Access to Affordable Housing
Access to safe, quality, and affordable housing is a basic necessity for healthy people and communities. Housing and the neighborhood environment are major components of physical and mental health. The vision is to ensure that all Linn-Benton-Lincoln residents have safe, affordable housing with a focus on priority populations who have been economically and socially marginalized.
The long-term vision of these goals is to ensure that all Linn-Benton-Lincoln residents have safe, affordable housing with a focus on priority populations who have been economically and socially marginalized.
Goals
- Expand the availability of brick-and-mortar shelter, transitional, and/or permanent housing units by developing, acquiring, or securing properties across Linn, Benton, and Lincoln counties.
- Expand and sustainably fund supportive services for shelter, transitional, and/or permanent housing.
- Improve data across the spectrum of shelter and housing providers to help create future progress measures and inform planning.
Goal 1: Expanding housing units
This goal focuses on expanding a variety of housing units. Examples of priority housing units and emergency shelter options include:
- farmworker and workforce housing
- affordable family housing
- multi-generational housing
- smaller housing for seniors (e.g., shared housing and co-ops)
- medically related transitional housing
- housing for people experiencing neurodiversity, developmental diversity, or severe and persistent mental illness
Goal 1 strategies
- Increase access to existing units through landlord engagement and relationship building.
- Build brick-and-mortar units to expand housing availability.
- Create or expand accessible emergency shelter options that reflect community and cultural needs and address systemic barriers to shelter.
Goal 2: Expand supportive services
This goal focuses on services including culturally and linguistically appropriate peer supports, street outreach, housing navigators, case managers, personal care attendants, and mental health professionals.
Necessary components to consider for adding staffing capacity include:
- harm reduction support
- transportation to locations
- culturally and linguistically specific services to serve different populations
- trauma-informed care
Goal 2 strategies
- Partner with InterCommunity Health Network Coordinated Care Organization (IHN-CCO) to fund supportive services positions that are culturally and linguistically appropriate
- Partner with existing workforce at housing and shelter locations
- Identify and apply for sustainable grant opportunities at state, federal, and private levels to strengthen shelter, transitional, and/or permanent housing support services
Goal 3: Improve housing data
Data quality and equity are lacking across the spectrum of shelter and housing providers. Data should reflect the makeup, diversity, and characteristics of the populations. It will be important to establish a baseline for actionable data that can then be used for this CHIP and in the future
Goal 3 strategies
- Work toward a tri-county continuum of care and withdrawal from the Rural Oregon Continuum of Care
- Research, expand, and adopt a culturally specific, situationally reflective, multitiered coordinated entry assessment tool that includes data for Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Disability (REALD) and Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIES).
- Improve Continuum of Care’s information technology system to improve data collection that meets the needs of shelter providers and is more culturally specific and situationally reflective
What we’re measuring:
We aim to track progress toward ensuring safe, stable, and affordable housing for all residents, particularly those who have been economically or socially marginalized.
Why it matters:
Affordable and stable housing provides a foundation for individual and community well-being, supporting health, safety, and economic stability.
Key Progress measures:
- Reduction in the percentage of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness.
- Increase in the number of shelter beds, transitional housing units, and permanent housing options.
- Decrease in the proportion of households spending more than 30% of their income