A crowd of housing officials, elected leaders, social service providers, architects and general contractors paused for a moment Monday afternoon to take in chirping birds, the quiet hum of a nearby power plant and the people around them.

In roughly a year, the spot where those people stood will be Bend’s first permanent supportive housing development intended for Central Oregonians transitioning out of homelessness.

Permanent supportive housing has services embedded into what is typically a multiunit apartment building. Those just getting off of the streets live safely and closely to services they need to adjust.

Services at this particular development in Bend could include job training and placement, mental health and substance use counseling and disability support.

Those services are more than important, said Evan Hendrix, the director of services for Shepherd’s House’s Lighthouse Navigation Center and a partner on the project. They are necessary.

“This is a massive milestone in Central Oregon,” Hendrix said. “This is Central Oregon saying yes.”

Partners in the project

Housing Works, Central Oregon’s public housing authority, is leading the project, and Shepherd’s House Ministries, a local homelessness service provider, will provide the day-to-day services once the apartments open.

Not only is this project one of the largest Shepherd’s House has ever taken on, it feels different than any other, Hendrix said.

The 33-unit building will sit on an acre of land near Third Street and Reed Market Road. It was once a family shelter run by NeighborImpact, a local service nonprofit that is now leasing the land to Housing Works.

Funding for the development came from the city of Bend, Deschutes County and the state’s Housing and Community Services Department, which aims to reduce poverty and increase housing access, totaling more than $10 million.

Andrea Bell, the director of the state’s housing department, said Monday that at it’s most basic, permanent supportive housing is “meeting all people where they’re at.”

The state is making record investments in housing and homelessness, Bell told The Bulletin. The bulk of funding for this project and several others in Central Oregon came from the state.

“Housing is one of the few investments with a positive ripple effect,” Bell said.

In theory, it not only offers stability and security to a family or an individual, but it also adds to the health of the local economy, Bell said.

State investments

In 2019, the state set out to create more than 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing by 2024 and surpassed that goal in July. The 24 studio apartments and nine one-bedroom apartments will contribute to Gov. Tina Kotek’s Executive Order 23-04, which sets the statewide goal of producing 36,000 homes each year.

The idea is to replicate the development once it’s up and running, David Brandt, the executive director of Housing Works, told The Bulletin.

“If it works, we’ll try it again because there are certainly more than 33 people who are chronically homeless in Central Oregon,” Brandt said.

In Central Oregon, roughly 1,647 people are homeless on a given night, according the 2023 point in time count estimate. Of those, most are in Deschutes County, and most are without shelter.

Around 18% of the total Central Oregon homeless population is chronically homeless, which is when someone has experienced homelessness for at least a year or four separate times in the past three years, according to state definitions.

Chronic homelessness in Central Oregon, which is what this development seeks to combat, disproportionately impacts seniors and Indigenous and Native American populations.

Both Brandt and Bryan Guiney, the state director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, agree that a project like this one can’t occur without public subsidy.

“We know what works,” Guiney said. “We know housing works to solve homelessness.”

Monday’s event was one of three affordable housing groundbreakings for Housing Works this week.

The first took place Monday morning on Bend’s west side, where a collaboration between the housing authority and RootedHomes, formerly known as Kôr Community Land Trust, will bring nearly 100 units of affordable houses and apartments near the Oregon State University-Cascades campus.

The collaboration between Shepherd’s House and Housing Works Monday afternoon was the second, and an event for the future rebuild and expansion of an affordable housing community in Redmond is scheduled to be the third on Tuesday.

The new permanent supportive housing development has yet to be named, but Housing Works is taking suggestions on its website at housing-works.org.

“This is a massive milestone in Central Oregon. This is Central Oregon saying yes.”

— Evan Hendrix, the director of services for Shepherd’s House’s Lighthouse Navigation Center