When Eugene-based nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County bought Saginaw Mobile Home Park in 2017, it was in pretty rough shape, according to executive director Bethany Cartledge.
“A bunch of potholes in the road, really hard to drive,” she said. “You have to really watch where you're going. Poor sanitation, failing infrastructure, a lot of dilapidated homes that really needed to be pulled out and replaced.”
St. Vincent de Paul owns and operates more than 1,400 affordable rental homes in five Oregon counties.
“And some of those have been maybe $200,000 per unit,” she said.
But, when it came time to replace and grow at Saginaw, it was able to do so for around half the price, a move Cartledge called a gamechanger.
Cartledge spoke to KLCC while standing inside a 500-square-foot one-bedroom home that is among 10 new units at Saginaw.
“So this unit leaves our factory at $68,000, and I term it that way because there is a cost for transport and setup, and that varies depending on where it's going,” said HOPE Homes’ Jacon Taylor.
HOPE is a partner nonprofit of St. Vincent de Paul that manufactures one and two bedroom houses at prices that are eye-popping in a way that’s different from most Oregon real estate.
Its 728-square-foot two-bedroom unit is not much more than the one-bedroom, $80,000.
With installation costs added, Cartledge said St. Vincent de Paul spent about $100,000 each on the 10 new homes.
The homes meet a variety of code requirements, including those set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“We also meet all the Oregon building codes, and so we've got 2-by-6 [studs] in our walls,” said Taylor. “We've got 2-by-8 floor joists. So, very robust structure in and of itself.”
Some of the units meet ADA guidelines for accessibility, and all are Energy Star’s NEEM+ certified.
“We found the highest energy efficiency rating that we could find, and we build to that,” said Taylor. “The nice part about that is there's a lot of incentive programs, and so our unit meets that need very well.”
HOPE can build the homes inexpensively for a variety of reasons. Its non-profit status and the efficiency of building in a factory are two.
The homes also come in a standard formation, meaning that homebuyers do not have choices about items such as counters and fixtures.
"Wasn't it Henry Ford that said you can have any color you want as long as it's black? So in a lot of ways we're the same way," said Taylor.
There’s also the people who are doing the building.
HOPE’s factory is largely staffed with workers who are learning trades with teachers overseeing their work. That also helps with another problem for the construction industry.
“What we see in the trades is that a full 20% so one in five of all of our tradespeople are 55 years or older, and so what that means is we're actually retiring people in the trades a lot faster than we're bringing them in,” said Taylor. “So I'm just proud of the forethought in our factory to realize that we have a coming workforce issue.”
HOPE’s Eugene factory is comprised of 17 stations, with homes spending about a week at each station. That means a home is built in 17 weeks, with the option to have up to 17 homes in various stages of construction at a time.
Cartledge said 30 of the roughly 64 HOPE homes built so far have been bought by St. Vincent de Paul, and it plans to add many more.
HOPE has sold some of the others and also has some in stock.
“It's been exciting because we have folks on the waitlist that we now get to call and say, ‘Hey, there's a unit,’” she said.
Shortening its waitlist one more spot at a time, and adding some much-needed affordable homes to the area’s housing stock.
