As this Southern Oregon community wooed tourists and retirees, its population outpaced construction of workforce housing
This story is part of a series examining housing and homelessness issues in Southern Oregon’s Josephine County.
Under a canopy of Pacific madrones, Judy Ostroski camps on federal land east of Grants Pass in Southern Oregon. Ostroski, who used to own a heating and air conditioning business, has been houseless since 2008 and has called the federal land home for the past three years.
“I enjoy camping,” she said. “But, I don’t want to live camping.”
Ostroski works a regular schedule at the nearby Dollar Tree and could qualify for rental assistance from the United Community Action Network (UCAN), yet she’s still unable to find a place to live in Grants Pass.
“I make about $1,000 a month, and even working, I’m priced out of renting any place,” Ostroski said. “If some place comes up for rent, it’s already rented by the time I see it.”
Ostroski’s housing experience is not unique in Grants Pass, which with a population of more than 38,000, is Josephine County’s largest town. In 2019, one report compiled by realtor.com ranked Grants Pass as the third most unaffordable housing market in the country, behind Santa Cruz and Miami.
In Josephine County, according to U.S. Census figures, nearly 16% of people live in poverty, and more than half of renters are rent burdened under federal standards, paying more than 30% of their income on rent.
This affordability gap is credited as a leading cause of the area’s growing homeless population, which more than doubled since 2018. Since timber revenue started drying up in the 1980s and ‘90s, Grants Pass has branded itself as a town for tourists and retirees — and it has built housing accordingly. Rents soared as the population rose and apartment construction stalled.
“Focus has been on developing tourism industries, but not the infrastructure to support the people that would be employed by those industries,” said Kelly Wessels, chief operating officer at UCAN. Consequently, the town loses a lot of its workforce, she said, because wages can’t keep up with rent prices, and there is no workforce housing.
According to the Grants Pass Daily Courier, over the past 10 years, fewer than 100 apartment units have been built in the town, compared to more than 1,000 single-family homes — which are often sold quickly to wealthy retirees and investors from out of town.
But tides could be changing in Grants Pass. Several affordable developments are on the horizon, and the newly elected City Council has made housing its top priority.
“I think we’re just starting to create some momentum,” said Doug Walker, a local developer and the chair of the city’s Housing Advisory Committee.
Over the past few years, Walker has jumped through numerous hoops to build a transitional housing project, and he is “jazzed up” to finally be pouring concrete. The project, called Foundry Village, will include 17 tiny homes and a community building, and Walker estimates it will be ready for residents in August.
The village will be operated by Rogue Retreat, a nonprofit that runs a similar project in Medford. The group overcame community opposition to also get approval for a low-barrier shelter in Grants Pass, which is expected to open on April 1 and will transition residents into the tiny homes at Foundry Village.
Walker said this kind of pushback against low-income programs is nothing new in Grants Pass.
“I’ve been advocating for affordable housing for about six years down here, and every single thing, whether it’s been a duplex, a subdivision of houses or a multiplex of apartments, has been resisted by the neighbors,” Walker said.
Over the past decade, the previous City Council has repeatedly attempted to prevent new affordable-housing developments. In 2018, another Medford-based nonprofit, OnTrack, proposed a 52-unit apartment complex and was rejected after neighbors cited concerns about traffic and potential crime they associated with low-income residents.
“In our community, poverty is often perceived as a character issue, which it is not,” said Wessels, from UCAN. “People think that if you are poor, it must be because you’re not trying hard enough, you’re not doing enough.”
OnTrack resurrected the project last year only to fail to get highly competitive funding from the state to subsidize the complex.
The last apartment project to be built in Grants Pass in the past seven years was the 50-unit low-income complex, Parkview Terrace. It was developed by the Housing Authority of Jackson County, since Josephine County’s housing authority has limited staff capacity.
After neighborhood pushback, the City Council initially rejected Jackson County’s proposal for Parkview Terrace in 2014.
“That says to (developers) you’re going to have to work really hard if you want to do something like that around here,” Walker said.
The city’s rejection of Parkview Terrace was ultimately overturned by the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, and the complex finally opened in 2016. Residents camped out at UCAN to apply for a spot in the building, which filled up in a matter of hours. According to reporting from the Daily Courier, by the end of the first day of applications, the building had a two-year waiting list.
