Opportunities & Challenges

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) is located just outside of Pendleton, Oregon. CTUIR has recently built impressive infrastructure and amenities on the Reservation such as a new state-of-the-art health clinic, school and governmental center. Their next focus is on providing quality, market-rate housing for tribal members and employees who would like to live on the Reservation and can afford to do so. Currently the majority of housing on the Reservation is in poor condition and/or income restricted.

CTUIR, through its project management firm, Wenaha Group, hired Brooks Resources to help determine the financial feasibility of developing two parcels they had identified for market rate for-sale and for-rent residential product.

The Approach

First, we worked with the CTUIR/Wenaha team to produce and send a housing survey to their 2,300+ tribal members aged 18+ to better assess their current housing status, their preferences and appetite for new for-sale and rental housing, price sensitivities and demographic information.

The survey results informed the second part of the project, the financial modeling work. Brooks Resources worked with the client to develop two proformas, or financial frameworks, to test the feasibility of each project scenario. The proformas considered all aspects of horizontal and vertical construction, debt service and anticipated cash flow.

The Results

The tribal member housing survey had an 11% response rate, which gave CTUIR beneficial information and demonstrated a high level of demand for each product type the tribe was considering. The financial models provided to CTUIR were flexible enough to allow the team to make changes in assumptions and immediately see the impact on the project costs and return.

With this tool in hand, CTUIR and Wenaha are currently in the planning phases for the first project.