Her Agency Distributes Billions for Housing Projects. Her Husband’s Company Helped Develop Some of Them.

Andrea Bell, the director of Oregon Housing and Community Services, oversees a large amount of taxpayer money. Her agency has provided over $1.4 billion in state funding for rent-restricted apartments over the past five years, and even more when federal tax credits are taken into account. Bell's husband, Joshua Crites, is a director at the consulting firm JH Brawner, which assists local housing authorities in developing subsidized apartment projects that benefit from the funding provided by Bell's agency.

JH Brawner operates offices in Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, and has played a role in creating 20,000 low-income housing units worth $3 billion to develop. Two housing authority projects that applied for or received tens of millions of dollars from Bell's agency since Crites started working for the company are mentioned. While JH Brawner is paid by the housing authority, not the state, Oregon law requires officials like Bell to disclose their sources of income annually, including their spouse's income, to prevent potential conflicts of interest.

Despite the law, Bell only disclosed her husband's employer in 2025, providing a misspelled address for JH Brawner's office in Issaquah, Washington. When asked about the lack of disclosure by ProPublica, Bell stated that she takes concerns about her statement of economic interests seriously and is committed to transparency, accountability, and compliance with state law. She did not respond when asked whether she had any involvement in her agency's decisions regarding the projects her husband's company worked on.

According to state ethics laws, Bell's failure to disclose her husband's employer is problematic and warrants a review to determine if she influenced any government decisions that benefited her husband's company. Russell Lehman, a retired administrative law judge, believes Bell may have violated the law and emphasizes the need for an evaluation by the state's ethics commission.

The governor's spokesperson has called for such a review, while Bell claims she sought an advisory opinion from the commission and updated her ethics disclosures to provide clarity.