Lane County roundtable highlights strain from rising costs on families, businesses

At Café Soriah in Eugene, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley sat down with chamber leaders, business owners and community members to talk about the same pressure showing up in household budgets and cash registers across Lane County. The June 5 roundtable centered on affordability, but the numbers behind it pointed to a deeper financial fragility that has been building for years.

The Oregon State Treasury’s 2025 Financial Wellness Scorecard found that 49% of Oregon households could not cover an emergency expense of $500 or more from savings. More than a third of households said they could not save anything after paying monthly bills. The scorecard also found that financial strain hit women, people with a high school education or less, and families with children at home more hard than other groups.

Lane County’s own data showed the same pattern. United Way of Lane County reported that 43% of county households were below the ALICE threshold in 2023, including 15% in poverty and 28% identified as ALICE households. In its 2024 report, United Way said 47% of Lane County households, or 75,317 households, were struggling to make ends meet, up from 46% the year before.

Business owners at the roundtable said customers were spending less, adding another layer of pressure on local employers already dealing with higher overhead. Merkley tied rising prices to tariffs, inflation and the Iran war in one account of the discussion, underscoring how global forces are feeding into local budgets in Eugene and Springfield. Vonnie Mikkelsen, president and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, and Brittany Quick-Warner, president and CEO of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, were both in the room, along with representatives from food, agriculture, health care and retail.

Housing costs remain one of the clearest signs of how tight the squeeze has become. Oregon Housing and Community Services says the state’s housing crisis has deep historical roots and has worsened after decades of building less housing than population growth and wages required. In Lane County, 2025 fair market rent data put a two-bedroom unit at $1,495 a month and a three-bedroom at $2,095, figures that help explain why affordability has become one of the most immediate economic questions facing families and employers alike.