Eugene affordable housing co-op moves ahead after ‘breakthrough’ financing

Construction to build Lane County’s fifth affordable housing cooperative continues after its developer closed on trailblazing state funding.

Leaders and major donors with SquareOne Villages, as well as Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson, on Monday toured the future site of Rosa Village, a 52-unit project being built at 2243 Roosevelt Blvd., to celebrate the development receiving $10.3 million in financing in March. The nonprofit hopes to finish construction by the end of 2026 and welcome residents by early next year. 

Rosa Village received over $7 million through the state’s ​Local Innovation and Fast Track Homeownership Program, marking the first-ever loan awarded to a cooperatively owned housing development. The development also got a construction loan from Summit Bank. 

Past SquareOne projects were funded almost entirely through donations, grants and one-time subsidies, which were difficult to replicate over time and at a larger scale, SquareOne Villages Executive Director Andrew Heben said.

“It’s kind of a breakthrough moment for creating a more replicable financing structure for these projects,” Heben told Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

The organization didn’t hold a traditional groundbreaking when construction on Rosa Village began in late December because it hadn’t yet closed on the Local Innovation and Fast Track funding. Project stakeholders gathered at the construction site, where foundational construction and framing is ongoing, to celebrate that step on Monday. 

The development features a common house, outdoor common area and pet play space, and 52 units of housing — a mix of one-bedroom flats and two-bedroom townhomes — spread across eight buildings. Monthly housing costs will be roughly $700 to $850, Heben said. 

It’s largely modeled after SquareOne’s Peace Village, Heben said, but it has a couple of new perks: It’s more energy-efficient and will feature 100-kilowatt solar panels on the roof. And the developer met its 25% goal of contracting with construction companies that are minority or women-owned or emerging small businesses.

“SquareOne Villages is absolutely a trailblazer in this work with this project, but with pretty much every project that they have ever done,” Knudson said at Monday’s event. “That has been both in outcomes on the ground in our community, but also in the more complex, policy-related work and the work of retrofitting the regulatory environment to allow for more spatial justice.”

The 3.3-acre lot was donated in 2020 to SquareOne Villages, which operated the space as a SafeSleep site — a city-regulated place to park or camp — during the pandemic.

The site closed in 2023, and SquareOne relocated its existing tiny home project Opportunity Village to the northern half of the lot, where it remains today. The southern half is the future site of Rosa Village.

Rosa Village will serve households that make between 40% and 60% of area median income. That’s about $25,680 to $39,263 per year for a single-person household. 

SquareOne is meeting with its “affirmative outreach council,” a group of representatives of local organizations that serve historically marginalized groups, to encourage a diversity of community members to apply to live in the co-op through “culturally appropriate outreach,” SquareOne community relations Amanda Dellinger said. 

The co-ops select residents via lottery, so staff are trying to “flood the zone” with applications to make the outcome as diverse as possible, they added. 

“Co-ops are confusing,” Dellinger said. “Most people don’t really understand what they would be signing up for by applying, and so they sometimes don’t.”

SquareOne operates under a community land trust model, meaning the nonprofit owns the land and cooperatives lease or own the housing built on top of it. Residents buy a membership share — a cost between $5,000 and $7,500 — instead of housing itself. SquareOne has a revolving loan fund to help assist with the share purchase.

That share gives them the right to occupy a dwelling as long as they follow co-op policies and pay monthly costs, about $700 to $850 for this project. When a resident leaves, the resale price of their share is capped to keep the housing affordable. 

After finishing Rosa Village, SquareOne hopes to break ground on OUR Village, a 44-unit project planned for 255 Maxwell Road. The nonprofit is in the process of securing funding for the space, which plans to serve residents making under 80% of the area median income. 

Unlike past projects, it will also offer three- and four-bedroom apartments — a change made in part from feedback from the outreach council.