EPISODE 20- Transforming Lives Through Housing – Mid Rogue Foundation

In Episode 20 of the Team Senior Podcast, Jamie Callahan sits down with Doug Walker of Mid Rogue Foundation to explore the powerful role housing plays in health, stability, and dignity.

Doug shares:

• How Foundry Village provides transitional housing through 17 tiny homes for people moving out of homelessness.
• The story of Evans House, a unique permanent housing option for low-income seniors.
• Exciting updates on Hillcrest Veterans Village, a 36-unit apartment community designed for low-income veterans and seniors.
• Why collaboration, community donations, and even small “inconveniences” are necessary to solve the housing crisis in Southern Oregon.

This inspiring conversation highlights how creative solutions and compassionate leadership can change lives and strengthen entire communities.

📞 Need resources? Call Team Senior at 541-295-8230.

Transcript

Team Senior Podcast Episode 20

Interview with Doug Walker, Mid Rogue Foundation

Jamie Callahan: Hi, this is Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. Our goal is to simplify aging. Society grooms us to plan for retirement, but what about life beyond retirement, where the rubber meets the road? Perhaps you've had a stroke or you've been diagnosed with cancer, or maybe you're forgetting things and now you have dementia. That's our area of expertise, and we are here to share our insight. And now, the Team Senior Podcast.

Hi, this is Jamie, and we are in the studio today with Doug Walker from Mid Rogue Foundation. I am really excited for him to share all of the amazing things that they have done in the past and some really cool projects that are coming in the future.

Doug, tell us a little bit about you and about Mid Rogue Foundation.

Doug Walker: Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me. So, I'm a retired builder. I got into construction when I was a kid, and that evolved into eventually rentals. And that evolved me into not having to work in construction anymore. And now I just kind of take care of my rentals and I get to volunteer.

I've been a volunteer in the community for about 15 years now. Started off with search and rescue, and then went to the library, and then now I focus most of my energy on construction-related volunteering.

Jamie: Wow. Okay. So you have a long history of serving the community. I love that. It sounds like a lot of the people on the board for Mid Rogue Foundation have that same commitment. Tell me a little bit about them as well.

Doug: Yeah, the board's a great group, and they have a variety of skill sets. We have a retired lawyer. We have a retired pastor from one of the larger churches in town. There's somebody who is still working and has a great background in communications and marketing. There's somebody who's a retired tech person from the Bay Area, somebody that works at DHS. We have a variety of people with great skill sets.

Jamie: That's amazing. I mean, what a great collection of people to serve, especially the area of the community that you serve. I know too, the foundation has evolved a little bit, the mission anyway. I think originally it was in some health records and some social determinants of health. But what are you doing now?

Doug: Yeah, yeah, that's correct. We started off as a nonprofit that brought in a large grant to the Rogue Valley to get health record updates and health record processes modernized for doctors. Now we're focusing on housing mostly. Our mission says we work on the determinants of health, which is a lot of things, but we are spending most of our time and energy on housing because it tends to be what our skill set is. And what we see as the greatest need in the community is just more housing.

Jamie: That is like music to my ears. You know that I own Team Senior, and we get those phone calls every day from folks that cannot afford what the landscape of housing looks like right now in Southern Oregon. Whether it's renting their own house or apartment, couch surfing, which unfortunately is where a lot of those people land when they can't afford to get their own place. Or because we serve seniors, you know, move into independent living, that's a minimum usually of $2,500 a month. So talk to me a little bit about some housing projects that you have in existence right now.

Doug: Yeah, so our existing projects, we have something called Foundry Village, which was built a couple years back as 17 tiny houses for people transitioning out of homelessness or out of other scenarios that are similar to homelessness. And it's very case management heavy, with navigation services and whatnot, and it's transitional. It's moving people out of whatever that situation is at that moment and getting them into permanent housing. And we could graduate a lot more people and move people through that system if there were more places for them to go. But that's the bottleneck—the lack of workforce or affordable housing.

We have another facility called Evans House, which is a six-bedroom house for low-income senior citizens, and it's permanent housing. They could stay as long as they want. And they're basically roommates with each other, with some very mild or light navigation or case management services. We have a person that goes in and has a weekly meeting, and they deal with issues and whatnot, which is kind of standard for that sort of scenario.

