Our 2024 legislative priority: Keep Oregonians housed and healthy
Healthy Homes lower the cost of living and increase comfort.
Solving Oregon’s housing crisis is about more than building new housing, it’s also about keeping low-income families from losing their homes. When everyone in our community has a healthy home with affordable utility bills, it will contribute to greater housing security for our most vulnerable Oregonians.
Healthy Homes is an innovative Oregon grant program that goes directly to household-serving organizations that do essential home repairs and improvements across the state. Its goal is to keep low-income families healthy, reduce medical costs and energy bills.
While initial funding for the program was a good start, it will run out before the next budget cycle because there is so much need across the state. A legislative investment of $15 million in 2024 will keep this critical program going.
How does the Healthy Homes Grant Program help Oregonians?
It helps keep seniors, low-income, and frontline families in their homes.
An uninsulated home or a broken window lets frigid air or extreme summer heat inside. An expensive, polluting oil furnace won’t keep someone warm if families can’t afford to turn it on. The Healthy Homes program pays for repairs and replacements with high efficiency equipment and resilience improvements to make people comfortable and lower their cost of living.
About half of Oregonians live in housing built before 1980. This housing is energy inefficient and in need of repairs. Frontline communities are highest at risk, which includes Black, Indigenous, and people of color, low-income families, people with disabilities, and people in rural areas.
Healthy Homes funding will help Oregonians:
Spend less money on heating and cooling
Have refuge from bad outdoor air such as wildfire smoke
Experience fewer sick days and emergency room visits (for example, from mold or lead exposure)
Live in more disaster-resilient homes
Create good, local jobs in home retrofitting
Healthy Homes fills in funding gaps.
Federal, state, and utility assistance programs pay for some but not all of these repairs. For example, without funds for mold mitigation, a federally-funded heat pump alone would not make a home with a mold problem safer. A contractor or community-based organization may not be able to take on the project. The Healthy Homes Grant Program fills in the gaps.
What essential home repairs and renovations does it fund?
Increased energy efficiency for lower utility bills and better comfort
Radon, lead, allergens, and mold abatement
Wildfire and air pollution filtration & air purification systems
Structural improvements and repairs for accessibility
Hardening against wildfire
Earthquake resistance
For a complete list of covered essential home repairs and renovations, Oregon Health Authority’s Healthy Homes Grant Program website.
It’s supported by people and groups across Oregon:
Included in the Fair Shot for All People’s Budget.
An Oregon Just Transition Alliance priority.
An Oregon Conservation Network (OCN) priority.
The Healthy Homes program was set up by bipartisan HB 2842 in 2021.
