A new 'frontier' designation would benefit Oregon’s small, remote communities that now compete with suburbs for construction money, they argue – but the state isn’t so sure
Housing and social services advocates throughout northeastern Oregon have begun to push for a new funding category they say will make it easier for housing developers in the most sparsely populated parts of Oregon to compete for construction dollars – and build more affordable housing.
But Oregon Housing and Community Services, the state’s housing agency, has no plans to make such a designation.
“We’re hesitant to put new definitions or designations formerly into programs at this point,” said Ariel Nelson, a spokesperson for the agency.
Nelson argued that various provisions in Oregon’s new Statewide Housing Plan, which was approved earlier this year, will incentivize housing construction and give unprecedented levels of assistance to local government and builders in rural Oregon.
At issue is the best way to encourage building affordable housing in the most rural areas, places that are sparsely populated, with small governments and little bandwidth to take on complex housing development projects, few if any dollars for investment and equity, and few builders and contractors.
FURTHER READING: Rural Oregon is experiencing one of the worst housing crises of our lifetime
When housing developers submit applications for state funds for affordable housing projects, they must identify whether a project is located in an urban or rural area.
Oregon Housing and Community Services defines a rural area as a geographic area that is at least 10 miles from a population center of 40,000 or more.
There is also an urban designation for the entire Portland metropolitan area and for any other area in Oregon that does not meet the rural definition.
OHCS also recognizes what it calls “scattered site” projects, which combine housing development in urban and rural areas.
Barb Higinbotham, the executive director of Community in Action, a social-service organization based in Ontario, Oregon, thinks there should be a third designation, a “frontier designation.”
FURTHER READING: A housing crisis in Ontario, among the poorest cities in Oregon
There are numerous definitions for “frontier” and “rural” that are used by different agencies at the state and federal level. But many in Oregon look to the definition adopted by Oregon Health & Science University’s Office of Rural Health. OHSU defines a frontier county as a county that has six or fewer people per square mile. Ten out of Oregon’s 36 counties – including much of northeastern and southeastern Oregon – fit that definition.
Higinbotham and others argue that the current definition of “rural” is too broad and includes communities such as Woodburn – population of 25,780, near Interstate 5 and the state capital – to Enterprise, a town of 1,950 that is closer to the Idaho border than to the next-nearest Oregon city, La Grande, almost an hour and a half’s drive.
That, she said, makes it difficult for the smallest communities to compete for housing dollars. Creating a new frontier designation would “help small towns to compete for funds that are currently designated for ‘rural’ areas.”
“We wouldn’t have to compete for funding with the really larger suburban areas,” Higinbotham said.
Higinbotham’s organization is part of the Eastern Oregon Housing Alliance, which formed last year to advocate for building more housing and reducing barriers to doing so in northeastern Oregon.
The alliance – made up of Higinbotham’s organization, Casa of Oregon, the housing authorities in the region, and other organizations – wrote a five-page white paper, released in late March, detailing policy proposals and profiling, in broad brush strokes, the current housing crisis in the region.
According to the alliance’s report, which used data from OHCS, the lack of affordable housing is “particularly acute in Eastern Oregon,” a 12,808-square-mile region of a little over 56,000 people that encompasses Baker, Grant, Union and Wallowa counties.
The poverty rate in the region is 16.25%, slightly below the state average of 16.5%.
To afford an average-priced two-bedroom apartment, one would need to make $13.10 an hour. But the average renter’s wage is $8.90 an hour, well below the state’s minimum wage of $10.50 for non-urban areas. The region suffers a shortage of 3,057 units of housing that are both affordable and available to rent, according to the alliance’s figures.
The number of people who are rent burdened – who spend more than 30% of their wages toward rent – is extremely high, encompassing more than 80% of the region’s households who make low- and lower-middle-income wages.
Sarah Parker, the deputy executive director of the Northeast Oregon Housing Authority, said the housing authority is having increasing difficulty finding housing for clients with Section 8 vouchers, which would pay two-thirds of a low-income person’s rent.
Parker said that a few years ago, three-bedroom apartments in the area rented for between $600 and $700 a month. The rent has skyrocketed since then, she said, with units renting for between $1,000 and $1,400 a month.
Northeast Oregon Housing Authority has 867 vouchers, and even with the voucher, people struggle to find a rental unit. The housing authority budgets $1,100 monthly per voucher.
“We can’t compete with the market,” she said. “We can’t get people into units.”