We offer navigation services to the general public, which are basically—what's mostly with seniors or people with lower income—just to see what their needs are, if they need help filling out forms, if they need help navigating through various processes and whatnot where their issues might be. And those are geared towards temporary assistance a person might need for something.

Jamie: Gosh, what a tremendous benefit. So let's go back to Foundry Village for a second. What is the criteria? So we've established homeless or like-homeless can live there. Do they pay a rent?

Doug: They pay a program fee. So we have to be careful when we say it's rent versus a program fee. If it's rent, then they have to abide by landlord-tenant law. That makes it a little difficult to exit somebody who's not participating in the program. So we call it a program, and it really is a program, and they have to participate. That's one of the fine lines we have to walk in this world—what's rent and what's a program fee, which is appropriate. Tenants should have appropriate protections.

Jamie: Now, Evans House is probably different, right? Are those people paying a program fee or are they paying rent?

Doug: They're paying a program fee as well. And that's because it's a genuine program. The grant we got to buy that house was through Options and AllCare Health, and part of it has a mental health component because that's where Options gets the money from the state. And so it's a program. They have to go to those weekly meetings. They have to talk about—I've never been in one of the meetings, so I can't say what they're talking about to be totally honest—but they have weekly meetings where they talk about whatever the issues are, and then the navigator helps them through those issues. But it's permanent. They can stay there as long as they want.

Jamie: That's awesome. So you said that it's senior housing? And they have to fall within some kind of criteria? Is the rent that they pay income-based?

Doug: Yes, it is. And it's no greater than one-third of their income. So whatever their income is, their rent is no greater than one-third of it.

Jamie: Any chance you're gonna be opening more Evans Houses?

Doug: We really want to, and that's like the first thing we'd like to do if we can either find land. We'll get to it later, but we'll talk about Hillcrest Veterans Village, and that came about by somebody's willingness to donate some land. And so same with Evans House. If we are able to get a donation of land, that starts the ball rolling with the grant processes at the state and at the federal levels, where then we can get something like Evans House—get more Evans Houses built. We'd very much like to do that. We just need to find that first donation, that first start. Then we would do it.

Jamie: How long has Evans House been in existence?

Doug: I want to say we're at two years, but I am not real good at remembering dates.

Jamie: So you definitely have some data now where you could go back to your original source for funding and say, "Hey, here are some measurable improvements that we made," right?

Doug: Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.

Jamie: I am like, seriously, so excited about that. Just again, because we get so many phone calls from seniors that have no place to go, right? So just for one moment, and I know that there are other organizations that have tried to tackle the housing issue, low-income things for seniors, things for veterans, what has allowed Mid Rogue Foundation to be different from other nonprofits? You guys have been so successful, but why?

Doug: Boy, that's a tough one. Not knowing what's going on at the other organizations, it's hard to say what we're doing differently that makes us work. I would guess, or make the assumption that part of it is that our board members have experience in the world of construction and in this world of making these kinds of things, these kinds of projects happen. I think that's a big part of the secret sauce. And that was kind of our mission. When we first started, AllCare Health sort of created, or the doctors from AllCare Health sort of created this foundation. And when it went dormant after that first grant, they then reconstituted and said, "Hey, focus on housing." And so that was sort of our mission. It landed in our laps. And then a number of us were invited to join the group and focus on that. And so that's what we've been doing.

Jamie: How long ago was the first grant?

Doug: I want to say about 10, 12 years ago.

Jamie: Oh my gosh. So there was a large span of time.

Doug: Yeah, quite a bit. Yeah, I want to say that it was dormant for maybe three years, four years.

Jamie: Wow. That's very interesting. I know that you have another really big project on the horizon. We've talked about it a little bit in the past, and I am super excited to have you share more about just the opportunities that will exist for seniors, but also for veterans, right?

