Community nonprofit founded by board members partners with Ashland School District; responses to request for proposals due in December

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

A 91-unit accessible housing development is being planned for an approximately 4.2-acre site at the corner of East Main Street and Mountain Avenue in Ashland, the location of the former junior varsity baseball field. A nonprofit founded in December 2023 by three Ashlanders, including two school board members, is at the heart of the project proposal. 

On Wednesday, the nonprofit, Sunstone Housing Collaborative, founded by school board members Jill Franko and Dan Ruby as well as Sunstone executive director Krista Palmer, released a request for proposals (RFP) from potential project developers.

The deadline for developers to apply is Dec. 2. The tentative goal is for a developer to break ground on the project in July 2025. The developer would raise their own funds to pay for the project through accessible housing-specific state grants and/or loans. The group’s tentative goal is to be completed in 2027, according to Sunstone co-founders.

“(The project deadline) just depends on who responds to the RFP, who wants to partner with us, what products they’re using, and then the funding schedule,” Franko told Ashland.news. 

“The Master Service Agreement (MSA) that we signed with the Ashland School Board was approved in July.

“It’s super exciting,” she added.

The proposed development would include one- to three-bedroom apartments, townhomes, studios and cottage-style homes, as well as rental and ownership opportunities, all on the school district-owned property, according to a news release. The project could also possibly include a community center and community garden, among other amenities.

The developer will negotiate a sales agreement with the school district for the market value of the land and will own the development.

The concept being used to develop the property is modeled after a Bay Area housing collective started by members of a school district. Franko hopes the concept catches on here in Southern Oregon and around the state. 

Sunstone, an Ashland nonprofit, was founded in December 2023, It’s overseen by a volunteer board of directors, which will include two school board members in perpetuity or as long as the nonprofit exists, in addition to current members operations director Steve Mitzel and Jessica Klinke. Noelle Christensen is board secretary.

“The reason Sunstone was created was solely to protect the interests of the school district,” Franko told Ashland.news.

Sunstone addresses questions online about project

Signage along the fence enclosing the old baseball field have drawn input from the community, including online. 

Franko, Ruby, and Palmer met with Ashland.news at a conference room inside a local coffee shop on Wednesday morning to discuss the project proposal at length. 

The group shared excitement for releasing the RFP to potential developer bids on Wednesday, and talked about their goals to bring to the community through the project.

A news release they issued later on Wednesday detailed their plans:

“In a time when food scarcity, income disparity, and housing insecurity are on the minds of families throughout our community, this housing project reveals the depth of belief and love for our families,” Franko said in a news release issued Wednesday. “Whether they are teachers, staff or part of the community workforce, we want every family who wishes to live, work, and raise their children in Ashland to afford living here. With this housing project we are emphasizing our commitment to retain existing staff and teachers in order to further the tremendous long-term tradition of excellent public schools.”

On Wednesday, Franko acknowledged the growing online discussion on the virtual platform NextDoor about the process leading up to the release of the RFP.

“Most of what this has been is just a dream and an idea that started even before my service,” said Franko, who serves as Sunstone board chair.

“However, until today (Wednesday, Nov. 6), when we released the RFP, this has been nothing more than passion, ideas, (and) a proposal.”

Franko said that, other than one to two hours of time for assistance from an attorney on the MSA, grant funds are paying for project needs, and the executive director role is funded through grants as well.

“There’s no builder, there’s no contract,” Franko said. “We are at the point now when we get to start engaging builders and finding out who wants to partner with us and that’s really exciting, but prior to this point (it was all in process).”

Also utilizing grant funds, Sunstone worked with the Housing Development Center (HDC), a nonprofit consultant, to release the RFP. The HDC is also assisting Sunstone with scoring the RFP, selecting building partners for the project, and assisting with obtaining additional grant funds needed to complete the projects.

A developer will be selected on demonstrated overall capacity to fulfill the needs of the project — including capacity to secure funding for both land purchase and construction.

The city of Ashland has awarded Sunstone a $55,000 grant toward the project, but Franko and Ruby said the funds will go directly to pay for needs that arise for the project, such as for architectural services. Ruby emphasized Sunstone is not a city project, though the city is supportive financially.

The developer that is selected for the project will utilize state grants and loans specifically for building accessible housing, according to Ruby.

“We’ve gone door-to-door and personally talked to everybody that surrounds it,” said Ruby, who serves as vice-chair of the Sunstone board and as treasurer.

“For the most part, people are overwhelmingly excited,” he added.

“One couple was concerned about construction and that’ll be pretty easy to mitigate,” Ruby estimated. “We’ve been doing major construction at the high school and that hasn’t had an impact on the community.”

Ruby dispelled myths people might have about the project so far.

“It doesn’t include any bond funding,” he said.

Franko also noted that there is no “personal gain” for her, Ruby, or Palmer in the project.

“Sunstone was created to be the time, the resource, the funders, essentially (for the project),” Franko said, “going out and applying for funding, because as everyone knows, all of our staff is working multiple jobs and twice as much.”

Ruby said his involvement in the project began as a way to improve housing for district staff, as well as a way to also boost declining enrollment.

“A lot of people don’t know that Ashland has a disproportionately high number of families living on low income or in poverty … all of our schools are Title I schools … and that’s related to unstable housing,” Ruby said.

