The Portland City Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted the city’s first housing production strategy, a state-mandated blueprint for expanding where and how housing can be built.

The plan is light on specifics, instead laying out 35 categories of actions the city will tackle. The strategy seeks to meet demand for 120,546 additional housing units by 2045.

“We leave working out all of the details to the projects themselves,” said Tom Armstrong, supervising planner for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “What we want to do is provide a guidepost.”

If completed, the expansion of housing would transform Portland, which had 296,479 total housing units as of 2021.

“We need more housing in Portland – a lot more housing,” said Commissioner Carmen Rubio.

The housing production strategy stems from a 2019 state law that sought to hold Oregon cities more accountable for how much housing gets built. Every city in Oregon of more than 10,000 people must submit a housing production strategy. The plans have a check-in at three years, and a new plan is due every six years.

The work is overseen by the state Department of Land Conservation and Development.

“It is a way that the state is increasing the city’s responsibility and increasing the state’s accountability,” Armstrong said.

Among the strategies, Portland is reconsidering zoning in Inner Eastside neighborhoods. That may result in greater allowable density, including apartment buildings.

Portland Neighbors Welcome, a pro-housing group, has lobbied the city to allow multifamily buildings of up to four floors in the Inner Eastside. Several members of the group testified Wednesday.

The housing strategy will “ensure that apartments, especially affordable apartments, will no longer be relegated to our busiest, loudest and most dangerous streets,” said Jennifer Shuch, a board member for the group.

Armstrong said the group makes a valid point about the city’s zoning.

“We have a zoning pattern that’s very focused on our corridors, and we have very sort of thin strips of higher density mixed-use along Hawthorne, Belmont, Division, Broadway, and then it quickly transitions to single-family neighborhood zoning,” Armstrong said.

In Portland’s tony Eastside neighborhoods, it may not pencil out for a housing developer to buy a $700,000 house and turn it into four units. But, Armstrong added, it might work to turn that house into a small apartment building.

“We don’t see a lot of that uptake of the middle housing because the home values in that neighborhood are too high for it to be feasible development,” Armstrong said.

Ben Hufford, a local architect who’s running for City Council in District 4, noted that Portland built less than 1,500 units in 2023.

“Our housing market is about to get worse,” he said. “Portland will see less affordability overall, and we will see an increase in homelessness.”

Mayor Ted Wheeler took a wider view.

“Housing is becoming one of those issues that local government is owning,” he said. “It is now probably considered a local government responsibility. But I want to remind people, a generation ago, it was not. It was a federal government responsibility in terms of funding, financing and incentivizing. Slowly but surely, over the course of a generation, that got cost shifted onto local government.”

Wheeler said the city should focus on what it can control — not outside economic forces such as interest rates that also affect development.

“Zoning, first and foremost, that is probably the biggest lever that we can pull — and I feel like we already did,” Wheeler said. “We did it with Central City 2035, we did it with Better Housing by Design. We did it with residential infill.”

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By Michael Casey
The Associated Press

The White House is taking steps to increase the supply of affordable housing while also bolstering protections for renters.

The housing measures announced Thursday include providing communities with $85 million in funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reduce barriers to affordable housing, such as zoning restrictions that in some places have become a hurdle to increasing the supply and density of affordable housing. HUD would provide grants upwards of $10 million.

“HUD recognizes that communities have unique housing challenges and that’s why the resources announced today are not one-size-fits-all,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge stated. “Today, we are acting to increase the supply of affordable housing, which is crucial to lowering housing costs. We look forward to continuing this work in partnership with local communities.”

The White House also announced that it’s forming an inter-agency task force to develop ways to fund efforts to convert more commercial buildings to housing, especially zero-emissions and affordable units. Across the country, office-to-housing conversions are being pursued as a potential lifeline for struggling downtown business districts that saw numerous tenants exit during the coronavirus pandemic.

“The mismatch between the demand for housing and the inadequate supply of affordable and available homes is at the heart of today’s housing affordability crisis,” stated Dennis Shea, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy.

