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Let’s Build workforce housing solutions summits began in 2022. The MMHF plans, organizes, and facilitates a day of collaborative brainstorming and action planning to bring real workforce housing solutions to life. Let’s Build events have successfully been held in Boardman, Newberg, Bend, and Portland. If we can help plan a Let’s Build event in your region, please contact us.

 Let's Build Success Stories

Let’s Build Boardman (2024) 

In partnership with the City of Boardman, and area employers including Tillamook County Creamery Association, Boardman Foods, and the Port of Morrow, nearly 80 attendees came together in August 2024 at the Port of Morrow Riverfront Center to brainstorm workforce housing solutions that addressed the region’s needs. Boardman is a city in Morrow County, Oregon on the Columbia River.

This summit resulted in six working groups:

  1. Improving accessibility to zoning and regulations

  2. Creating a comprehensive vision for workforce housing and development code updates

  3. Establishing a quarterly expo for landowners and housing innovators to create new projects and/or pilots

  4. Building a career and technical education (CTE) brick and mortar facility to develop a skilled workforce

  5. Developing a framework for employer investment in workforce housing

  6. Establishing a revolving loan fund to help bridge predevelopment costs

Let’s Build Portland (2024) 

Our partners at Autodesk were the hosts of this summit overlooking the Willamette River and downtown Portland in May 2024. The summit began with a welcome from Autodesk’s Ryan McMahon and Alana Mongkhounsavath which was followed by keynote addresses from MMHF Board Member, Jeff Gaus, who discussed the four global trends driving the need for more affordable workforce housing, and MMHF Board Member and SEDCOR Economic Development Manager, Abisha Stone, who shared her experience leading the workforce housing effort with the Newberg Workforce Housing Consortium in Newberg, Oregon.

This summit resulted in four working groups:

  1. Align city and state workforce housing incentives in Oregon

  2. Develop a tool or resource to identify availability and readiness of a portfolio of developable sites

  3. Consolidate public-private funding sources to support middle market housing

  4. Build equity for renters

Let’s Build Bend (2023) 

As part of their capstone project, members of Leadership Bend, a program stewarded by the Bend Chamber of Commerce, decided to find innovative solutions to build more workforce in the region. The MMHF was asked to help organize and facilitate the summit to address the region’s housing affordability for their workforce. Like the rest of Oregon, Bend and Deschutes County is greatly impacted by the lack of workforce housing and has experienced challenges in attracting and retaining talent.

This summit resulted in six working groups:

  1. ​Create a revolving investment gap fund to build workforce housing

  2. Create an employer-driven and supported workforce housing initiative - center the individual needs of employers and put them collectively in the driver seat

  3. Increase funding to already successful local workforce development efforts in the construction and development industries

  4. Issue permits faster

  5. Reform the condo defect law to advance condos as a viable workforce housing solution

  6. Launch the Central Oregon Childcare and Housing Taskforce - incorporate incentives for childcare solutions to advance the creation of more workforce housing

Let’s Build Newberg (2023) 

As part of our work with SEDCOR and the Newberg Workforce Housing Consortium (NWHC) to find and invest in innovative housing solutions with up to $3M in financial support from the State of Oregon, this summit in Newberg, OR brought together employers, innovators, and other community builders. The event was held at Friendsview, which is an employer member of the NWHC. The Consortium, which also includes A-dec, George Fox University, Newberg-Dundee Public Schools, and Providence Health, with support from the City of Newberg, has expressed challenges with recruitment and retainment of employees due to the lack of affordable workforce housing. 

This summit resulted in three working groups:

  1. ​Engage Newberg’s neighboring cities to come together to advocate for state policy change to encourage, speed, and lower the cost to develop workforce housing.

  2. Develop financing tools to support workforce housing creation.

  3. Develop funding mechanisms to support workforce housing innovation companies, their product development, and research and development.

Let’s Build Portland (2022) 

This was the inaugural Let’s Build Summit, held at Autodesk in Portland. The summit was designed to bring together leaders and innovators from within the Portland community and beyond to brainstorm solutions and find ways to enact meaningful change in the region. 

This summit resulted in three working groups:

  1. ​Streamline and add clarity and certainty to the State’s required wetlands delineation and mitigation requirements for new developments in the Willamette Valley

  2. Support R&D, policy work, and funding amongst manufactured housing stakeholders to fund innovation and pilot projects

  3. Create the country’s first center of excellence specifically for workforce housing innovation. Envisioned as a partnership between industry and academia, this center would incubate technologies, creative funding strategies, workforce education, and policy innovation.
     

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