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Portland, Multnomah County announce affordable housing projects

By: Chuck Slothower//September 17, 2019//

Portland, Multnomah County announce affordable housing projects

Chuck Slothower//September 17, 2019//

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The Joyce Hotel building in downtown Portland will be rehabilitated to provide 66 units of affordable housing. The project is one of nine announced this week by the city of Portland and Multnomah County that will provide a total of about 930 subsidized units aross the city. (Sam Tenney/91Ƶ)
The Joyce Hotel building in downtown Portland will be rehabilitated to provide 66 units of . The project is one of nine announced this week by the city of Portland and which will provide a total of about 930 affordable units citywide. (Sam Tenney/91Ƶ)

Portland and Multnomah County officials announced Tuesday they will build or rehabilitate nine affordable housing developments that will provide approximately 930 subsidized apartments across the city.

The cohort of housing projects represents the dividend from the $258.4 million housing bond approved by voters in November 2016. A year later, a statewide measure added flexibility, allowing public housing authorities to use taxpayer dollars in concert with private dollars.

The infusion of funding will be a boon to nonprofit developers and contractors. Total spending on the projects is expected to exceed $300 million.

“Everybody deserves a decent, safe and affordable place to call home,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said at City Hall on Tuesday while announcing the housing projects.

Plans came in response to a Housing Bureau solicitation in April. Proposals were due in June. Among the criteria, all proposed subsidized units had to be priced at 60 percent of area median income or less. In addition, one-third of the total units had to be deeply affordable – priced at 30 percent of area median income or less.

The Housing Bureau set maximum available subsidies at $150,000 per unit for new construction or $100,000 per unit for acquisition and rehab. Proposals had to provide a minimum of 50 units.

Wheeler said the new projects, combined with others that were already in motion, will fulfill the goals set out by the housing bond framework plan.

“We now have all of the units to hit our bond goals or surpass them,” he said.

Multnomah County will contribute $4 million to provide permanently supportive housing services meant to keep formerly homeless individuals off of the streets.

County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury said the surge of affordable housing projects confirms that homelessness is the top public policy priority.

“Homelessness is now at the forefront of our moral compass, and it should be,” she said.

The $5 million reaped from the county’s sale of the Wapato Jail property was plowed into The Westwind – one of the new projects, Kafoury said.

The link between affordable housing and homelessness is clear, Kafoury said.

“You can’t solve homelessness without housing,” she said.

The projects announced Tuesday are a mix of rehabilitation and ground-up construction. The projects using existing buildings are:

  • Alta at 18th, a 144-unit rehabilitation project from NW Housing Alternatives with NW Pilot Project and NAYA
  • The Anna Mann House, which will convert an existing Laurelhurst building into 88 units of affordable housing, by Innovative Housing Inc. with IRCO and Luke-Dorf Inc.
  • The Joyce Hotel, 66 units, by Community Partners for Affordable Housing with Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare and the Native American Rehabilitation Association (NARA) of the Northwest Inc.

The ground-up construction projects planned are:

  • 115th at Division Street, 138 units, from Related NW and Central City Concern
  • Cathedral Village, a project in St. Johns with 110 units, from Related NW with Catholic Charities
  • Las Adelitas, 141 units from Hacienda Community Development Corp., with services by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare
  • Northeast Prescott, 50 units from Community Development Partners and the Native American Youth and Family Center with NARA
  • Stark Street Project, 93 units from Human Solutions with LifeWorks NW and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization
  • The Westwind, 100 units in Old Town Chinatown, from Central City Concern with NARA

The Housing Bureau anticipates it will have $45 million remaining from the housing bond.



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