These measures are part of a larger effort by the White House to address a chronic housing shortage, with the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimating the nation needs 7.3 million affordable rental homes to make up the gap. Meanwhile,  to levels seen before the pandemic and are spiking in several cities across the country.

Diane Yentel, executive director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, welcomed the news but said more needs to be done.

“As rents rise, homelessness increases, public housing deteriorates, and millions of families struggle to keep roofs over their heads, robust federal investments and actions are badly needed and long overdue,” Yentel said. “But the administration can’t solve this crisis on its own. Congress must also act with similar urgency and enact badly needed housing investments and tenant protections.”

Measures aimed at helping renters include a requirement that landlords notify public housing tenants 30 days before a lease termination due to nonpayment of rent as well as $10 million for tenant education and outreach.

“We must provide renters with the necessary resources to safeguard their interests and enhance their communication with landlords,” Fudge said. “HUD is dedicated to collaborating with renters and ensuring they are well informed about their rights.”

The White House noted the policy covering renters builds on earlier efforts during the pandemic, when 11 million emergency rental payments were made as part of a to prevent evictions in several cities and states.

Other measures highlighted Thursday but announced earlier include $27 billion from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with money designated for retrofitting homes as well as constructing zero-emission buildings. A $3.2 billion U.S. Department of Transportation program will target low-income communities with poor access to transportation.

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By MAE ANDERSON, ASHRAF KHALIL and MICHAEL CASEY
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — On the 31st floor of what was once a towering office building in downtown Manhattan, construction workers lay down steel bracing for what will soon anchor a host of residential amenities: a catering station, lounge, fire pit and gas grills.

The building, empty since 2021, is being converted to 588 market-rate rental apartments that will house about 1,000 people. “We’re taking a vacant building and pouring life not only into this building, but this entire neighborhood,” said Joey Chilelli, managing director of real estate firm Vanbarton Group, which is doing the conversion.

Across the country, office-to-housing conversions are being pursued as a potential lifeline for struggling downtown business districts that emptied out during the coronavirus pandemic and may never fully recover. The conversion push is marked by an emphasis on affordability.

Multiple cities are offering serious tax breaks for developers to incentivize office-to-housing conversions — provided that a certain percentage of apartments are offered at affordable below-market prices.

In January, Pittsburgh announced it was accepting proposals to produce more affordable housing through the “conversion of fallow and underutilized office space.” Boston released a plan in October aimed at revitalizing downtown that included a push for more housing, some of which would come from office conversions. And Seattle launched a competition in April for downtown building owners and design firms to come up with conversion ideas.

In the nation’s capital, Mayor Muriel Bowser has made office-to-housing conversions a cornerstone of her plan to repopulate and revitalize the district’s downtown. Her “comeback plan” for the capital city, announced earlier this year, seeks to add 15,000 new residents to the downtown area, adding to the approximately 25,000 who already live here.

Bowser’s administration says about 1 million square feet of downtown real estate is already transitioning from commercial to residential. But the city needs another 6 million square feet converted to meet her goal of 15,000 new downtown residents.

“We’re not going to have as many workers downtown as we had before the pandemic,” Bowser said earlier this year. “Our job is to make sure that we are getting more people downtown.”

But the conversion push has some skeptics. Housing advocates worry that the affordable housing requirements could get watered down. And even advocates of the conversion model say giving tax breaks to wealthy developers isn’t the best tool to achieve the goal.

“Developers who feel it’s going to benefit their bottom line will do it without an incentive,” said Erica Williams, director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. “This is a very costly proposal for an unproven program.”

And, as increasing numbers of employers turn to hybrid work models, there’s the question of whether people will want to move to downtown areas if they’re not required to be there every day.

“You have to make downtown a neighborhood — somewhere that’s living and playful and active,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey told an panel at the United States Conference of Mayors meetings in Washington last January. “How do you make it a neighborhood that has a vibe where young people want to be?”

Jordan Woods, a 33-year-old federal government contractor, moved to an apartment in downtown Washington in 2019, attracted in part by the appeal of being able to walk to work. He said he was able to find dependable stores and restaurants that stayed open at night, but then the pandemic came and downtown became “like a moonscape” for more than a year.