Doug: Yeah, yeah. So this project that you're referring to is called Hillcrest Veterans Village. And it's a 36-unit apartment complex, so three buildings plus a community building for low-income seniors. And we are jazzed up to be getting this underway. We were just in meetings this morning with the architect and general contractor—that standard every-two-week meeting—and we were talking about timelines with permits. It looks like we're a few weeks away from getting the full permits. We've got the site permits, which means we can start digging and put in utilities. That work started a couple days ago. I haven't been on the site in two days. I'm gonna be going there after this to look and see where it is and see if there's any issues we gotta troubleshoot.

And so yeah, we are rolling along and underway, and it's great. We are about 90, 95% funded. We still need some funding. The apartment buildings themselves are funded through the state, so they're guaranteed. Where we have to come up with some more funding through the community, through donations, through grants, is for the community services building, and that's kind of where the offices are for case management and for other entities that come in and offer services to the veterans. They'll go to the community services in those offices. That's the stuff we have to raise some money for still.

Jamie: And I would imagine those offices will exist because there will be some program management happening in these buildings also.

Doug: Yes, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And the variety of entities—I mean, there's the obvious property management stuff that's sort of general stuff that goes on. And then there's a garage space for maintenance as well. But then when a veteran services needs an office to meet with somebody or a family member, or Options or one of those outside entities that we have operating—we have MOUs with—they'll need that office space, and that's what it's for.

Jamie: So, okay, so let's talk about that office space and other things that could exist there. If someone or an organization wanted to get involved, how do they do that? Are they volunteering, donating, collaborating? I'm sure it could be all those things. Walk us through that.

Doug: All three. So right now we're doing a fundraising pitch to the community to sponsor a tree in the name of a veteran, in honor of a veteran. So buy a tree for $300. That pays for the tree itself, the installation of the tree, plus a little extra fundraising to help pay for the project, which is why we're doing this. It's a fundraising effort. And that money then goes into that project. What was the question? I just got myself sidetracked.

Jamie: That's okay. So I'm curious to know, when you talk about the project management building, the community service building that will be there, right? I know that lots of services will be provided there. And you said that there's other opportunities for people to get involved.

Doug: Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. So yeah, so there's the obvious fundraising. We need to raise a little more money to get us over the top to get that built. And then there are opportunities to refer veterans. So if you know of somebody who might be a veteran who might qualify as a low-income veteran that's looking for a new apartment, something that's got quality and that can accommodate them as they age. One of the beauties of this building in newer construction is we can build it to what's called universal standards. So a person can age in place, even though they may not be in a wheelchair. They can age in place because the shower has a zero lip on it, so you can just get into the shower without having to lift your leg over a bathtub and various things like that.

So if you know of a veteran who might need something like that, please look us up—Mid Rogue Foundation, Grants Pass on the internet—and you should be able to send in, they should be able to send in their name and contact information so they can go on a list for that. So those are referrals for somebody who might need a place to stay.

We need donations. The best donation is one that's not restricted to anything that just goes to whatever it is that we need. We had to pay for something right off the bat that was odd and off-target, and that was, we had to tunnel underneath the irrigation ditch before it went live with water to feed the community. And we had to pay for that out of our pocket. So it was nice if we can get some money that's unrestricted. So if you're willing to make a donation, that would be great.

And another thing we're doing is we're using the site as a training facility for high school students. And so if somebody out there is in the construction world and they want to do some volunteering, we could use some volunteers to help train those high school students. We're gonna be able to pull out some small little bits of the project to have those high school students on—some of the outdoor gazebos, some fencing, some of the concrete sidewalk. We're gonna pull that out, take it out of the general contractor's project scope, and we're gonna do it ourselves and use that to work with the high school students on that. So that's a way of volunteering.

And then once it's operational, there'll be opportunities to volunteer as well. Don't know what that's gonna be, but there'll be something. If it's just to help with services or social events for the veterans, that sort of thing needs to happen as well.

Jamie: Given that it's a community that will serve veterans, I feel like you will have people coming out of the woods to serve veterans. This is a community that loves to take care of our vets. You mentioned two things that I just quickly want to ask about. Are all of the showers that are going into each of the apartments going to be a zero barrier, no-lip shower?

