QuickTake:
About 1,400 Eugene residents completed a survey this summer. Affordable housing and personal safety were top concerns, with notable gaps between their importance to residents and the city’s response.
Results from Eugene’s 2025 community survey show that residents feel better about their own lives but less optimistic about issues like homelessness and the city’s future compared to three years ago.
Policy analyst Jason Dedrick presented results to councilors and senior staff at a Wednesday, Sept. 10, work session. The city worked with survey company ETC Institute to gather responses from about 1,400 residents through online and mailed questionnaires between July and August.
About 300 total fewer people responded than in 2022, the last time the city launched a community survey, but results were largely similar. Dedrick presented only data from the mailed questionnaire on Wednesday, which received 942 responses — exceeding the city’s target response rate but falling just short of the 2022 total.
Takeaways included increased negativity surrounding homelessness and jobs in Eugene, improvements in quality of life, a continued lack of confidence in city councilors, and new gaps between what residents value and how they rate the city’s performance.
About 50 people also joined focus groups to add context to the results, a new feature this year, Dedrick said. The results will help inform the city’s 2023-2026 strategic plan — the subject of the second half of the work session — and guide upcoming budget development.
“We’ll be sharing these results with the community,” Dedrick said. “We’ll also be sharing results with staff to help inform service delivery across the organization.”
Worsening concerns about homelessness, housing
As in 2022, a majority of respondents said the community is heading in the wrong direction on homelessness. About 59% percent said so this year, up from 54.7% three years ago. Just over 19% said the city is improving, down from 23.8%.
Subsequent write-in responses cited the “large/increasing” number of unhoused people, need for affordable housing and ineffective city action.
“These responses are similar to what we saw three years ago, and not really anything too new or groundbreaking here for us,” Dedrick said.
A new question asked about efforts to mitigate the impacts of unsheltered homelessness, and 49.3% said the city was heading in the wrong direction, 21.1% in the right direction, and 29.6% “don’t know.”
Housing remained another top concern. About 49% said it is heading in the wrong direction, down slightly from 51% in 2022. Nearly 230 respondents wrote in “housing costs and affordability” as their main worry on the subject.
Quality of life up, city outlook down
Excluding “don’t know” and “not provided” as options, about 82% percent of residents said they are somewhat or very satisfied with life in Eugene, up from 78% in 2022. More people also reported living comfortably, about 48% compared to 45.1% three years ago.
Neighborhood quality of life rose five percentage points, with about 80% rating it “good” or “excellent.” But positive views of Eugene as a place to work dropped from 46% to 40.2%, more than 10 percentage points below regional and national averages, according to ETC data.
Positive feelings about the city’s overall direction also dropped, from 27% in 2022 to about 23% in 2025.
Despite that, fewer people believe Eugene is “worse” or “much worse” than it was five years ago: just over 50% this year compared to about 60% in 2022, excluding “not provided” responses and those who haven’t lived in Eugene for five or more years.
About 39% of respondents reported the city being “about the same,” up from 30.5% three years ago.
“This is data that has room for improvement, but it’s trending in the right direction,” Dedrick said.
Confidence in local government still low
Confidence in the City Council remains low. About 52% percent reported “not much” or “no confidence,” nearly unchanged from 2022. This year, “not much confidence” gained one percentage point and “no confidence” lost one.
The share of respondents that reported “some” and a “great deal” of confidence in city councilors — 36% — was one percentage point lower than the regional average and three percentage points lower than the national mean.
Focus group participants said greater access to city leadership, additional communications and transparency around the city’s actions and more focus groups would improve trust, Dedrick said.
Expectation gaps: jobs, schools lag
The city uses “expectation gaps” to compare how important residents find certain services with how well they think the city delivers on them.
Gaps worsened in career opportunities for the next generation, availability of jobs, quality of K-12 education and after-school and childcare programs. Gaps shrunk in diversity, equity and inclusion and leadership’s addressing and adaptation to climate change.
Affordable housing choices and sense of personal safety remained the two concerns with the biggest gaps. Arts and culture institutions had the smallest gap, as in 2022.
New questions on downtown, public safety
A new section in the survey asked about downtown. About 39% percent said downtown is staying the same, 36.1% said it’s getting worse, and 13.4% said it’s improving.
Safety is a top concern for the neighborhood, with about 40% reporting they feel unsafe or very unsafe downtown, the highest level of unease across situations that the survey asked about.
Overall, excluding “not provided,” 57.3% of respondents said their feelings of public safety have stayed the same in Eugene over the past 12 months. About a quarter of respondents said it had decreased, followed by 10% who said it had “decreased a lot.”
Homelessness and encampments were the top reasons people felt unsafe, according to write-in responses.
When asked to name the most important action that the city could take to improve safety, 255 people wrote in that increased law enforcement would do so, followed by 247 people who wrote addressing homelessness “directly.”
Focus group participants cited aggressive behavior, the lack of CAHOOTS — a local crisis intervention program that stopped providing services earlier this year — and mixed views on license-plate recognition cameras as factors that contribute to feelings of unsafety, Dedrick said.
“It’s not the presence of people that are unhoused, it is aggressive behavior they run into out of maybe the 1 out of 100 folks that are unhoused that they interact with, or maybe even folks that aren’t unhoused,” Dedrick said.
Councilors weigh in
Councilors said most survey findings were unsurprising.
Councilor Alan Zelenka, who oversees Ward 3, said the survey presented “a lot to be hopeful about.” He said perception often heavily influences views on homelessness, housing and safety, not factual data.
Eugene’s homelessness is a symptom of larger problems in Oregon and the country, like a lack of housing, mental health services and substance abuse rehabilitation, he said, adding that if people examined what the council was doing to address those issues, they would be “impressed.”
“I think all three of those things, we’ve moved the needle on them and moved them in a positive direction,” he said. “Apparently not enough.”
Councilors Randy Groves and Mike Clark both voiced a desire to have had greater input with the survey’s design. Clark said he wished the survey revealed more about public expectations versus reality.
“There’s nothing surprising in learning that homelessness is the biggest concern,” he said. “What we don’t know is, what do most people expect the City Council to do about homelessness?”
Councilor Jennifer Yeh appeared to disagree, saying she wants to “lean on” experts and staff with experience. City Manager Sarah Medary said most councilors previously indicated they did not want to be heavily involved in the survey design.
“When we came into this survey, I will just say I don’t think the executive team has ever been more involved, or the departments have ever been more involved,” she said.