“And even before the pandemic it was still missing basic stuff like playgrounds and dog parks and a normal non-Whole Foods grocery store that I could walk to,” Woods said. “I wouldn’t say I regret it, but if I was considering the same move right now, I’m not sure I would do it.”

Chuck D’Aprix, principal at Downtown Economics, a development consulting firm, said attracting new residents to a former downtown business district holds specific chicken-and-egg issues. The businesses that residents need are different from those of daytime office workers.

They include mid-size affordable grocery stores and day-care centers, pet supply shops, hardware stores and auto repair garages. And those places need to stay open past office hours.

“A lot of those services simply aren’t available right now in small city downtowns or mid-sized city downtowns, you know, they close up at night,” D’Aprix said.

But with vacancy rates at downtown office buildings continuing to rise, from 12.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 17.8 percent in the first quarter of 2023, according to the real estate firm CBRE, there’s an urgency to do something. Some of the hardest hit places include San Francisco with a preliminary vacancy rate of 29.4 percent, Houston 23.6 percent, Philadelphia at 21.7 percent and Washington at 20.3 percent.

In New York City, where the vacancy rate is 15.5 percent, Mayor Eric Adams announced in January a plan to bring 500,000 new homes to the city including what he calls rent-restricted units.

A key piece of that plan is to rezone parts of midtown Manhattan which currently only allow office and manufacturing spaces. Along with the rezoning, the mayor’s office is pushing bills in the legislature to approve tax breaks that would entice developers to invest in conversions that include affordable units as well as changes in the state’s multiple dwellings law that would allow buildings built through 1990 access to more flexible regulations that make conversions easier.

“The ability to really take our outdated office stock in the city is a true win-win because we not only shore up the office market, given the vacancy rates that we are seeing, but we also help reactivate our business districts, which really suffered right during the pandemic,” Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer said.

“We can also make a dent in this dire housing crisis that we’ve been in,” she said, noting that more than 70,000 New Yorkers sleep in shelters every night and there’s “essentially a functional zero-vacancy rate for the most affordable apartments in our city.”

Over the past two decades, nearly 80 office buildings in New York have been converted into residences — the most in the country according to CBRE. Around 200 more could be in play over the next decade, according to John Sanchez, the executive director of the 5 Borough Housing Movement, which supports conversion. That would produce around 20,000 units of housing.

The conversions are credited with turning lower Manhattan from a neighborhood that shut down at dusk into a sought-after destination for both families and foodies.

“What you saw was the fastest growing residential neighborhood in the city,” said Ross Moskowitz, a partner at the Stroock & Stroock & Lavan law firm who specializes in real estate, land use and public-private partnerships. “All of a sudden, you just saw strollers and dogs, so obviously that means that people are not just coming to work. They’re actually coming to stay.”

But conversions alone in New York and elsewhere are unlikely to bring back entire downtown neighborhoods, nor will they automatically put a dent in the affordable housing crisis. In a March report, CBRE found that office-to-home conversions only represented about 1 percent of new multi-family projects and that, despite the hype, that “there’s no evidence” they’ve significantly increased.

“Converting buildings is not easy,” said Luke Bronin, the mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. “There are a lot of buildings that just aren’t conducive.”

Issues include access to natural light and air, the absence of balconies in most office buildings and the need to install hundreds of bathrooms and kitchens, along with the accompanying plumbing, in buildings often constructed with just two large bathrooms per floor.

There also can be environmental issues, said Anoop Davé, the CEO of Victrix, a real estate investment management development company specializing in converting mostly vacant office buildings into residential buildings and hotels. “A lot of these buildings could have asbestos or something like that. That is not necessarily a deal killer but sometimes the cost or remediating is so large that even if you are given it for zero, it doesn’t work.”

Financing, current lease holders and zoning issues can present challenges, as well. Washington, for example, has a glut of federal buildings that are untouchable.

Christopher Nicholson, 38, a technical operations analyst, knows first-hand the pluses and minuses of living in a converted downtown office building — he has lived in two in downtown Denver. In 2018 he moved into a 31-story former office high-rise built in 1967 that was converted into apartments in 2006.

“It was in the downtown business district, so everything else next door was office buildings, and there was a big parking structure right next door,” he said. “There was definitely a lack of green space, the nearest park is more than a half a mile away. The grocery store was about a mile plus.”

He moved to his current building in 2020, a 130-year-old, nine-story former office building converted in 2000. His new building is right by the light rail and bus stops and near hotels that have nice restaurants and cocktail bars. That makes it easy to get friends and businesses colleagues to meet near his home, he said.

“I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” Nicholson said. “I think for what I get, I’m more than happy with the tradeoffs that I’ve made.”

Associated Press writer Manuel Valdes also contributed to this report.

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A new mixed-use development is coming to North Portland. The city’s Bureau of Development Services recently approved the design and land use for Coho Commons, a six-story, 42-unit apartment building that will be at 3836 N. Vancouver Ave., near the intersection with Northeast Failing Street.

San Francisco-based Eastwood Development is the developer and contractor for the project. This is the firm’s fifth market-rate project in Portland since opening an office in the city two years ago.

Coho Commons will include a mix of studios and units with one, two or three bedrooms; all will have their own balconies. The three-bedroom units – all on the top floor – will have access to their own private rooftop outdoor space that will be surrounded by an eco-roof.

Lucas Eastwood, principal and owner of Eastwood Development, said the firm wanted a broader range of unit sizes that would be inclusive to individuals, couples and families seeking to be in the area rather than maximize the building’s density.

On-site amenities will consist of automated stacker parking for 14 vehicles, plus an adjacent ground-level ADA space, 65 long-term bicycle parking spaces and five short-term spaces, and a bike wash and maintenance area.

BAMA Architecture + Design principal CJ Shumate said the size and building make-up represents the direction of development on North Vancouver Avenue since it was rezoned for higher density.

The building’s design features primarily a horizontal brick cladding with corrugated metal and spandrel wood panels, which Shumate said will bring a slight residential nature.

The team hopes to break ground by the end of the year, Eastwood said.

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The Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development has issued $810,000 in grants to support 15 communities as they work to implement the Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities program. Its aim is to strengthen transportation and housing planning, reduce climate pollution, and make communities more equitable.

Communities receiving assistance are Albany, Ashland, Bend, Central Point, Corvallis, Eagle Point, Eugene, Grants Pass, Keizer, Marion County, Medford, Philomath, Salem, Springfield, and Talent.

The grants provide consultant and direct assistance for building community engagement plans and studying potential areas to allow more climate-friendly development to occur. Those areas include city centers, town centers and transit corridors. Communities will update plans to have increased development where people can live, work, shop and play; improved facilities for walking, bicycling and transit; and reduced parking mandates to free up land for housing and other services.

Oregon’s work to address climate concerns has been in progress for more than a decade, starting with establishment of a greenhouse gas emissions reduction policy by the Legislature in 2007. The Oregon Department of Transportation has earmarked more than $15 million to support implementation. DLCD is seeking additional resources.

In 2020, the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission directed the DLCD to draft updates to state transportation and housing planning rules, and to convene a rulemaking advisory committee to help guide rule development to reduce greenhouse gases from driving.

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Portland’s Bureau of Development Services recently issued building permits for an eight-story, mixed-use development in the outskirts of the Gateway Plan District.

TimberView, previously named Glisan Tower, will provide 105 affordable housing units and a ground-floor food hall with four vendor spots. Apartments will be offered to people earning 60 percent of the area median income or less.

Access Architecture designed the project at 9919 N.E. Glisan St. Truebeck Construction is the general contractor.

The new name more adequately describes “what we are doing,” said Curtis Rystadt, the project’s developer. TimberView will have a mass-timber frame with glulam columns and beams and cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor panels. It will be the tallest CLT affordable housing development in Portland (possibly in Oregon), according to Access Architecture principal Brendan Sanchez.