FURTHER READING: A Section 8 pit stop turned long-term stay
Recently, Northeast Oregon Housing Authority applied to receive a grant through OHCS to build a 50-unit affordable apartment complex in La Grande. Applications for OCHS housing construction dollars are scored using myriad criteria, including the number of units that will be built, location, and whether the housing will target specific populations, such as racial and ethnic minorities.
The applications with the highest number of points receive funding. The housing authority’s application was not selected.
Parker said that if the state had a frontier designation, it “absolutely” would help organizations like hers successfully apply for funding to build affordable housing.
One reason Parker thinks the application was not successful was because it could not show a significant diversity among those it could house.
Eastern Oregon is not as diverse as other parts of the state. Creating a frontier designation, Parker said, would recognize that and create scoring criteria that are more reflective of rural Oregon’s demographics and housing needs.
Ariel Nelson, OHCS’s spokesperson, said the agency’s priority is putting policies and programs into place that are flexible, with the goal of making it easy for as many entities to apply as possible and for as much housing as possible to be built.
“Housing is needed everywhere across the state,” she said.
She said that the housing agency recognizes that there are frontier communities throughout Oregon and that the state’s rural communities may not fit a one-size-fits-all definition.
But she said creating such a designation may not be the most “meaningful metric” to spur more dollars for housing construction in rural Oregon.
Oregon’s Statewide Housing Plan, which was approved by OHCS’s oversight body earlier this year, is the first time that the state has had a strategic, statewide plan for addressing the state’s housing shortage.
One of the plan’s goals is to increase funding for building affordable housing in rural Oregon by 75%.
The state’s LIFT program has already awarded funding for 675 homes in rural parts of the state.
Nelson said that meeting that goal will depend not only on making funding available but also on helping rural communities create the infrastructure needed to build the housing.
One reason OCHS won’t create a frontier designation, Nelson said, is that such communities still would not be able to submit competitive housing applications if there are no developers in an area willing to build housing and if there isn’t the government infrastructure in place to submit funding applications.
Applications for housing development dollars often run into the dozens, if not hundreds, of pages. Getting an application together can take months. Larger housing developers often hire staff solely for that purpose.
But in smaller, rural towns – where one person often manages the town’s building, permitting and planning – that is not possible.
“They’re hugely complicated,” Higinbotham said. “If you don’t have someone with the wherewithal and with the knowledge and experience to fill out those applications, it’s hard to compete.”
Nelson said that OHCS is pushing to pass legislation this year that would increase technical assistance for smaller communities, in order to provide training and resources to fill out applications, by $1.35 million.
“It is recognizing that a lot of rural communities and small towns really lack capacity,” Nelson said.
Another way the Statewide Housing Plan proposes to increase construction in rural areas is strengthening relationships among the state and local governments in rural areas and housing developers if they already work in a rural area and convincing housing developers to work in rural areas.
That sounds predictably softball in a state that places a high value on public process and relationship building, but Kenny LaPoint, OHCS’s assistant director of public affairs, said, “In some rural or small towns, the relationships are nonexistent.”
That means developers or government officials in rural Oregon may want to build housing, but not necessarily know every in and out of how to submit a funding application that could be successful.
“We have been intentionally talking with developers across the state to do more development in rural towns,” LaPoint said.
One way the agency incentivizes that development is through “scattered site” development, which started two years ago. Housing developers build affordable housing in an urban area and a rural area and submit a joint application for funding.
Nelson said bundling together the developments helps developers finance construction in rural areas, which is often more expensive, and encourages developers to build “some housing where they wouldn’t otherwise.”
OCHS awarded funding to the first scattered-site developments earlier this year, including housing projects in Madras and Redmond, and a project that will build housing in Hermiston and Gateway, an unincorporated community near the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.
OCHS is also updating the guidelines and eligibility criteria for a loan guarantee program that Nelson said has “been underutilized,” which would encourage investors to put money into rural affordable-housing developments.
The agency is also expanding a pilot program, started last year, that encourages building workforce housing by working with employers and other private entities. When the state opened the round of applications for the pilot year, there were 31 applicants for five slots, with the majority of applications coming from rural Oregon.
“The demand is out there,” Nelson said.
Nelson said OHCS is willing to continue having conversations about creating a frontier designation and “what that could look like.”
For Higinbotham’s part, she said she is optimistic that the work of the Eastern Oregon Housing Alliance will have an impact, especially given the energy focused on the Statewide Housing Plan.
“I think that will support us,” she said.
© 2019 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657 , ext. 404.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots
