New Digs for Housing Works

Housing Works, Central Oregon’s regional housing authority, has operated out of a downtown Redmond building for years, building affordable housing and helping people obtain housing assistance, get homeownership training and more.

It recently sold its historic building, making way for the Dry Canyon Arts Association and other businesses, and has a new facility underway. Plans for the new Housing Works complex include a large office space, affordable homes for both renters and homeowners and a childcare facility. The Source chatted with Housing Works Executive Director Lynne McConnell about the changes in a recent Q&A. Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

The Source: Share some info about the new facility.

Lynne McConnell: What’s exciting is that we’re building a whole new office. It’s actually half the size of our last office. It’s going to be a lot more efficient, but it’s built for us, versus the old historic building that wasn’t designed for us and couldn’t really be remodeled in the way that we wanted it to, because it was historic. So, the new building, 5,000 square feet. It’s going to be on the corner of Antler in Redmond and 17th. It’s a whole campus. Five acres — Rooted Homes bought a portion of it from us, and they’re under construction on a project… we’re applying for multifamily. We haven’t gotten money yet, but it’ll be roughly 60 units. We’re trying to build a childcare site we’ll build out, because that’s our expertise. We’ll sell it for under value to NeighborImpact to operate it, because we do not operate childcare.

TS: When is the new office expected to open?

LM: We’ll go vertical in November on the new office. It’s roughly an eight-month build, so hopefully July. We’ll have a big party when that happens, because it’s also our 50th anniversary.

TS: Share more about the childcare center.

LM: I think having a childcare center there is going to be super cool. We’ll have three classrooms. One of those classrooms is slated for infants, which is really cool. Redmond is a childcare desert in particular for infants, and so being able to provide those services, in partnership, is huge. That’s something we’re really excited about. Our multifamily we’re really excited about, too. Most of them are like we typically go for, Earth Advantage platinum, which is really energy efficient, so folks have limited bills going long term, etc. So just having this sort of services center there, and in the same way that we did on Simpson, the College View project, if folks want to move into homeownership, they don’t have to change their entire community. They can, in theory, just go across the street, and that’s a model we really enjoy for our customers.

TS: What’s it going to take to see that childcare center actually built in Redmond?

LM: I think we need about $700,000 more for the childcare center to go to start building. We have it mostly designed. We’ve received some money from the state to build it.

This article appears in the Source October 30, 2025.