The project is Access Architecture’s first to feature mass timber. Affordable housing developments like this one typically use “five-over-two” construction featuring concrete and light wood framing, Sanchez said. However, Rystadt wanted all timber, he said.

“When you look at building materials and their effect on the planet, steel and concrete are much more disruptive than wood,” he added. “Wood is the best building material that we have.”

Portland permitting

TimberView landed in the new, sparsely navigated waters of Type IV building classification. A statewide alternate method (SAM) for CLT – the first in the country – was introduced in 2018 and further adopted into the Oregon Structural Specialty Code (OSSC) a year later.

Only a handful of projects in Portland, including Central Lofts and the Chiles House, have been permitted under the Type IV C classification that allows a timber building up to nine stories (85 feet) to leave all the structure exposed as interior finishes. Only one other building as tall as eight stories, Minnesota Places (a mass-plywood-panel affordable housing development), has been permitted under it in Portland.

In fact, the most recent eight-story CLT project to receive building permits in Portland was Carbon 12. It became a catalyst for new building classifications.

On track to be the nation’s tallest timber building at the time, Carbon 12 had to go through a special permitting process that involved the state looking at the structural and fire and life safety aspects and the city of Portland reviewing the nonstructural components.

The only other mass-timber project taller than eight stories to receive building permits in Portland was Framework – a 12-story mixed-use development that was halted in 2018 due to escalating construction costs. The project team, however, has a redemptive building on track – Sandy Pine.

Now, projects like TimberView can enter Portland’s building permit process like any standard building – though review is a bit different, particularly for the fire rating. Like Carbon 12, TimberView is using a char layer for its main fire rating. In an event of a fire an outer layer of wood is designed to char but leave the structural core untouched.

Kevin White, a structural engineer for the city of Portland, said he spends much of his time double-checking the char layer calculations submitted by projects’ engineering teams to confirm whether: a) the building’s loads can be supported as is, and b) in the event of a fire, the remaining non-charred sections of the structure can still support the loads.

All buildings with Type IV classification must have a minimum two-hour fire rating. The taller the timber building, the more there is a need to encapsulate the structural frame by a fire-resistant material like gypsum board or steel.

Rystadt initially wanted TimberView to be 11 stories, he said, but use of an all-timber frame above 85 feet would’ve required more materials to achieve the fire rating. That would’ve increased the project cost.

Timber expression

Keeping the Type IV C classification for TimberView was important, Sanchez said, because the team could then expose as much of the mass timber as it wanted.

“One of the main drivers for the exterior concept was to express the structural frame of the building as well as the mass-timber components,” he said.

The building’s main body is clad in metal panels, while the commercial spaces and residential entry on the ground floor have wood-panel siding and exposed timber. Along the south face toward Northeast Glisan Street, a timber line carves up the building to the eighth-floor amenity deck where the metal panels disappear to reveal the timber structure.

A similar effect occurs on the ground floor to reveal the glulam columns and create little nooks by the food hall at the corner of Glisan Street and 99th Avenue where people will be able to eat outside without feeling like they are in the street, Sanchez said.

TimberView will be the tallest building in the area, which includes other apartments buildings.

Truebeck Construction recently completed Chiles House, Portland’s first affordable housing project to be constructed entirely of CLT. That is a main reason why Truebeck was selected as general contractor, Sanchez said.

Innovative elements

In addition to mass timber, TimberView will have radiant floor heating; neither feature is typically included in affordable housing projects.

Rystadt, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest with radiant floor heating, said it always felt like a luxury to come in from the cold, take off his shoes and feel a warm floor. He wanted the same for TimberView residents, he said.

Currently, the project is on track to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum standards. The building will have extra exterior wall insulation, high-performance windows, and all-electric systems – and be solar-ready, Sanchez said.

“I’d say the fact that we are trying to do multiple innovative design elements to this makes it more challenging,” he said. “Usually, you try to do one or two innovative things per project, so you are not biting off more than you can chew.”

With building permits issued, the project team is set to break ground soon.

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The U.S. Economic Development Administration has awarded the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition $41.4 million to develop and expand Oregon’s emerging mass-timber industry. The money is intended to address a worsening housing crisis, increasing threats of wildfires and the need for job creation in hard-hit communities.

