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The Portland Bureau of Development Services recently approved plans for a six-story affordable housing development in the King neighborhood.

The Kafoury Court Apartments will offer 40 housing units for low-income, chronically homeless seniors within the Black community, according to the proposal.

It will be located at 4066 N.E. Grand Ave., at the intersection with Northeast Mason Street. An existing single-story apartment building on the 10,000-square-foot site will be demolished.

Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives is the project owner and Design Research Office is the architect.

鈥淭he prioritization of Black seniors is of unique importance in understanding the project’s connection to this area’s cultural history as well as its future needs,鈥� the proposal stated. 鈥淭he King neighborhood community has suffered a legacy of discrimination, redlining, and displacement of the local Black community.鈥�

The project team is aiming to confront that history by providing affordable housing for Black seniors.

The roughly 30,700-square-foot building will have a large common room (more than 4,300 square feet), exterior courtyards, private balconies, and enclosed sunrooms. Each floor will have access to a sunroom or a common deck 鈥� all between 272 square feet and 373 square feet.

Two modifications and a design exception were approved for the project: a reduction in the amount of a street-facing fa莽ade that must be offset by at least 2 feet in depth from the rest of the fa莽ade (a requirement for buildings taller than 45 feet to reduce their bulk close to the street) from 25 percent to 16 percent, an allowance for bicycle lockers instead of horizontal racks, and an exception for the sunrooms’ oriel windows to project into the public right-of-way.

鈥淚n addition to providing much needed housing,鈥� the proposal stated, 鈥渢he proposed six-story, affordable housing development in the King neighborhood will bring pedestrian activity and a sense of place to the two streets it faces onto.鈥