Lane County Launches Land Banking Program to Boost Affordable Housing

Six years after Lane County's affordable housing plan flagged land banking as a priority, the county formally launched its Housing Land Banking Program with $2 million in Oregon Video Lottery revenue and a task force that began convening in March 2026. For anyone priced out of Eugene's rental market or searching for a starter home in Springfield, the honest timeline is sobering: the task force has six to eight sessions before it can even deliver a draft framework to commissioners, and land acquisition, permitting, and construction all follow after that.

"We desperately need housing in Lane County," said Eric Mongan, the county's Housing Production Manager and the initiative's primary public voice. "While Lane County government doesn't directly develop real estate, we can and should have a role in identifying buildable land that can be purchased and incentivized for housing development."

The mechanics are deliberate. The county identifies parcels with development potential, buys them, shepherds them through all required land-use approvals, and sells them to affordable housing developers as "shovel-ready" properties, with zoning and entitlements already cleared. Those delays routinely kill affordable projects before a foundation is poured. The program also allows mixed-use sales, letting the county bundle affordable units with retail or market-rate housing depending on what a site can absorb.

What parcels might qualify, and what the county would pay, is exactly what the seven-member task force is now working out. The body was constituted under Board Order 25-05-20-07, passed in 2025: each of the five county commissioners selected one member, giving residents a direct line to the process through their elected representatives, with the County Administrator selecting the remaining two. University of Oregon appointee Melissa Graciosa is among those named to the group, though her specific role and affiliation had not been independently confirmed.

One early credibility question surrounds the task force's size. Initial coverage of the program cited a 13-member body. Board Order 25-05-20-07 specifies seven voting members. The county has not publicly explained the gap.

Mongan framed the task force's core charge as building the accountability structure for public money: "What the task force is really going to be working on is: What is the goal? How well are we aligning with other adopted goals of the county? How do we measure levels of success or opportunities for improvement? How do we ensure that we are being best stewards of these public resources?"

The program does not operate in isolation. SquareOne Villages broke ground on Rosa Village, a 52-unit permanently affordable project in Eugene's Trainsong neighborhood, off Roosevelt Boulevard in West Eugene. Homes for Good, the public housing authority covering Eugene, Springfield, and Lane County, received a $4 million pre-construction loan from PacificSource Community Solutions in April 2024 at a 0.33% interest rate, covering land acquisition, design services, and environmental reviews. Springfield is independently pursuing land acquisition for income-qualified housing as well.

The land banking concept traces directly to the Lane County 2019 Affordable Housing Action Plan, making the task force's first meetings the product of nearly seven years of policy groundwork before a single parcel changes hands.