The EDA will issue the award via its $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge. The OMTC is one of 21 coalitions selected from a nationwide pool of 529 applicants to receive funding through the challenge.

The OMTC is a partnership between the Port of Portland, Business Oregon, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Department of Land Conservation and Development, and the TallWood Design Institute – a collaboration between the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

The grant money will support university research involving the use of mass timber in housing; spur development of a factory to produce mass-timber housing; fund forest restoration projects in the Willamette National Forest; jump-start public-private partnerships to grow employment in the creation and use of mass timber in housing; and support efforts to modernize building codes in Oregon communities impacted by recent wildfires to enable use of mass timber in housing.

President Joe Biden in April visited Portland International Airport as part of a national infrastructure tour and met with members of the OMTC. He observed the use of locally sourced mass timber in PDX’s new roof and learned how mass timber can be used in housing.

“This is a transformational moment for Oregon,” Port of Portland Executive Director Curtis Robinhold stated in a news release. “The project will create rural and urban jobs with products grown and manufactured right here in Oregon. The innovations will enable production of high-quality building products from low-quality wood. This will increase housing, provide jobs and promote forest health. That means more homes at lower costs, new workforce opportunities and more climate-resilient communities.”

The Port of Portland will use funding for site improvements that will lead to construction of a mass-timber housing factory at Terminal 2.

“Already a global leader in mass timber, the Northwest is poised to bring mass timber forward as a housing solution,” Iain Macdonald, director of the TallWood Design Institute, stated in the news release. “Mass timber allows for rapid construction using sustainable, locally sourced, low-carbon wood products.”

The Build Back Better funding will support a comprehensive strategy for expanding the mass-timber housing market:

• The money will accelerate mass-timber research and development efforts via construction of an acoustic testing laboratory at the University of Oregon and a fire testing facility at Oregon State University. Also, applied research at UO and OSU will advance via testing of mass-timber housing prototypes for structural, seismic, durability and energy performance.
• Federal investment will offset the costs of site development for a mass-timber modular home factory, the UO’s acoustics research lab and a fabrication facility at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2. Planning for site improvements at T2 will begin immediately, with construction of the lab and site work expected to begin in 2024.
• Public-private partnerships will be developed to produce mass-timber homes at a greater pace and promote workforce training opportunities in advanced manufacturing and the use of mass timber in construction.
• The Oregon Department of Forestry will receive funding to implement forest restoration projects within the Willamette National Forest to improve resilience, reduce wildfire risk, and provide a sustainable supply for mass timber production. Resilience treatments will utilize a materials track-and-trace program to provide utilization and resource accountability.
• OSU will receive funding for research and development to modernize forest restoration practices, including improved forest inventory mapping, enhanced forest worker health and safety, and efficiency within wood supply chain activities. OSU also will develop workforce training curriculum to help promote employment in the forest and wood products industry.
• The Department of Land Conservation and Development will modernize development codes to support the use of mass timber in newly built modular workforce housing in 10 communities, prioritizing those impacted by wildfires in 2020.

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Community leaders and others gathered Tuesday to hail the grand opening of an affordable housing development in Portland’s Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood.

Crescent Court Apartments, at 11560 S.E. Division St., has 138 units for low-income families earning 30 percent to 60 percent of the area median income; monthly rent costs approximately $341-$1,410. Seven of the units are designated as permanent supportive housing for individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming so.

“It was a little over two years ago the city announced that it awarded $70 million to fund nine new affordable housing developments (via) Portland’s housing bond,” City Commissioner Dan Ryan said. “And today, the first of those nine projects opens its doors.”

Crescent Court Apartments is the second affordable housing development in which Related Northwest and Central City Concern are partners. It was designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects and built by Walsh Construction.

The 121,966-square-foot development has studios as well as one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments. Among the amenities are a community room with a kitchen, a shared laundry facility, internet stations, a teen room, resident service space, a playground, and a picnic area with a barbecue grill.

