BEND, OR -- The city of Bend is working to identify needs and priorities on issues like homelessness, housing and community development. Affordable Housing Coordinator Rachael Egan Baker says, "We’re looking for feedback to determine the needs and how to address them. And, results from this survey will help define funding goals for the next five years." Click HERE to participate in the survey. 

It asks several questions like, "Are we in need of more emergency shelters? Are we in need of more different types of housing? Are we in need of more job training?" Egan Baker tells KBND News, "This source of money is available from many different kinds of opportunities and we need the community to help define or identify what it needs."

Creating a plan for future Community Development Block Grants is required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Egan Baker says it's a lengthy process by design, "We’ll take those survey results and we’ll discuss them at our Affordable Housing Advisory Committee meetings and compile those results; then that will help identify, moving forward, the strategies and goals that we will draft and present to the public in the spring, in addition to the community meetings where we will also be gathering information." The online survey is available through November 30.