Last week, over 80 people gathered in Boardman, Oregon, for the Let’s Build Boardman event at the Port of Morrow Riverfront Center. For six hours, developers, policy makers, workforce development professionals, funders, land owners, and more brainstormed solutions to our housing underproduction crisis and developed action plans.
Over the last few years, Boardman has been one of Oregon's fastest growing cities. It's also one of the few cities with far more jobs than residential units. As a result, a huge percentage (over 50%) of Boardman's employees commute from somewhere else to work, and rents and home sale prices are skyrocketing. Many employers cite housing as the primary barrier to hiring and retaining workers, with hundreds of easily identified positions impacted by the workforce housing shortage.
This was the largest “Let’s Build” event to take place to date. As always, the biggest take-away was reaffirming how passionate Boardman stakeholders are about the city where they live, work, play, worship, and more.
Six task forces were launched to carry the day’s work forward:
Improve accessibility to zoning and regulations – Making the policies that impact housing development more transparent, and easy to understand and navigate
Create a comprehensive vision and master plan for workforce housing, and development code updates to facilitate the vision – Supporting the Boardman Planning team’s ongoing work
Establish a quarterly expo for landowners and housing innovators to create new projects and/or pilots – connecting the “doers” and keeping everyone in the loop
Build a career and technical education (CTE) brick and mortar facility to develop a skilled construction trades workforce – directly addressing the high costs of importing labor from afar
Develop a framework for employer investment in workforce housing
Establish a revolving predevelopment loan fund – Create bridge financing for middle income housing and innovation
A special thanks to the Port of Morrow for hosting the event and to our sponsors: City of Boardman, BoardmanFoods, Tillamook County Creamery Association, Hayden Homes, and Simplicity by Hayden Homes.
Another extra huge thanks to our facilitators: the MMHF’s own, Amy Snyder; MMHF Board member Adam Day; Jenn Kovitz of Hayden Homes and Simplicity; and Quang Truong of UrbanForm.
If you were not able to join us and would like to be included on any of these task forces, please email amy.snyder@missingmiddlehousing.fund.
There is no silver bullet to solve our housing underproduction crisis. The more communities we serve in finding innovative housing solutions, the more real-world solutions we can share. We hope you will stay connected with us and follow our progress on LinkedIn.
We would love to hear from you if you have ideas or solutions in construction, product manufacturing, financing, government, and economic and community development. To contact us, please visit our website or email us at info@missingmiddlehousing.fund.
We look forward to another Let's Build event coming soon to your region.
