Uniting in common cause key to getting things done

Last week’s groundbreaking for the Housing Authority of Yamhill County’s 175-unit Stratus Village affordable housing project, its first since the Village Quarter development of 2006, was well worth celebrating.

Ultimately, a larger inventory of affordable housing is the only way we will ever provide safe, secure refuge to neighbors now living in broken-down vehicles and makeshift camps in our community. That promises improved livability for us all.

But something else a little less obvious caught our eye as well: The partnership role played by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which ponied up $7 million of the funding in exchange for dedication of 20 units for income-qualifying tribal members.

It should come as no surprise to see the tribes joining with the city, county, housing authority, hospital, community college, community action partnership, community care organization, wineries association and WorkSource Oregon in the project. Community partnerships have been a tribal hallmark since the landmark restoration of 1983, and really took off after opening of the Spirit Mountain Casino in 1995 put the tribes on a sounder financial footing.

In exchange for state approval of the casino, destined to become the top tourist attraction in a state chock-full of worthy contenders, the tribes agreed to set aside 6% of the take for worthy causes in the communities they serve.

Over the years since, the Spirit Mountain Community Fund has awarded 3,357 grants totaling $98.7 million. And in 2008, it created a second charitable fund devoted to worthy causes and projects of fellow Oregon tribes.

But impressive as that may seem, it barely scratches the surfaces of the overall contribution:

n The tribes launched their own court system early on. In 2009, they funded, staffed and equipped their own fire station in partnership with the West Valley Fire District, and assumed responsibility for all West Valley firefighting functions in 2022, after the district foundered.

They created their own police force in 2013, and assumed responsibility for law enforcement functions in Willamina as well last year, under contract. Along the way, they created a ropes rescue team to serve Willamina’s new Hampton Lumber mill.

n The tribes committed at the outset to providing supplementary funding to the Willamina schools, where enrollment runs about 40% tribal, and funded school resources offices for many years in Sheridan as well as Willamina.

They partnered with the state to create the Fort Yamhill State Heritage Area in 2006, provided $4 million in critical funding to the Newberg-Dundee Bypass Project in 2011, and have maintained membership on the Parkway Committee for more than a dozen years now. They were also a founding partner in the Yamhill County Transit Area bus system, which includes a Grand Ronde stop in its network.

n Over the years, the tribes have purchased the 23-acre Blue Heron Paper Mill site at Willamette Falls, the Multnomah Kennel Club Dog Track at Wood Village, the former elementary school site in Grand Ronde and the Country Inn at Sheridan for redevelopment, restoration and repurposing. In the process, they are creating jobs to supplement the more than 1,000 maintained at the casino, as well as preserving tribal heritage and meeting tribal service needs.

They are creating a development called Tumwata Village at the falls. They have turned the former school into the Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center and a former inn into a behavioral health treatment center.

n In collaboration with OSU’s Forestry Department, the tribes are maintaining 2,500 acres of oak savanna and prairie and stands of native red cedar. They are also maintaining 13,000 acres of commercial timber under a management regimen incorporating prescribed burns and other means, allowing them to avoid use of herbicides and foster natural understory growth.

They are preserving native plant, fish and game resources, and their traditional uses as sources of food and medicine. They are also preserving native language and cultural customs through language classes and curriculum, powwows and festivals like the recent Camas Festival partnership with Linfield University, native canoeing, salmon-netting and eel-harvesting expeditions, and Northwest Power Council collaboration on salmon passage in Northwest rivers.

Make no mistake. We see Stratus Village, slated to come online in 2026, as a landmark development. It is a linchpin in the community-wide crusade effort to address homelessness in a more humane, effective and constructive manner in our county.

It will feature 61 one-bedroom, 84 two-bedroom and 30 three-bedroom units. HAYC put up $2.7 million for the land, the state kicked in $11.25 million of the construction cost, and the tribes and other local partners raised the rest.

Housing is costly, but it’s an absolutely crucial component.

HAYC noted it currently has 2,000 people on the waiting list for federally subsidized Section 8 housing, and it takes a projected four years for them to reach the top. The tribes are in a like fix, having the least housing in the state for one of the largest tribal populations.

If there is a common thread here, it’s this: When every available individual and agency pools every available resource, feats of great magnitude become possible. As the tribes have so ably demonstrated, working together works.