Doug: Yeah. And when I say no lip, I think four of them are—four units might be six units, I can't remember now—complete ADA compatible or compliant, whatever the right word is. And so they have zero lip. Right. A wheelchair rolls right in. But the other showers have, I think, about a one-inch lip. So they'll have a little bit of a lip just to keep the water within the shower. And they're pre-made shower pans.

Jamie: I'm familiar with those. So very accessible to somebody with a disability. And then along the lines of veterans, obviously lots of people fall in that categorization, whether they have just discharged from serving in the Air Force or whatever, or whether they are a senior. Is there precedence given to folks that are seniors?

Doug: You know, I'm not sure what that criteria is gonna be. We haven't established that. I would say if we sense that we are gonna have way more applicants than we can handle in that first go-round, we might do that because I know we are allowed to filter for that and say preference to seniors. That's the one classification of person that rentals can discriminate on behalf of. So I think we would incline ourselves that way, but I think we'll have to determine that in six months or eight months when we see what kind of waiting list we've created.

Jamie: Do you have a wait list right now?

Doug: I think we've got four names already, I think.

Jamie: How many apartments again?

Doug: 36. 36 units, 12 are two-bedroom, 24 are one-bedroom units.

Jamie: Wow. Oh my gosh. Such an incredible blessing to Southern Oregon. I know we've talked about this before, but I did not remember that being the number. I need to stop for a second. I have chills.

Doug: Yeah. It is, we need housing so badly throughout all the Rogue Valley. And this is really great in Grants Pass because this is the first veteran-specific housing built in the Josephine County area. We talk a lot about serving veterans and helping veterans, but there isn't a lot of people stepping up. And the story that this came about is that our Rotary club—I'm in a Rotary club and we were analyzing how we do our meetings and somebody said, "Well, do we have to do the pledge?" And then we said, "Well, why do we do the pledge?" And a number of people said, "Well, we do the pledge to honor veterans and those of us that are veterans," you know. I raised my eyebrows and said, "Wait a minute, that's all we're doing to honor veterans? We can do—that's a pretty damn low bar." To say we honor veterans by doing the pledge, we could do a lot more.

And so somebody else in the club stepped up and said, in honor of her father, she was gonna donate land. And that's kind of—I'm gonna get choked up here. Excuse me. But that's what got this ball started with Tommy. Tommy, her name's Thomasina. She was willing to donate land, and that's what got us started on this.

Jamie: Oh, she is an absolute saint in Southern Oregon. I know who she is. I absolutely love her and her family. That's amazing. They've done a lot for the Boys and Girls Club as well.

Doug: Yes, she does.

Jamie: So outside of that story, share another story with us. Just something that highlights, you know, the meaningful impact that the foundation has had. Something that still inspires you.

Doug: You know, every once in a while, somebody calls up or—doesn't call up, I somehow find out through one person or another how they were helped. And sometimes it's a real small way. Like, "Oh, I was able to be at Foundry"—Foundry's been running a little while, so that's the one thing I have the most examples from. It's been going for about three years—that they were able to be there at Foundry for about three months or whatever it is. And it just took that, it took them to get settled. It took them to get on track, to get mentally healthy, and then they were able to find a place and move on and do well. And I hear of those once in a while, and that really is motivating.

Jamie: Yeah. I actually have a personal story too, and I won't go into any detail of somebody who went through the system with Foundry, and it definitely pulled them out of a situation and allowed them to get on their feet, get a job again, get their stuff together, save enough money to be able to rent their own apartment. And in this scenario, they had lost access to their children as a result of some drugs being involved. But they were able to pull it all together, and you fast-forward now, I think it's been about three years, and they have their own little two-bedroom apartment. The kids are living back with them. They've saved 30, 40, $50,000 that they're getting ready to put down on a home. And I don't know that they could have done that without Foundry Village.

Doug: Yeah, yeah. And it's funny how just that small thing of just giving somebody a place to land, a place to stay, a place to get slightly ahead, because a lot of people don't have any backstop resources of family members or money in the bank or whatever those resources are. And so as soon as something goes sideways, they might end up homeless or something like that. And so Foundry, it becomes that sort of de facto family or backstop resource that a person can lean on to get themselves back out of that hole that they're in. And it's really amazing what that can do for people.

