Survey: More say Eugene heading in wrong direction

Presenter: A citywide survey in 2025 reveals growing concerns about the economy and shows that more Eugene residents think the city is going in the wrong direction on homelessness. With the City Council Sept. 10, Jason Dedrick:

[00:00:16] Jason Dedrick: My name is Jason Dedrick in the City Manager’s Office. I’m going to dive right in on our community survey results. There was little change for many of the questions and items that we carried over from 2022. Some changes, but mostly relatively minor.

[00:00:28] Homelessness is emerging a bit more as the dominant issue. And this relates to the three new sections of the survey that we had around safety, belonging and downtown, where we hadn’t asked questions around those three areas before. Across all three of those, homelessness was a key variable in the results that we received.

[00:00:46] And then concerns related to the economy and jobs emerged a little bit more across multiple questions than they did as concerns in 2022. Only 40% say Eugene is a good or excellent place to work, and that is down 6% from the last survey, not as good as cities across the region or the nation.

And then only 30% say the value they received for their city tax dollars and fees is ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ That’s down slightly, 1% from 2022, similar but lower to what cities across the region and the U.S. are reporting.

[00:01:18] Presenter: More Eugenians are saying the city is headed in the wrong direction on homelessness. Jason Dedrick:

[00:01:26] Jason Dedrick: Fifty-nine percent of our respondents said we’re headed in the wrong direction on the issue of homelessness. That’s up from 55% three years ago.

[00:01:33] We also asked a question to help us with one of our strategic plan goals, which is to mitigate the impacts of unsheltered homelessness, both on individuals that are unhoused as well as housed community members. So we asked how those efforts are heading, in terms of the right direction or the wrong direction, and you can see that 49% feel those efforts to mitigate impacts of homelessness are going in the wrong direction.

[00:01:56] We asked in an open-ended way: What are your top concerns, your most urgent concerns for the community over the next year? And so people could write in their number one, their number two, and their number three response. The top items here: homelessness, housing, illegal activity, public safety, city budget and taxes, and transportation. Homelessness and housing as the one and two are the same as three years ago.

[00:02:19] A new item here is city budget and taxes, which was not in the top five three years ago, and you can see that coming in all the way up on the list as number two this year. So budget and taxes are much more seemingly at the forefront of folks’ minds than it was three years ago.

[00:02:38] Presenter: Over a third of the respondents say they are feeling less safe in Eugene this year compared to last year.

[00:02:45] Jason Dedrick: We asked how feelings of safety have changed over the last year. 57% say their feelings have stayed the same, 35% decreased. Open-ended question: What makes you feel less safe in Eugene compared to other times when you feel safe? The top items here are homelessness, public harassment and aggression, mental health and erratic behavior, and then just generalized anxiety and perception of threats.

[00:03:10] And then what’s the most important action the city can take to improve sense of safety? Again, a write-in question. You can see that increasing law enforcement presence and action was the number one response. Another theme embedded within these responses were things like community policing or neighborhood policing, wanting to see officers out in the community when they’re not responding to calls.

[00:03:31] Addressing homelessness is number two and expanding and restoring crisis and mental health services. CAHOOTS was a strong theme in that item.

[00:03:41] We asked a few questions around downtown. We found that three-quarters of respondents are visiting downtown once or more a month and nearly half once or more a week, and we asked about the direction they feel downtown is going: 36% say it’s getting worse, 39% staying the same.

[00:03:57] Open-ended question: What could the city do to encourage you to visit downtown more often? Increased sense of safety and an item related to homelessness were the top two. Also included here: more, better, and diverse retail and more free and easier parking.

[00:04:12] Presenter: The city followed up in some areas with focus groups. Jason Dedrick:

[00:04:17] Jason Dedrick: So on safety, when we asked what comes up most for people around safety: aggressive behavior, whether it be out in the community, things like bike paths, sidewalks, downtown came up, aggressive behavior from other individuals.

The lack of CAHOOTS came up as something that makes people feel less safe, not directly tied to that aggressive behavior item. And then license plate cameras also came up, in both directions. We had focus group members saying that they felt safer with the cameras and others saying they feel less safe with the cameras.

[00:04:51] Presenter: There were some bright spots among the results. Jason Dedrick:

[00:04:55] Jason Dedrick: So looking at sort of the high level, how are community members experiencing Eugene? Most are pretty satisfied with their life overall, their quality of life in their neighborhood and Eugene overall and two-thirds feel that Eugene is a good or excellent place to live. You can see that all of these are up slightly since 2022. So regardless of how people are feeling about issues in the community, overall, people’s lives are going relatively well.

[00:05:22] Presenter: Jason said the surveys and the city’s strategic plan help the city with continuous improvement.

[00:05:28] Jason Dedrick: One of the things that we’re managing out of our strategic planning and performance program is working on continuous improvement. So we’re currently offering two levels of training for our staff around scaling up in what continuous improvement is and how to bring it to their work and to start measuring improvements that occur.

[00:05:44] So you can do things, but if you can’t measure what you’re doing, how do you know if the things you’re doing are having the impact you want to have?

[00:05:51] And so that is also part of this strategic planning journey for us as an organization is to move forward more on that. So there are a suite of things that we’re trying to bring to our staff to really think differently about the way that we work around efficiency and effectiveness.

[00:06:07] Presenter: The latest survey results show public opinion continuing to focus on homelessness, housing, and safety, with new concerns about the economy and the city budget. But many think the city is headed in the wrong direction, and they still don’t have much confidence in the City Council.