Survey responses agree on top community need: permanent stable housing

Presenter: A grim anniversary is coming up next week. Speaking to commissioners Sept. 1, County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky: 

Steve Mokrohisky (Lane County, administrator): First, I want to recognize that Monday, Sept. 7 is the sixth anniversary of the Holiday Farm Fire. It was the most destructive event in Lane County history in terms of the number of residences and structures that were burnt.

It’s been much on our mind throughout this fire season. As we’ve had some large scale fires around Oregon, some of those have consumed homes and impacted communities in familiar ways.

As you know, county staff are continuing to work with state agencies and with many community organizations on the recovery process.

And just, you know, a quick update here: of the 517 dwellings that were lost in the Holiday Farm Fire, 228 have been rebuilt. Of course, we know that some of those folks did not seek to rebuild, 228 have been rebuilt there. 

An additional 37 permits that have been approved and ready for construction are underway now, and we expect another surge in permitting activity in the coming months associated with the Oregon Housing and Community Services homeowner assistance and reconstruction program.

Presenter: The loss of entire communities to wildfire comes on top of a housing crisis. Also on Sept. 1, commissioners unanimously adopted the Community Needs Assessment. From Lane County’s Housing and Community Action Team, Brianna Rogers: 

Brianna Rogers (Lane County): I’m here to present the Lane County Community Needs Assessment for ultimately for adoption and approval by the group.

Before I started my presentation, Maggie was a part of our task group and is a member of our Poverty and Homelessness Board and has been a part of the task group from when it started. 

So I asked her to come along with me to just share a little bit about how she enjoyed the experience—hopefully she enjoyed the experience—but a little bit about how she felt or what it meant to her. So I want to give Maggie just a few minutes before I go into my presentation.

Maggie: This was a very extensive process to go through. And I have to commend Brianna for her patience with all of us—setting the meetings, you know, helping guide us through the process. And it was really inclusive. And I like the fact, since I’m from the West Lane part of the county, that often gets forgotten. I was really pleased that we were taking an active part in this needs assessment.

And I just wanted to point out that the overarching theme—from people that both live in poverty and say that they don’t live in poverty—is affordable housing. And I want to put that out to you.

But I do want to say that going through this needs assessment, we looked at all aspects, like I said, we were led by Brianna and I felt that was a very inclusive process, detailed. And I want to commend the other members of our group that participated, so thank you.

Presenter: The Community Needs Assessment comes out of Great Society anti-poverty programs of the 1960s. Brianna Rogers:

Brianna Rogers (Lane County): The Community Needs Assessment is a requirement of Community Action… Community Service Block Grant funding was created originally in 1964 in Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, and ultimately has the goal of supporting individuals and families who are living in poverty and uplifting them out of poverty.

So, we’re still working with this funding today. It is providing basic needs and then connections to long-term supports. So that is providing, you know, clothing, household items, housing assistance, and then connections to public benefits or longer-term housing supports as well.

We as Lane County, the designated local Community Action agency, contract our Community Service Block Grant funding out to three agencies. These three agencies are serving the entire county.

So Catholic Community Services is serving the Eugene, kind of the North Central Lane County. So, like, the Eugene area. They also serve the Springfield and eastern Lane County.  

Community Sharing program serves the South Lane County area, and then the Outreach Services serving the West Lane County area.

So the entire county is served by Community Service Block Grant and Community Action funding.

And then this is just one piece of the puzzle. That is the support that we provide to those who are living in poverty or who are unhoused. So it’s one piece of the the system of housing and sheltering and basic needs and permanent supportive housing.

The Community Needs Assessment itself identifies gaps and needs in services across the community. This survey and this assessment is done every three years. So I was here three years ago, and I hope to be back in three years doing the same thing.

We collect feedback from the community in general or at large, but also specifically are really required and wanting to receive feedback from those who are low-income, those healthcare professionals, education partners, elected officials, and then those in the private and public sector as well.

The outcomes of the needs assessment later inform our Poverty and Homelessness Board strategic plan. So the last one was just adopted in June of 2025. It’ll continue to feed and inform that plan.