Also, Boys and Girls Clubs of Portland will open a 1,700-square-foot club inside the apartment building. Terry Johnson, CEO of the organization’s local chapter, said the club will be the first ever embedded in an affordable housing complex. Participation in the after-school program will be free for Crescent Court residents.

West Powellhurst Elementary School and West Powellhurst Park are within walking distance of the new complex. Mass transit along Division Street will make public services and amenities like the Midland Library, the East Portland Community Center and the Blackburn Center more accessible to Crescent Court residents.

In addition to $16.7 million in bond money from the Portland Housing Bureau, the project team secured funding from Oregon Housing & Community Services, Enterprise Housing Credit Investments, U.S. Bank, and Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services.

The Portland Housing Bureau, when selecting projects, places high priority on serving families, addressing homelessness and preventing displacement, and serving Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities, Director Shannon Callahan said. Crescent Court delivers all such opportunities, she added.

“It provides family housing,” she said. “It provides opportunities for east Portlanders to stay in their neighborhoods. It provides a full array of supportive services. And it supports families and is focused on supporting the immigrant and refugee community.”

The development team partnered with the Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) to provide outreach and help identify potential Crescent Court residents.

Construction started in November 2020 and completed late last month. The building has a 153-kilowatt, rooftop solar array and achieved Earth Advantage certification.

“This development was planned and built during extraordinary times,” said Ann Silverberg, CEO of Related California’s Northern California Affordable and Northwest divisions. “We’ve had snow, we’ve had fires, we’ve had smoke, we’ve had social unrest, we’ve had supply chain issues, we’ve had a pandemic, and this project still started on time, closed on time, and has … actually finished early and under budget.”

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By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of new single-family homes rose 12.4 percent in November, the fastest pace in seven months, as the housing industry continued to benefit from low mortgage rates and strong demand.

The November increase pushed the seasonally adjusted annual sales pace to 744,000 last month, the best showing since reaching 796,000 in April.

The median sales price of a new home sold in November hit $416,900, 14.1 percent higher than a year ago.

Demand has surged this year as many Americans cooped up by the pandemic seek out larger homes.

The sale of previously occupied homes rose for a third straight month in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.46 million units, the fastest pace since January, according to a report this week from the National Association of Realtors.

Extraordinarily low mortgage rates have intensified demand.

Freddie Mac reported Thursday 30-year fixed rate mortgages averaged 3.05 percent last week, down from 3.12 percent two weeks ago.

Mortgage rates are likely to move higher next year as the Federal Reserve phases out the monthly bond purchases it has been making since the pandemic hit nearly two years ago. The Fed has already signaled that it expects to start raising interest rates as early as next spring to check sharply rising inflation.

But interest rate increases are expected to be modest and the shift higher may actually intensify demand as Americans try to lock in rates before they head even higher.

“Anticipation of higher mortgage rates as the Fed tapers should be supportive of sales over coming months,” predicted Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

For November, sales were up in every region of the country except the Midwest, which saw a 25.4 percent drop. New home sales surged 53.2 percent in the West and were up 15.6 percent in the Northeast and 2.7 percent in the South.

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By TERENCE CHEA
Associated Press

A new generation of startups wants to disrupt the way houses are built by automating production with industrial 3D printers.

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, uses machines to deposit thin layers of plastic, metal, concrete and other materials atop one another, eventually producing three-dimensional objects from the bottom up. In recent years, 3D printers have mostly been used to create small quantities of specialized items such as car parts or prosthetic limbs, allowing consumers or businesses to produce just what they need using the machines at home or work.

Now a small number of startups around the world are applying 3D printing to home construction, arguing that it’s faster, cheaper and more sustainable than standard construction. They say these technologies could help address severe housing shortages that have led to soaring home prices, overcrowding, evictions and homelessness across the U.S.

But 3D home construction is still in the early stage of development. Most startups in this field are developing new technologies and not building homes yet. And two of the highest profile and best-financed companies – Mighty Buildings and ICON – have delivered fewer than 100 houses between them.