Despite limited and costly land, multi-units like this can only be built in Grants Pass because most of the land in Josephine County is unincorporated and doesn’t have the proper services to support denser units. The county tries to make up for its lack of affordable housing with Section 8 housing vouchers, a federal rent subsidy.
But the voucher wait list is about a year, with more than 600 families on the list, said Teresa Santucci, executive director of the Josephine Housing and Community Development Council. This wait list is relatively short compared to other counties. Jackson County has a three-year wait for vouchers, and many Oregon counties have closed their wait lists altogether.
The main problem in Josephine County is, with vacancy rates lingering around 1%, people who get vouchers then struggle to find housing. Vouchers typically need to be used within 60 days, though Josephine County offers long extensions to give them the chance to find a rental.
“We have a lot of people who’ve had vouchers for over six months because they can’t find anything,” Santucci said.
According to a recent housing analysis, the city is about 1,000 units behind need. But this could change with potential low-income projects on the way.
The Jackson and Josephine counties housing authorities are applying for state tax funding for a 50-unit affordable housing unit off of Harbeck Road. If they receive this competitive funding from the state this summer, they could break ground by the end of the year.
Another application was submitted from Josephine County for Project Turnkey, a $65 million statewide plan to convert hotels and motels into housing for fire survivors and people that are homeless. The goal is to fund 12 properties around the state and house 800 to 1,000 people in non-congregate rooms.
AllCare Community Foundation and Rogue Retreat are spearheading the effort to get funding to purchase a Grants Pass motel. According to the Daily Courier, two motels have been identified as potential sites.
The Oregon Community Foundation (OCF), the organization charged with administering the funds, has already funded two projects in neighboring Jackson Country, where wildfires left thousands houseless last year. One motel will be in Medford, run by Rogue Retreat, and the other will be in Ashland, operated by another non-profit, Options for Helping Residents of Ashland. The Medford project will operate as transitional housing, while the Ashland one will be run as a low-barrier shelter to meet the needs of the area’s most vulnerable populations.
Organizations in Eugene, Corvallis, Lincoln City, Klamath Falls and Pendleton have also received Project Turnkey funding. As of a February deadline, OCF had received 20 applications across 15 communities in the states. Wessels said housing projects like these are a step in the right direction.
“We really need larger projects that are going to be sustainable and utilize funding sources,” she said.
While it is still unclear if these projects will receive funding, a deal is being struck in Grants Pass for 66 units of affordable senior housing. Last year, the City Council marketed land for affordable housing projects and favored selling it to AVS Communities, a California developer specializing in senior housing projects.
AVS, a private company, was competing with Josephine and Jackson counties’ housing authorities, along with two other nonprofits, who all offered well below asking prices.
City Councilor DJ Faszer said the city ultimately favored AVS because it offered to purchase the property at the full price of $1.1 million, which could be used to incentivize future affordable-housing projects. The contract is still being negotiated and AVS has yet to propose a date for breaking ground.
“We need to move the needle in the direction that we want,” said Vanessa Ogier, a newly elected city councilor who ran on a housing platform. “If we leave this open to the free market — well, I hate to break it to everyone, but the free market causes problems.”
Ogier referenced how just recently the city’s Urban Area Planning Commission approved development for 57 single-family homes on land zoned for moderate density, which could have held duplexes.
“That type of behavior is what needs to be curbed immediately,” Ogier said.
Both Ogier and the newly elected mayor, Sara Bristol, said that in past years, the city hadn’t acted to scale with the state of the housing crisis, but they intend to change that.
The city’s Housing Advisory Committee has recommended instituting minimum density standards, which would incentivize developers to build at higher densities, among other plans for action. The city is also currently hiring its first housing specialist, committing to dedicate more time and energy to these issues.
“The housing issue has been one of the city’s top priorities for several years now, and yet (they made) baby steps in terms of progress,” Bristol said. “I think the current council is going to be much more aggressive about tackling that issue than the past council had been.”
With these shifting political tides, Ostroski has hope that she will someday be able to move from her camp outside the city to a home of her own. She’s taking classes from her tent to get her license to restart her heating and air conditioning business.
Eventually, she hopes to be able to afford a house and enlist locals who are homeless to help fix it up.
“I want to help people stand on their own two feet and show them what respect looks like,” Ostroski said. “I have hope that things in Grants Pass can change.”
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