9 BRAND STORY business owners, bartenders, restaurant servers, skilled tradespeople and first responders. The need for middle-income homes reaches across the state. Oregon must build 30,000 housing units each year to keep up with demand, according to the state’s Housing Needs Analysis, yet builds less than half that amount. Northeast Oregon, where the Temps live, falls short by about 529 homes a year. In 20 years, the region will be short 6,500 homes affordable for buyers earning between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, the income range the Temps fall in. Homebuilder Gust Tsiatsos has watched construction costs climb from around $125 per square foot eight years ago to more than $400 today. He has projects in La Grande, Baker City and Ontario that could produce 67 homes, with land secured and infrastructure in place, but financing remains the obstacle. “It really boils down to how much risk developers like me want to absorb,” Tsiatsos says. “If we can find a way to get financing that’s affordable, it gets us off the bubble.” Oregon Community Foundation created the Building Hope Fund to help close this financing gap, to provide flexible loans to developers with projects ready to move forward but stalled by the cost and availability of capital. With $100 million in seed funding, the statewide foundation aims to help finance 10,000 new housing units over the next decade. “The shortage of middle-income homes is holding Oregon back,” says Megan Loeb, OCF senior program officer for Economic Vitality and Housing. “Housing is an economic engine. Without it, smallbusiness owners can’t expand because their employees can’t find housing. Jobs sit vacant. Families are spending upwards of 40% of their income on rent. They can’t build stability or wealth.” Rooted Homes offers an example of what is possible when financing barriers are addressed. In Redmond, the Bendbased nonprofit community land trust built seven modest cottages at the attainable price of just under $400,000. The project received a one-time grant from Deschutes County, but executive director Eliza Wilson says that finding similarly affordable financing for future developments is difficult. The Temps at home in La Grande PHOTO BY JASON HILL Housing construction in Redmond
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