ENTERPRISE — Seeking to increase the county’s stock of affordable workforce housing, the nonprofit organization Wallowa Resources has launched a new entity to acquire land and to design, develop, own and manage existing and new housing.

The new subsidiary organization, called Working Homes, already has started “due diligence and collaborative community planning on two properties,” according to a press release issued Monday, Jan. 23. One of the properties is a plot of vacant land that would be held in trust to provide for affordable workforce housing. The other property is an existing apartment building.

Citing the pending nature of the deals, Wallowa Resources officials declined to specifically identify the two sites, although Nils Christoffersen, the organization’s executive director, said existing tenants in the apartment building will be welcome to remain under terms similar to their current rental agreements.

Working Homes will be advised by a committee and will be governed by the board of Wallowa Resources.

In an interview Monday, Christoffersen said it made sense for Wallowa Resources to take a leading role in work to address the shortage of workforce housing in the county. He said the lack of affordable housing has become a critical issue in the county’s economy, as potential employees discover that they can’t find an affordable place to live.

A nonprofit entity has access to potential sources of funding such as foundation grants that aren’t always available to governments or private developers, Christoffersen said. And as Wallowa Resources staff and board members did their homework about forming Working Homes, they concluded that Wallowa Resources would be in a better position to tackle the work than a new organization would be, thanks to its 26-year history and what Christoffersen called its “strong history of designing, developing implementing projects, and a strong history of receiving and being accountable for federal state and private philanthropic funds.”

In addition, Christoffersen said, Wallowa Resources has experience in managing commercial real estate: In 2010, the organization took ownership of the old hospital building in downtown Enterprise. The building now is fully occupied and houses 24 organizations and agencies.

Wallowa County Commissioner John Hillock thinks it makes sense for Wallowa Resources to dive into housing issues.

“I think it’s a good thing, and the nice thing about them is that they’re really well-versed in the nonprofit world, they know all the foundations,” Hillock told the Chieftain. “When you go to fund a project like this, it’s good to go with someone who knows where they are going and how to get there. They’re experts at what they do.”

The county has committed $500,000 to help finance efforts to increase the stock of workforce housing in the county.

Housing shortage

The housing shortage is a statewide and national issue, fueled in large part by decades of underinvestment in new and existing homes. Shifts in the housing market in Wallowa County have exacerbated the problem, which came into sharper focus during a period of rapid local hiring, migration of retirees and remote workers, and investment in housing as a financial strategy to take advantage of the vacation rental market. Many local businesses and community service providers are understaffed, constraining economic growth and a range of services from health care to public safety.

Christoffersen said Working Homes’ pending deal to purchase the apartment building is a way to make a relatively quick impact. Other projects involving construction of new houses are years away.

“The simplest way to have an immediate impact is to help retain existing workforce housing as workforce housing — and stem the tide of loss of that existing housing stock to other uses — like upgrading it to higher end rentals or converting it to vacation rentals,” he said.

The land trust model, in which a nonprofit organization owns the land on which housing is constructed, helps reduce the cost of housing by removing the price of the land from the purchase price.

“I don’t know that we will necessarily use that model for every development we do,” Christoffersen said. “But it’s one tool in the toolbox.”

The governmental definition of “workforce housing” limits ownership to households making up to 120% of a county’s median income. For Wallowa County, the median household income is $57,000, so the housing created by Working Homes will be intended for households making up to $68,400.

Christoffersen said he hopes Wallowa County will join forces with cities in the county and state agencies to complete a countywide housing-needs assessment.

The idea, he said, is so “we have a better sense of what the scale of the real need is here. And right now, we know we need more housing stock, but we don’t know the specific number.”

Wallowa Resources has raised $75,000 for Working Homes and is in line for another $150,000 in state and national grants. Larz Stewart, the development director for Wallowa Resources, said a capital campaign is likely in the coming years. Working Homes likely will receive at least some of the $500,000 the county has earmarked for housing efforts.

State Rep. Bobby Levy, R-Echo, said she will be asking the Legislature for a $5 million appropriation from the state’s general fund to help cover costs of land acquisition, infrastructure development, construction and sale of housing units.

“This allocation would provide the necessary resources to get our project off the ground and hopefully serve as a model for the rest of Oregon,” Levy said in a press release. “Flexibility, creativity and dedication is what we need to solve the housing crisis in Oregon — we believe this model can do just that.”

A story in the Jan. 25 edition of the Chieftain reported that Wallowa County officials have pledged $500,000 to address the shortage of housing in the county. However, that money is not earmarked entirely for the use of Working Homes, the new Wallowa Resources entity that’s working on housing issues. The online story has been corrected to reflect this.