And then it also informs our funding priorities. So when we have any additional funding or need to make sure that we are supporting agencies or programs or program types that are best supporting the community, we look to our Poverty and Homelessness Board strategic plan and our means assessment to see where we need to prioritize that funding in those programs to help the most folks in need.

So Community Needs Assessment is required by Community Action, designated by Community Service Block Grant funding. It’s completed every three years. 

And an assessment of anti-poverty programming identifies needs and gaps in anti-poverty services and informs requests for proposals, and also helps to inform microinvestments when flexible.

So we started this process back in September of 2025. And we put together a task group that consisted of Poverty and Homelessness Board Members providers and advocates, and then that group worked on the survey creation that we released out to the community in March of 2026. 

It was open for 60 days, closed in May of 2026, so from May to June there was results ranking, looking at different demographics, difference and differences between demographics and any statistically significant differences in the results overall and in the specific demographics that we were looking at. And then June to August, we were putting together the assessment.

So a few weeks ago in August, we went before the Poverty and Homelessness board and that group adopted the Community Needs Assessment. 

I’m here now today in September to ask for an adoption by the Board of County Commissioners and then later this month, if adopted today, would be submitted to Oregon Housing and Community Services as part of our yearly auditing processes.

Before we really get into it, I wanted to just give a quick thank you and a shout out to our task group members. As you’ll see, they are members of our (PHB’s) providers, advocates, the county staff. 

We have a number of data folks on as well. That was one of the lessons learned from the 2023 Community Needs Assessment was that we really needed to, yes, be really trauma-informed and person-centered when we created the survey, but also have the end data in mind.

We want to make sure that we’re asking questions in the right way so that we are able to analyze those results accurately.

So we have data folks, and I want to give a huge shout out to Tracy Bishop from Lane County on our quality and compliance team, who did all of the data analysis. I will not take credit for any of the data analysis itself. That is not my my realm. But she did put all of the analysis together.

So who took the survey? We had 1,133 total interactions. So that was 1,133 community members who clicked into the survey. They may not have made it really far into the survey, but they clicked and they opened it.

We had 832 complete responses, which means they made it through the ranking of services. So they provided some demographic information and they ranked some services, Eugene being the largest contributor, then Springfield and then Florence (which I probably have Maggie to thank for some Florence responses as well).

We also asked which best describes you…   We also asked where did you hear about the survey..   We also asked where respondents stayed last night. So the majority of respondents are stably housed or were stably housed in renting or owning situation. And the next is unstably housed with some housing concerns.

So we’ve got a really good variety of where folks stayed last night. That’s one of our data questions that we ask of participants who are receiving services.

We wanted to ask the same question to get a sense of what housing situation folks are living in of the 832 responses, 251 of them identified as low-income. The first most important service area to those who identify as low-income is permanent stable housing.

The second most important service area for those who identify as low-income is services for those who are low income and housed.

Presenter: Commissioner Pat Farr:

Commissioner Pat Farr: Also the most important thing for the people who identify as having stable housing or not low-income: Permanent stable housing has the highest response rate in both categories.

Brianna Rogers (Lane County): So we asked, ‘What do you think is going well in the community? What do you think our community does good at?’ 

And then we also asked, ‘What do you think we need improving on? What do you think is not going well?’ We also asked, ‘What do you think the services we need more of, or what are the gaps in services?’

And then (finally): ‘Would you be willing to reduce funding in other areas to increase funding in this service area?’

Presenter: The community also identified specific needs and gaps. Brianna Rogers: 

Brianna Rogers (Lane County): . What could we use more of? Low-income and affordable housing; rent and utility past due payments; case management support; and navigating services, long-term rent subsidy programs and then services in rural areas as well. 

So these are the needs the community said these, we want to see more of these services.

Services for people who are low-income and housed: They identified rent utility assistance for renters, support finding long-term subsidy programs, affordable child care programs, connections to mental health services, and then help with pets as well—pet food, pet services, veterinary services.

