Central City Concern is in the midst of a Portland building boom, thanks to a 2016 initiative dubbed . It has received contributions from six metro-area health care organizations and is in the process of producing three developments providing a total of 379 affordable housing units as well as health care services.

The first one to open was Hazel Heights – a $26.8 million, four-story complex with 153 residential units – 92 with one bedroom and 61 with two bedrooms. The development is located at 333 S.E. 127th Ave., near Stark Street.

Eight units are reserved for households with incomes no greater than 30 percent of the median family income (MFI), 30 units are reserved for households with incomes no greater than 50 percent of the MFI, and 115 units are reserved for households with incomes no greater than 60 percent of the MFI. Rents will range from $412 to $995 per month, depending on tenants’ incomes.

For these units, Central City Concern primarily is targeting individuals who are exiting transitional housing programs and are employed, but who may still have significant barriers to permanent housing.

“These homes are important for supporting employed people with affordable housing,” Central City Concern President and CEO Rachel Solotaroff stated at the Hazel Heights grand opening several weeks ago. “When people are housed, they have a better chance for a healthy future.”

The six health care organizations participating in Housing Is Health are: Adventist Health Portland, CareOregon, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, and Providence Health & Services Oregon.

The two other projects are Charlotte B. Rutherford Place and the Blackburn Center. Silco Construction finished the former project – a 51-unit apartment complex in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood – this past fall. Walsh Construction is expected to finish building the latter project – a 175-unit apartment complex with health care services in the Hazelwood neighborhood – this next summer.

Ankrom Moisan Architects designed Hazel Heights, and Team Construction of Vancouver, Washington, served as the general contractor. Like Charlotte B. Rutherford Place, Hazel Heights buildings will feature large rooftop solar arrays – a total of 88 panels.

Other major financial contributors to the Hazel Heights project included: Umpqua Bank, the Portland Housing Bureau, U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, Oregon Housing and Community Services, Federal Home Loan Bank and PGE.

The post Residential development filling key role appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A new building in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood of North Portland is providing an essential community asset: affordable housing for people with ties to the area.

Charlotte B. Rutherford Place, a 51-unit apartment complex at 6905 N. Interstate Ave., opened earlier this month. Central City Concern spearheaded the project, and Home First Development Partners was in charge of overall design and development. Doug Circosta, Architect designed the project, and Silco Construction built it.

A celebration took place Dec. 4 to mark the arrivals of the first residents. The building may be new to them, but the vicinity is not.

“One hundred percent of the residents in Charlotte B. Rutherford Place have family or historical ties to the neighborhood,” Central City Concern President and CEO Rachel Solotaroff said at the grand opening.

The other main determining factor for residency at Charlotte B. Rutherford Place is income. Three units are reserved for persons making 30 percent or less of the regional median family income, 28 units are for those making 50 percent or less of the MFI and 20 units are reserved for those making 60 percent or less of the MFI.

The building itself is a standard wood-framed structure with masonry cladding adorning the exterior of the ground floor and entrances. The remainder of the building is clad with two-toned blue siding. There are 34 one-bedroom units and 17 two-bedroom apartments.

Charlotte B. Rutherford Place is one of three projects that comprise Central City Concern’s Housing is Health initiative, which in 2016 brought together six separate metro-area health care organizations for the purpose of funding affordable housing. Those organizations are: Adventist Health Portland, CareOregon, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, and Providence Health & Services Oregon.

The other affordable housing projects being developed via the initiative are the 153-unit Hazel Heights on Southeast 127th Avenue and the 175-unit Blackburn Center on Northeast 122nd Avenue. The latter also has a large clinic featuring mental health and addiction treatment services.

The total budget for Charlotte B. Rutherford Place was slightly more than $12 million. KeyBank contributed $5.14 million, Oregon Housing and Community Services provided $3.5 million, the Portland Housing Bureau chipped in $1.56 million and Multnomah County added $1.24 million.

In addition, the Housing is Health group contributed $500,000 and PGE contributed $84,000 for installation of a rooftop solar array.

The new facility is named for the Honorable Charlotte B. Rutherford, a Portland community activist and former civil rights attorney, journalist, administrative law judge and entrepreneur. Her grandfather, William Rutherford, operated a barbershop in the former Golden West Hotel, which is now a residential building managed by Central City Concern.

Rutherford’s parents, Otto Rutherford and Verdell Burdine, were president and secretary, respectively, of Portland’s NAACP chapter in the 1950s, and each played an important role in securing passage of the landmark Oregon Civil Rights Bill in 1953.

The post Restoration of residential roots appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Three Central City Concern mixed-use projects now under way in Portland may not be dazzling examples of engineering or construction, but they’re already making an impression.

The Blackburn Building, the Stark Street Apartments and Charlotte B. Rutherford Place – all part of the Housing Is Health initiative – are expected to help get homeless individuals into housing units and provide health care resources to people without insurance.

