Mid Oregon Credit Union Establishes Innovative Workforce Housing Revolving Loan Fund with Support from GoWest Foundation

Posted by Alyse Knudsen on January 28, 2026

Mid Oregon Credit Union has been a cornerstone of financial empowerment and community support in Central Oregon since its founding in 1957. The credit union was built on the principle of providing financial inclusivity to underserved populations, beginning with local educators and expanding to serve a diverse field of membership. For more than six decades, Mid Oregon has remained deeply committed to fostering financial stability and growth for individuals and families who might otherwise lack access to vital financial services. This long-standing dedication to their community aligns perfectly with the goals of the Workforce Housing Revolving Loan Fund initiative, which seeks to address the growing housing affordability crisis in Bend, particularly for middle-income families.

With the median home price in Bend nearly $800,000, middle market housing for Bend’s workforce is critically short. “A lot of the workforce has moved out of Bend to other states or to more affordable communities in Central Oregon,” explained Kevin Cole, Mid Oregon Credit Union’s President and CEO. “This is producing a downstream effect on school enrollment, traffic, and the demographic makeup of Bend. To be a community, Bend needs a solution where teachers, police officers, firefighters, and credit union employees can achieve homeownership in the community where they work.”

In 2023, Mid Oregon Credit Union was awarded a Planning Grant of $20,000 from the GoWest Foundation, which helped the credit union to take a critical step in tackling the workforce housing shortage. With this support, they developed a comprehensive and strategic plan designed to confront the unique housing challenges faced by essential workers — individuals who are vital to the economic health of the community but increasingly priced out of the local housing market.

The planning phase resulted in a detailed framework for a revolving loan fund that will reduce financial barriers for developers, enabling them to create housing that is attainable for working families who are increasingly priced out of homeownership. This focus ensures that essential workers — teachers, healthcare providers, service workers, and others — have access to stable and affordable housing, allowing them to build equity and long-term financial security. The plan also fostered key partnerships with local developers, city leaders, and community stakeholders, ensuring a collaborative approach to addressing Bend’s workforce housing needs.

Building on the successes of the planning phase, Mid Oregon is now poised to implement the Workforce Housing Revolving Loan Fund with support from a $200,000 grant from the GoWest Foundation. This funding will allow the credit union to operationalize a revolving loan fund, ensuring that essential workforce homeownership projects can move forward.

The Workforce Housing Revolving Loan Fund is designed to address one of the biggest barriers to housing development: the high upfront costs of land acquisition and pre-development. By offering low-interest loans to developers, the revolving loan fund helps make it financially feasible to build deed-restricted homes for middle-income families who are increasingly priced out of Bend’s housing market. Structured as a perpetual, community-led tool, loan repayments will be reinvested into future projects — allowing the fund’s impact to grow over time.

Mid Oregon is also collaborating with OnPoint Community Credit Union to offer comprehensive financial literacy workshops tailored to the specific needs of middle-income families, empowering them with the knowledge and resources to achieve and sustain homeownership. This educational partnership does more than just address immediate housing needs; it lays the groundwork for long-term financial stability and upward mobility for these families. By fostering a collaborative environment between credit unions, they are also building a model that can be replicated across other regions.

The project has had unwavering support from the Bend Chamber of Commerce, which has played a leading role in advancing workforce housing initiatives in Central Oregon. That leadership has been matched by employer investment, including a $500,000 seed contribution from Providence Health Care toward land acquisition—underscoring the region’s growing commitment to long-term housing solutions for essential workers. Through a partnership among the credit union, Bend Chamber of Commerce, Bend NEXT Foundation, and GoWest Foundation, the Workforce Housing Revolving Loan Fund will be leveraged up to three times its original capital, maximizing both impact and sustainability.

“The GoWest Foundation has been supportive of our work in this area dating back to 2019,” added Cole. “It has been open to creative ideas to help address the lack of middle market housing in Bend. Our community needs an ‘all of the above’ strategy to address this issue and the GoWest Foundation has been a flexible and committed partner to help us develop creative solutions.”

Together, these efforts reflect Mid Oregon and the GoWest Foundation’s commitment to not only address Bend’s immediate housing crisis but also position the efforts as a model for other communities grappling with similar challenges.

Learn more and start the grant application process for your credit union HERE or contact the GoWest Foundation team to discuss grant project ideas.

Posted in Community Impact, GoWest Foundation, Oregon, Regional Member News, Top Headlines.