Medford moves forward with workforce housing

By Elizabeth Castillo (OPB)
April 18, 2022 10:21 p.m.

Construction will begin soon on a new 62-unit apartment building in downtown Medford aimed at moderate to middle-income renters. The city was already facing a housing shortage before the 2020 Almeda Fire roared through the Rogue Valley.

“Regionally we were already about 3,000 units in the hole and then we lost 2,500 units of housing overnight,” said Harry Weiss, the executive director of the Medford Urban Renewal Agency.

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“So it’s become really quite exacerbated and dire and a huge number of those units that we lost in the fire were fairly inexpensive units that were serving lower-income households and workforce households so we’ve got a big hole to climb out of,” he said.

Weiss added the city and Jackson County are working to build affordable housing on several other lots. The city also wants to encourage developers to build more duplexes and triplexes.

Listen to the entire conversation:


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