Oregon Community Foundation Launches $100M Housing Fund

The Oregon Community Foundation is launching the Building Hope Fund, a $100 million housing fund aimed at helping developers build 10,000 new homes for middle-income residents.

Oregon is currently building only about half of the 30,000 units needed every year to pull the state out of its housing crisis. “We hear it from business owners all the time: Jobs are sitting empty, and opportunities are unrealized because working families cannot find housing,” said CEO Lisa Mensah. “We will invest in housing for middle-income Oregonians — restaurant servers, bartenders, nurses, small business owners, construction workers, teachers — and offer reasonable loans to developers so they can get busy building.”

Mensah said the Building Hope Fund will begin with $100 million in seed funding, with the intention of attracting other partners, including investors, donors, businesses, other foundations and financial institutions, to grow the fund and multiply its impact across rural and urban communities statewide.