9496_Special Procurement Request_Signed_20261021.pdf

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OREGON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY SERVICES

REQUEST FOR SPECIAL PROCUREMENT

No. OregonBuys #REQ-91400- 00224427 (OHCS #9496)

PART A – REQUEST (completed by the Contract Administrator)

1. Date of Request: 9/22/26

2. Contract Administrator: Michael Johnson or Brit McLean

3. Title: Affordable Housing Portfolio Stabilization Analysis

4. Total Estimated Cost: $130,000

5. Proposed Contract Timeframe: from 10/23/26 to 1/11/27

6. Request, Background, and Justification:

(a) Request:

Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) requests approval of this contract-specific Special Procurement under ORS 456.625(19)(b) to award a services contract directly to Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., in an amount not to exceed $130,000, for a term of October 23, 2026 through January 11, 2027, without conducting the intermediate procurement process required by OAR 813-006-0005(1). The contract will deliver a portfolio stabilization analysis and an accompanying investment business case that quantifies how many affordable rental units can be financially stabilized at defined levels of state investment. The contract will be a single, fixed-term award with no renewal or extension option.

(b) Background:

OHCS is Oregon's housing finance agency, established under ORS chapter 456. The agency finances, regulates, and monitors affordable rental housing across the state, administering the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, private activity bonds, state capital programs, and long-term regulatory agreements that keep rents affordable. The agency's Affordable Rental Housing division is responsible for the continued physical and financial viability of that portfolio over regulatory periods that commonly run 30 to 60 years.

The OHCS-financed portfolio comprises approximately 1,200 projects and close to 60,000 units. Financial performance across that portfolio has deteriorated materially since 2021, driven by insurance and utility cost escalation, wage and staffing pressure in property management, elevated vacancy and collection loss, and debt service on capital raised in a higher rate environment. Roughly 39 percent of the portfolio now reports debt coverage insufficient to meet operating expenses and debt service, an increase of about 44 percent over the same measure in 2021. An April 2026 vacancy analysis of 56,307 monitored units identified 4,149 vacant units, of which 1,616 had been vacant for a year or longer.

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This matters to the public because the units at risk already exist and are already affordable.

The Oregon Housing Needs Analysis identifies a statewide shortage of 95,937 units. Losing existing regulated units to financial failure, foreclosure, or conversion increases that shortage at a cost per unit that substantially exceeds the cost of stabilizing the units in place, and displaces households who are currently housed.

In 2026 OHCS has engaged with partners to develop a common understanding of the problem. Now, the agency needs a defensible estimate of the relationship between dollars invested and units stabilized, built from unit-level economics and tested against the financing tools currently available.

OHCS has not previously procured this analysis and holds no existing contract for it. There is no prior solicitation, award, or amendment history associated with this request.

(c) Justification for Use of Special Procurement:

• The required analytical inputs are not generally available in the market. The engagement depends on operating benchmarks derived from the contractor's own national portfolio of mission-owned affordable rental housing. Those benchmarks are not published, not commercially licensable, and not constructible from public data. A competing offeror would substitute conventional market benchmarks that do not reflect the operating economics of regulated affordable housing, which would undermine the analysis rather than replicate it.

• The combination of capabilities required is narrowly held. The work requires LIHTC and private activity bond structuring capability, distressed affordable asset management experience at portfolio scale, and public-sector technical assistance experience, in a single team on a compressed schedule. There are few to no other firms with no ownership or lending position in the Oregon portfolio being analyzed.

• The deadline is externally fixed and non-adjustable. The analysis must be available in advance of the 2027 regular session. An intermediate procurement process, including scope publication, three-quote solicitation, evaluation, negotiation, execution, data-sharing agreement, and contractor onboarding, would consume the remaining schedule and leave no period in which the analysis could be performed.

• The award is limited in term and scope. It is one contract, under the intermediate procurement regulatory threshold, ending January 11, 2027, with no renewal, no option period, and no price agreement.

7. Findings to Satisfy the Required Standards:

This proposed Special Procurement:

(a) will be unlikely to encourage favoritism in the awarding of public contracts or to substantially diminish competition for public contracts because:

This is a single, contract-specific award of limited value and fixed duration. It creates no price agreement, no qualified provider list, no preferred vendor relationship, and no option to renew. It ends January 11, 2027.

The award removes no meaningful volume of work from a competitive market. It is a one-time analytical engagement below the intermediate procurement regulatory threshold.

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The award does not create a competitive advantage in future procurements. OHCS will own all deliverables, models, workbooks, and methodology documentation produced under the contract, and will make that work product available to all prospective offerors in any subsequent solicitation for implementation-phase services. Any firm competing for the 2027 implementation work will therefore begin with the same information base as the contractor performing this analysis.

OHCS will document in the procurement file its consideration of certified firms under ORS

200.035 and ORS 200.055, and the reasons those firms cannot supply the specific analytical inputs described in Item 6c.

AND

(b) will otherwise substantially promote the public interest in a manner that could not practicably be realized by complying with the requirements of ORS 279B.055 (Competitive Sealed Bidding), 279B.060 (Competitive Sealed Proposals), 279B.065 (Small Procurements), or 279B.070 (Intermediate Procurements), or any rules adopted thereunder because:

The public interest at stake is the preservation of approximately 60,000 existing regulated affordable rental units, a substantial share of which are on a trajectory toward financial failure. Roughly 39 percent of the portfolio cannot currently cover operating expenses and debt service. Units lost from this portfolio are lost from a state inventory already 95,937 units short of need, and each lost unit displaces a currently housed low-income household.

Replacing a lost unit costs the state materially more than stabilizing it in place.

Compliance with the competitive methods adopted by rule under OAR 813-006-0005(1) cannot practicably realize that interest. The analysis has a fixed external deadline set by the legislative and budget calendar, not by agency scheduling. A competitive process run within the remaining window would produce a completed procurement and no analysis.

The practical alternative to this special procurement is not a competitively procured analysis; it is no analysis, and a state investment request the agency cannot substantiate with unit-level evidence.

The cost of the analysis is also proportionate to the decision it informs. A $130,000 engagement is being used to structure and validate a state investment decision several orders of magnitude larger. Proceeding without it materially increases the risk that appropriated funds are sized incorrectly or directed to properties where they cannot achieve durable stabilization.

PART B – PROCUREMENT (completed by the Procurement Specialist)

1. Procurement Specialist: Autumn Waters / autumn.waters@hcs.oregon.gov

2. Request Type: Class Special Procurement Contract-specific Special Procurement

3. Proposed Contracting Procedure:

Direct award and negotiation with Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.

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PART C - APPROVALS (completed by the DPO and the Executive Director)

1. Designated Procurement Officer:

Recommends approval Does not recommend approval

By: Date:

Phillip Andrews, Designated Procurement Officer

DPO’s conditions of approval, if any:

2. Executive Director Approval:

By: Date:

Andrea Bell, Executive Director

Date 2: 10/21/2026