Is a new foundation being put in place for fostering affordable housing opportunities in Hood River County?
HOusing for PEople (HOPE) is an organization in transition (details here), and one of the main movers with the organization, former director Richard Sassara, has moved on to another position in the community. We wish Sassara well; he helped nurture the organization through some tough challenges over the past eight years.

The HOPE board, meanwhile, has contracted with the Mid-Columbia Housing Authority to oversee day-to-day functions and is in discussion with the authority’s development arm, Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation, for the long-term future of HOPE.

Whatever the “strategic restructuring” means, affordable housing remains a linchpin issue in Hood River County and the Gorge as a whole.

HOPE’s office on the Heights remains open but has a for sale sign in the window; ideally, the organization should retain a physical presence in Hood River.

The realities of finding land and building affordable homes have proven to be a continually daunting mission for HOPE as well as for the government agencies and private builders and developers who have strived to help meet the need.

HOPE and CCHC should use their ongoing discussions as a time to consider not only the reorganization, merger, or other arrangement between the two groups, but to look even further. The groups should look at ways that working together will provide more affordable housing choices for wage earners of all income levels.

As board member Gary Young stated, “I’ve come to believe that if there is going to be a solution to solve affordable housing from Rufus to Cascade Locks that we need to ask ourselves, ‘What are the ways we can work together more collaboratively?’”