What could we use more of? Housing options. Access to affordable physical, mental and behavioral health, home repair, mortgage assistance, support services. And so that is the connections to, SNAP benefits or TANF benefits, veterans services, any kind of support to longer-term assistance as well.

And then food and meals was also identified as a gap in services.

So as I mentioned, a couple weeks ago I went before the Poverty and Homelessness Board. And that board voted to adopt the Community Needs Assessment. I’m here today seeking Board of County Commissioner approval and adoption as well of the Community Needs Assessment. 

If adopted later this month, I will submit to the Oregon Housing and Community Services auditing system to show them that we have done an assessment and here are the results.

And then starting in October, we are going to start implementing some of the system improvements that were identified within the assessment. And we do that for the next three years.

So if adopted today for the next three years, we will work towards not only the gaps in services and the needs and services identified in the top two service areas, but the rest of the areas as well.

As we were able to look at the request for proposals or microinvestments into different programs and services as well. So we’ll work to tackle those system improvements and the needs and gaps identified within the assessment.

Presenter: Commissioner Pat Farr:

Commissioner Pat Farr: I wanted to say regarding the process here, this is not ideological. The results aren’t ideological. They’re not political. This is fact. This is really what people are thinking in our county. And it’s a pretty good representative survey that was done.

And if you look at the needs of the community, there are no real changes, no deviations, whoever asks, ‘What is the most important thing?’ And it always comes out ‘Housing.’ It really does.

And one statement that was made during this process is: ‘If we don’t have enough housing, families will end up stuck in a continuous cycle of crisis.’ How true is that?

And that’s called out as a statement from one of the survey respondents. So it really is important that we really, really close attention to this survey result—the final is in our packet today.

And it really substantiates the things that you are saying and the work that is being done by the tripartite Poverty and Homelessness Board, which has some elected officials, some lived experience, and some service providers.

And there are more than just the voting members on the Poverty and Homelessness board. There are other regular members of the board who are not voting members that make it a very well represented group indeed.

Presenter: Commissioner Laurie Trieger: 

Commissioner Laurie Trieger: I think this is great for what it shows us, but it’s also really important for what it doesn’t get at because of this overarching crisis around housing and housing affordability. 

So I don’t know how or where we might dig in a little more on those other needs around affordable child care, around food insecurity, around people at risk because of domestic violence in the home. These are some key issues that I know so many people are experiencing, and we’re not even getting to it.

Presenter: Brianna Rogers:

Brianna Rogers (Lane County): One thing that we could do is, you know, rather than looking at just the permanent stable housing and the services for those who are low-income, look at what was the top-ranked need in each of the seven (service areas) and really go provide some funding or some support to programs and projects that support those top seven services.

So there’s a couple in your asking about ‘How do we look at not just the overshadowing housing challenges that we have, but looking at other service areas.’ That’s one thing that we can do. 

Commissioner Laurie Trieger: Great. Thank you so much.

Presenter: Commissioner Heather Buch:

Commissioner Heather Buch: It was also very interesting for me to see, you know, as somebody who covers a rural area, services and rural areas was on the top five list of gaps. And I mean, I can obviously say, yes, that’s a real thing and has been for some time.

But sometimes I want to know which services are there. Like just dive in just a little bit further and say, ‘Okay, where do we go from there? This is the gap, but what actually do they need? And where can we plug in in those particular areas?’

I’m sure you in your division may know that. it’s not necessarily captured in this report. That’s something that interests me.

Presenter: Brianna Rogers: 

Brianna Rogers (Lane County): In the 2023 (assessment), one of the service areas was services in rural areas. I will tell you because I’ve committed to memory and actually in my bag is the full assessment from 2023. I’ve been carrying it around for three years. Oh my gosh, I probably will carry this one around too.

The top four services that were ranked for ‘23 were: affordable housing in metro areas; affordable housing in rural areas; community service center services or basic needs services; and then affordable, high-quality child care.

So similar trends across the board in different service areas.

Presenter: Lane County commissioners approve the latest assessment of community needs, after hearing broad consensus on the need for more permanent stable housing.