Jamie: Yeah. I mean, we all need that at some point in our life. Sometimes, sometimes multiple times in our life. So if you could identify one thing today that our listeners could do to support what you have going on in your world outside of maybe donating—not everybody has the money to donate—what can they do?

Doug: You know, I think outside of donations of either land or money, I think one of the things they can do is they can talk to other people that they know or even talk in the grocery store line, sort of to counteract that "not in my backyard" attitude we have. Because whatever we do to solve this housing crisis, it's gonna involve inconveniencing ourselves. No matter what we do, whether we pay more in taxes, whether somebody builds an apartment building down the street from us, whether somebody builds an ADU next to you, whatever that happens to be, we're all gonna have to be inconvenienced a little bit if we're gonna solve this problem.

And if we do it right, if we're thoughtful, then all of us are inconvenienced just a little bit, not a lot. Not a huge amount, but a little bit. And if we can do that and we think through that and we acknowledge that we're all part of the solution and we're all gonna have to give a little bit to make this work, whatever the problem is, whatever thing we're chipping away at, that's kind of the reality that I've learned over time. As long as we all give a little bit, the pain is very minor. And those problems, they don't ever totally go away, but they'll be helped quite a bit. They'll be chipped away at or shrunk.

Jamie: That's such a great point. And you know when you stand back and you look at it at the 10,000-foot view and you say, "We're all going to be inconvenienced a little bit to solve this problem," it's a problem nationwide, right? The housing crisis is a problem nationwide. The housing crisis in Southern Oregon is not just because we have a shortage of housing, it's because there is a radical disparity between median wages and housing that is available that was caused by people moving into our area where they could secure housing for one-half or one-quarter of what they would pay in San Francisco, New York, Denver, whatever.

And while I feel like in many ways we embrace that, right? But that has also helped to cause the problem. And nobody wants their taxes raised, right? But these same people that moved in, I'm one of them. I mean, I share in that burden that I've placed on Southern Oregon. I feel like it is a little bit my responsibility to give back to the community given the imbalance that I've created here.

Doug: Yeah. And I'm the same thing. I moved up here from San Francisco when I was 27, whatever it was, my wife and I, and the same thing. I mean we left there because we had saved up whatever—we saved up $30,000. We were able to come up here and build ourselves a house. And we couldn't do that in San Francisco, but we could do it up here. And so that wealth that's generated in the San Francisco, the Seattle, all those metropolises, it filters out and it pressurizes our system and it raises our prices. And that's exactly part of the most significant—that's probably the most significant puzzle piece that's caused the inflation, the cost of housing in our area.

But it is a West Coast, East Coast, probably gonna be all over the country eventually. I mean, there's still affordable housing in some of the Midwest places. They still have a supply of vacancies that keeps the prices down. But there are very few, and I'm sure it'll change over the next 20 years if we don't build more or somehow change something with whatever it is we're doing.

Jamie: Right. Well you're definitely forging a path, I think, to more builders being able to do this. I sat in many meetings, probably eight years ago in Jackson County, just with a group of people that were coming together to try to address this exact thing. And I feel like they could not move the dial. So major kudos to Mid Rogue Foundation.

Doug: Yeah, thank you. And I was part of probably a similar committee at the City of Grants Pass for quite a while, and we made progress on what the city can control, which is basically land use code planning code. And we did some significant things, and I think they're gonna restart that. They eliminated that committee, but I think they're about to restart that. And so it's worthwhile and it helps, but it's a small piece in the big puzzle of the cost of housing. But it needs to happen.

Jamie: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Doug, I want to say thank you for coming today. And do you have anything else you want to share with us before we wrap it up?

Doug: No, just thank you. Appreciate doing this.

Jamie: Yeah, you are very welcome and thank you all of your board members and all the people that played any part in making this possible.

Thank you again, Doug Walker. This is Jamie Callahan, and we will talk to you again next week.

Thank you for listening to the Team Senior Podcast. We're here every week sharing new and relevant information. Remember that we're just a phone call away. Team Senior can be reached at 541-295-8230. Again, 541-295-8230.

Until next time, this is Jamie Callahan.