morning about replacing its wooden siding.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/CVoFc_Aneyo

29/08/2026

Title: A $20 Million Child Care Grant, Pulled | HV14 Short5

Bre Irish asks for an update on the regional child care project she worked on alongside Dan Spatz — and gets called a sore topic. They were on the cusp of converting a former middle school into a regional child care center. The site was there. The funding was there: a $20 million EPA grant. Then, Spatz says, the Trump administration yanked it, because the grant had been written under the Biden administration to DEI criteria.

The economics behind the project are the same economics as housing, and Spatz draws the line himself. Density makes child care affordable; small centers are expensive, and economy of scale favors larger facilities that work in larger cities. In a rural region, that math is exactly what makes a shared regional center the only version that pencils — and what makes losing one hurt this much.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/CVoFc_Aneyo

27/08/2026

Title: Students Were Sleeping in Their Cars to Stay Enrolled | HV14 Short4

Asked by Marty Fulford why a community college would get into the housing business, Dan Spatz points to a survey. Columbia Gorge Community College asked students what was keeping them from enrolling, and the top two answers were lack of child care and lack of housing. Students told him directly they'd slept in their cars until they found work. Others bounced house to house, or couldn't attend at all because they couldn't afford to drive.

The third barrier was broadband. Spatz describes running Zoom meetings off a geosynchronous satellite before Starlink — say something, get a response ten seconds later — and asks why there isn't federal investment in fiber. Bre Irish frames it the way she sees it: broadband access is the electrification of this century, and you can't ask people to work or do homework from home without it.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/CVoFc_Aneyo