High Desert, Higher Costs

Bach uses Bend as a lens into the growing housing crisis in the region, where residents and tourists alike prize access to outdoor recreation, and housing issues have been brewing for decades. Like other cities in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado, Bend serves as a gateway to popular natural areas while also suffering from a limited amount of new housing, increasing populations, amenity migrants in the age of remote work, depressed or stagnating wages, and a widening gulf between homeowners and renters. High Desert, Higher Costs introduces us to regular people—from the former political candidate evicted during COVID-19 to the nonprofit worker hoping to build apartments for the houseless—who struggle to call Bend home. Bach explores the causes of these issues and the political, legal, economic, and cultural factors influencing them, and also offers potential solutions for current and future residents to build their lives now, and in the years to come, in Bend and throughout the American West.