“I think this one’s different, in that it’s going to be a real service to the community,” said Brian Ames, a project engineer with Walsh Construction, the general contractor for the six-story Blackburn Building at East Burnside Street and 122nd Avenue. “It’s definitely something that we need right now with the housing crisis, and we’re providing housing and a critical need to people who really need it.”

The Blackburn Building is the flagship of – a unique effort that has received a total of $21.5 million in financial support from nonprofit organization CareOregon and five major hospitals (Adventist Health-Portland, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University and Providence Health & Services-Oregon). An additional $9 million for the initiative is coming from the Portland Housing Bureau, and private fundraising efforts will supplement investments.

All told, Housing Is Health this year alone will provide local low-income residents with 382 new housing units, along with health care and other facilities.

Besides 186 housing units, the Blackburn Building will have a health care clinic, a pharmacy and commercial space. Central City Concern, which runs 23 other facilities around the Portland area, will provide on-site support including services focusing on employment, addiction recovery and mental health treatment.

Ground was broken last year on all three projects. The Stark Street Apartments will be a 153-unit complex at the corner of Southeast Stark Street and 127th Avenue, and Charlotte B. Rutherford Place will be a 51-unit complex on North Interstate Avenue.

Recognizing substantial needs

Sean Hubert, Central City Concern’s chief housing and strategy officer, said the nonprofit has been engaged with a range of health systems in the Portland area since the early 2000s. In 2007, it established at its Old Town clinic on Burnside Street a recuperative care program that pairs houseless persons with housing and social services needed to return them to work.

“We put them in housing and stabilize them and give them primary care and help them resolve their acute health conditions,” he said.

The program, in turn, allowed the types of partnerships, Hubert said, that have resulted in initiatives like Housing Is Health.

“At this point we have a decade’s worth of data showing the reduction of recidivism and emergency room admission rates,” he said. “We’re finding housing stability and a standard of care for that population, and all that was already enabled when we started talking about these projects.”

The other factor driving development of Housing Is Health is the ongoing lack of affordable housing. Coupled with increasingly expensive rents in the metro area, it has turned out to be a time bomb for persons with substance abuse or other acute health issues.

Even hospitals accustomed to handing out hotel vouchers to patients without homes began to feel the pinch when their own employees began to struggle with the same issue.

“More generally, housing was on their radar,” Hubert said.

Central City Concern has operated transitional housing for decades now. But these days, that process is not nearly as cost-effective as it once was.

“It worked well when rent is $600 or $700 a month,” Hubert said. “But now, at $1,400 a month, that really has had an impact on our partner organizations’ ability to leverage that. The amount of people we could serve was declining and the hospitals were seeing the results of that.”

Busy building affordable units

At the $52 million Blackburn Building project site, concrete support columns extend upward two stories from ground level as the elevator shaft and other superstructure features take shape. The building’s bottom two stories will be reinforced concrete post-tension decks, while the upper four stories will be wood-framed, Ames said.

The location next to TriMet‘s 122nd Avenue MAX light-rail platform also is ideal for the target population. Coincidentally, most of TriMet’s blue line platforms are being renovated by California-based Stacy & Witbeck at present.

“This whole corridor is now zoned for high-density residential, and you’ll see a lot of that continue to change, as it already has along Burnside,” Ames said. “It should be a big face-lift for this area.”

Just around the corner from the Blackburn Building, crews of framers swarm over the wooden skeleton of the Stark Street Apartments. Consisting of two primary wings, the $29.9 million complex was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects. Central City Concern expects tenants to come from the immediate neighborhood, while rents will range from just $412 up to $995 per month depending on household income. There will be playground amenities for children and at least 88 solar panels.

TEAM Construction of Vancouver, Washington, is the general contractor for the project. Senior Project Manager Mack Thames said the company has a track record of working on similar projects benefiting low-income residents.

“We do a lot of projects with REACH (Community Development),” Thames said, in reference to the Portland nonprofit affordable housing development and property management company. “But this is our first one in recent memory with Central City (Concern). We certainly work with the Vancouver Housing Authority and with Catholic Charities, so we do a fair amount on the nonprofit side.”

Thames showed off the four-story complex, which will feature 91 one-bedroom and 62 two-bedroom apartments. The design provides for interlocking fields of view and communal courtyards and playground spaces. The main feature will be an exterior elevator that allows residents to access either side of the south building via a sky-bridge. Exterior walkways will be built on each floor in other recessed courtyard areas, providing residents with an unusual overhead perspective.

Meanwhile, the $9.9 million, 51-unit Charlotte B. Rutherford Place complex in North Portland is on track to finish first – possibly by the end of the year.

“This will be the first time where we really brought our clinical services together with our housing in the same project,” Hubert said. “This is very exciting for us. It allows us to take all of our knowledge and put it into one projects, and to design the best model of care from a client’s perspective.”

The post Housing Is Health: three critical projects under way appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.