In Our View: Lumber crunch expected to be temporary The Columbian Share: Just as the United States is coming out of the woods of the pandemic, it is running out of wood. Skyrocketing lumber prices have been one of the unexpected results of the coronavirus pandemic. As Levi Means of Parr Lumber told The Columbian: “There have been big surges in the past; in the early 2000s during the height of the housing boom before the major recession, you saw some pretty large increases in the cost of materials. They pale in comparison to this, fractions of what we’re seeing now.”