The State of Oregon has acute housing and Early Care and Education (ECE) needs in nearly every corner of the state. This report was developed in response to a $10 million budget note in 2021 Oregon House Bill 5011 that seeks to respond to both challenges simultaneously, building spaces for ECE providers to serve children and families within or on the grounds of affordable housing developments. This model – known formally as ‘co-locating’ ECE facilities with affordable housing – has been successful in Oregon and beyond. However, programmatic challenges and misalignments, incongruous land use and wage policies, and limited funding have historically hampered large-scale, statewide attempts at co-location. This report identifies many of those challenges, makes broad recommendations for improving the abilities of housing developers and ECE providers to co-locate, and offers rationale for how the state might design the Oregon Co-Location Fund, to be initially supported with HB 5011’s $10 million seed investment.