To move beyond a niche market, construction firms will need to significantly ramp up production and persuade home buyers, developers and regulators that 3D printed houses are safe, durable and pleasing to the eye. They’ll also need to train workers to operate the machines and install the homes.

“To the extent that 3D printing can offer a faster, cheaper way to build even single family housing units or small units, it can address a portion of the problem,” said Michelle Boyd, who directs the Housing Lab at the University of California, Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. But the sheer magnitude of the housing shortage demands many types of solutions, from loosening zoning restrictions to building more high-rise apartment buildings, she said.

Proponents note that printing houses rather than nailing them together could save huge quantities of scrap wood, metal and other discarded construction materials that are dumped into landfills every year.

Backers say 3D printing reduces the need for human labor at a time when home builders are struggling to find enough skilled workers to meeting housing demand. Many construction workers left the trades after the housing-fueled financial crisis more than a decade ago, and fewer young people are entering the field.

Jason Ballard, CEO and co-founder of a 3D printing construction startup called ICON, said its 3D printing system can do the work of 10 to 20 workers in five or six different trades. And unlike humans, the machines can work up to 24 hours a day, saving developers time and money.

“With 3D printing, we’re able to print exactly what we need,” said Sam Ruben, the company’s co-founder and chief sustainability officer at Mighty Buildings. The process can eliminate nearly all construction waste, he said, which can add up to savings of two to three tons of carbon per housing unit.

In Mighty Buildings’ factory warehouse in Oakland, California, a 3D printer deposits thin layers of a stone-like material that quickly hardens under ultraviolet light and resists fire and water. Wall panels are printed one layer at a time and then filled with an insulating foam. Robotic arms finish the surfaces into various designs.

The printer can produce the entire exterior shell of a studio home or individual wall panels that can easily assembled with simple tools, the company said. Mighty Buildings is now producing 350-square-foot backyard studios, known in the industry as “accessory dwelling units,” that can be used as extra bedrooms, playrooms, gyms or home offices.

So far the company has delivered six units and has another 30 under contract, starting at $115,000 each, which doesn’t include the cost of installation and site work. Two units can be combined to make a 700-square-foot dwelling. The company’s home construction costs are about 40 percent lower than that of traditional homes in California, Ruben said.

Most of the modules are assembled in the factory, transported by truck to the owner’s property, then put into place using a crane. The unit size is limited by the dimensions of the truck bed and the clearance heights of tunnels and overpasses.

Backed by more than $70 million in venture capital, Mighty Buildings is planning to build more factories with a goal of producing 1,000 housing units next year. It’s also creating software that allows developers to custom design printed buildings . Ultimately, the company plans to produce townhouses and multistory apartment buildings, Ruben said.

Mighty Buildings is teaming up with a Beverly Hills, California-based developer, the Palari Group, to create a planned community of 3D printed homes in the desert resort community of Rancho Mirage in California’s Coachella Valley.

The solar-powered development, set for completion next spring, will have 15 lots with a 1,450-square-foot primary home plus a 700-square-foot secondary home and swimming pool in the backyard, costing around $850,000, said Basel Starr, Palari’s CEO and founder.

Those lots sold out quickly and there’s a waiting list of 500 homebuyers, Starr said. He’s planning similar developments in other parts of California.

Austin, Texas-based ICON has used 3D printing technology to produce low-cost housing. It’s printed homes for the chronically homeless in Austin as well as poor families in Nacajuca, Mexico. Instead of producing homes in factories, it brings its Vulcan printer to work on-site, squeezing out long tubes of concrete layer by layer that dry quickly to form the walls of a house.

“The factory comes to you, imprints the house right where it intends to be. We chose that method to eliminate a lot of the shipping costs and then also to give ourselves a lot of design freedom,” said Jason Ballard, ICON’s CEO and co-founder.

Its current technology can reduce construction costs by up to 30 percent and build a house twice as fast as traditional methods because the 3D printer does nearly all the work, Ballard said.

“The benefits that automation and digitization had brought to so many other industries with regard to speed and affordability were completely missing from the construction industry,” Ballard said. 3D printing, he said, “was like the most powerful automation of all the automations we could discover.”

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