“There’s a greater need for housing than there is for new schools.”

Ruby said the district’s enrollment is declining and it’s not just because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but appears to be for the foreseeable future.

“(Declining enrollment is happening) because this town can’t grow meaningfully geographically and it’s aging, so we are losing school kids,” Ruby said.

“People imagine there’s lots of land all around (Ashland for building) … but there isn’t,” Ruby added. “No. 1, this (location) is ideally situated because it’s too close to services and stores and schools and parks … for families, that’s great.” 

Palmer noted the importance of creating new partnerships, including public-private partnerships, and new ways of looking at property management, asset management and resident services and how these things can work together to meet community needs.

Through Palmer’s research as executive director of the nonprofit — her role is funded by an AllCare For Health grant — she also learned there is a significant shortage in childcare in Ashland.

She connected with Oregon Child Development Coalition (OCDC) to see if they had the desire or capability to expand programming.

“Our connection with them was two-fold, was to connect with the families that send their children there, and also, to identify the possibility of OCDC facilitating onsite childcare in the development so we actually do have a MOU (memorandum of understanding) and they will be included in the developer selection process,” Palmer said, “and we’re pursuing grant funding to make that happen and so that is going to be an integral part of this development is meeting that need (for childcare).”

Palmer’s background is in occupational therapy, which she said informs her perspective as executive director of the housing collective. 

“So much of the basis of how a person functions in their community can be based in where they live and how that house is situated to accommodate their physical and other needs and so that’s been a huge priority for this project in defining the … minimum accessibility requirements for the building,” Palmer said. 

Accessible vs. Affordable housing: What’s in a name?

Franko acknowledges that it’s really hard for school district staff, especially classified workers, and many others working in the community to afford to live where they work.

“We did an internal survey and found that there was significant interest from both teachers and staff,” she said.

Franko said the housing development is known and advertised as accessible housing, which is distinct from affordable housing.

“We are building housing that’s 120% of AMI (area median income) and below and one of the things that happens a lot in the affordable housing of old, you would have this housing project that was siloed and isolated by income,” Franko said. 

“One thing that’s been really important to us … is that this project is really integrated,” she added, “so our hope is that the project — It has varying levels of income … you don’t know how much your neighbor is making or paid for their unit, compared to yours.”

Housing units will be income-based, but until a developer is chosen, it is still unclear exactly what the rents would be, according to Palmer.

“Our hope is also to partner with a community land trust so that there can be permanently affordable home ownership opportunities,” Palmer said.

Ruby noted that the Ashland School District is one of the largest employers in Ashland and that the housing units would provide housing for classified staff making anywhere from $15 to $20 per hour, in addition to individuals working elsewhere at that same rate.

When Franko and others looked at the data around why the district is losing students, Franko acknowledged and debunked a myth that students are leaving to attend private schools.

“We lose a significant number of families to them moving outside of Ashland, but not outside of the county,” Franko said.

“Through exit data, we found that they’re moving to other public schools within the county,” she added.

Sunstone origin story

Franko said when she was first elected to the school board in 2021, she had a conversation about housing opportunities for school district staff members with Operations Director Steve Mitzel.

“I’d just always been passionate about housing and I’d heard about what California was doing for teachers and staff so I met with Steve Mitzel … and said, ‘Hey, I really want to look into building housing for teachers and he said there’s been many board members in the past who’ve been passionate about this, we’ve never been able to move it forward, but good luck, I support this.’”

Franko said the process began to explore which district-owned properties could work for the concept. 

Then, the process of getting support from other members of the school board began.

“You have to get people impassioned about the same things that you are when it comes to a board,” Franko said. “There was a long kind of nurturing (effort) of getting people excited about this idea and that probably took two years.

“The board felt like we needed to come out of the pandemic with some new ways of doing public education and also just tackling some of our biggest challenges, one of which was declining enrollment,” she added.

Franko researched the concept of providing housing that was affordable and attainable and how that could attract more families to the district, which was losing students and staff members.

“(The concept) it was born out of (was) the Innovation Committee for Increasing Enrollment (in 2022),” Franko said.

One of Franko’s dreams is to help other school districts throughout the state of Oregon to adopt similar approaches to solving housing woes for district employees. 

She noted that California has been a model to follow, including in how their state school board association assists districts in the process of pursuing housing collectives.

Franko and Ruby will attend the OSBA convention this weekend in Portland and hope to discuss the project with OSBA leadership.

“Nobody can handle it alone, nobody is going to be able to solve this challenge alone, and public entities have to get on board,” Franko said. “It’s our responsibility. We have a lot of excess and surplus land and … we can help be part of a solution.”

A mandatory pre-proposal informational meeting is planned for 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 12, at the Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library, 1757 Ashland St., Ashland.

The Ashland School Board will meet for a special session on Dec. 19 to consider a developer for the project, according to the agenda for the Nov. 14 school board meeting.

Email Ashland.news staff reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].

Nov. 8: Corrected name of Sunstone Housing Collaborative. Added Noelle Christensen to listing of Sunstone board members. Removed implication that developer with lowest bid would win the contract; contract award will depend on a number of factors going into overall capacity to meet the needs of the contract. Removed statement that school district would continue to own the property and Sunstone would own the development; the developer will negotiate a fair-market purchase price for the land and own the development.