What is hard about staying
Six in ten of the 86 county residents who answered the Oregon Voices survey said they love where they live. Fifty-eight percent also said families are having trouble making ends meet. The hard parts have names: a year-round home, a wage that outlasts the season, money to start something, and help that arrives before winter. These guides lay out what the records say, and what they cannot yet say.
For the people trying to hire, house, teach or treat their neighbors. For anyone looking for a place to live. For the candidates and commissioners who will be asked about all of it.
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Three to read first.
What does it take to find a year-round home here?
What a home costs here, why the numbers need their dates, and what was on the market in October 2026.
Read it
Where does the money come from to start something here?
Who lends in the county, including the lenders built for Native borrowers, and what none of them can do.
Read it
Where does the value of local work go?
Where the value of local work goes, starting with a steer that had to leave the county.
Read itMore to read.
Watch this part of the story.
The records behind it.
Wallowa Memorial Hospital
A rural hospital serving residents and visitors of Wallowa County.
Working Homes
A nonprofit that buys, repairs and builds homes for the county’s workforce, including the EM&M apartments in Enterprise.
Northeast Oregon Economic Development District
The economic development district for Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, which keeps the regional strategy that public projects are listed in to qualify for some federal money.
Building Healthy Families
A family support and education nonprofit established in 1999, based in Enterprise and serving Wallowa, Union, Baker and Malheur counties.
Wallowa Resources
A local organization connecting stewardship, education, and rural employment.
What would it take for you, or your kids, to stay?
The 2046 questions ask for your experience, not a policy. Twenty people answered in October 2026; their themes are counted without names.
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