A 235-unit affordable housing community in downtown Portland is undergoing renovation; work is expected to finish this summer.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has provided Section 8 project-based rental assistance at Rose Schnitzer Tower. But that contract was set to end in December 2027. Via recapitalization, developer Guardian Real Estate Services preserved the subsidy for the next 20 years.

Portland has properties totaling more than 1,000 affordable housing units with regulatory agreements approaching expiration.

“Preserving existing buildings and preserving existing subsidies is huge, and frankly, just as important as new construction,” said Tom Brenneke, founder and president of Guardian Real Estate Services.

Rose Schnitzer Tower, at 1430 S.W. 12th Ave., was constructed in 1979. The 17-story building has one-bedroom units for low-income seniors. Residents pay 30 percent of their adjusted income for rent and utilities, while HUD provides a monthly subsidy payment to the owner to cover the remaining cost of maintaining and operating units.

The $9 million rehabilitation is addressing critical building systems and accessibility. The building envelope, mechanical and fire/life safety systems, accessibility features, interior common areas and designated mobility units are receiving improvements. Site work will include landscaping and entryway upgrades.

Approximately 12 residents will be temporarily relocated to available vacant units within the building or to nearby hotel rooms with kitchens.

The project team includes architect Leeb Architects, interior designer Tello Interiors, Denver-based construction manager and consultant Marx Okubo, general contractor R&H Construction, and relocation specialist Peregrine Relocations.

Guardian Real Estate Services recapitalized and executed the project for Robison Jewish Home, a Portland-based nonprofit. The company assisted with the building rehabilitation.

“We are a co-general partner, they (Robison Jewish Home) are a co-general partner, and a new tax credit investor, Royal Bank of Canada, is a limited partner,” Brenneke said.

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer donated the property to Robison Jewish Home around 20 years ago, Brenneke said, and the nonprofit will continue to own the property.

The project owner is Rose Schnitzer Tower Affordable Limited Partnership, which includes Robison Jewish Home, Guardian Real Estate Services, and tax credit investor Royal Bank of Canada.

Guardian Real Estate Services closed on financing for the project in December. A Freddie Mac Tax-Exempt Loan combined with 4 percent Low-Income Housing Tax Credit equity and $37 million in housing development revenue bonds from Oregon Housing and Community Services were used to complete the recapitalization.

“To really understand the way the state funding goes, you’ll find what I would characterize a very lopsided set of funding resources where around 75 percent of it is going toward new buildings and 25 percent is going for preserving existing affordable housing projects,” Brenneke said. “I’m an advocate for maybe some more balance here.”

Crafting a deal to preserve affordable housing is an enormous effort, Brenneke said, and it usually comes with rehabilitation.

Construction began in December and is expected to finish in July.

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Every night in the U.S., nearly 40,000 veterans face the prospect of sleeping in a shelter or on the streets, according to national statistics. But the Society of American Military Engineers’ Portland Post is now looking to help reduce that number in the metro area.

The Portland Post plans to this year host a concert to raise money to assist homeless vets and hopes to support groups like Transition Projects, which helps homeless residents. A representative of the group last month addressed approximately 50 SAME members during a luncheon.

“Today was our first introduction into ways we might be able to help,” Tony Roos, president of SAME’s Portland Post, said during the luncheon. “(Transition Projects’) mission really matches our own.”

Amethyst Hoos, Transition Projects’ supportive service coordinator for veterans, told SAME members that a military discharge other than honorable can be one of the biggest challenges for homeless veterans. As long as a veteran has at least one day of active duty, he or she is eligible to receive services from groups like Transition Projects. Outreach efforts to those veterans go a long way toward reducing the overall homeless population, according to Hoos.

“A lot of our programs are for folks that maybe don’t have an honorable discharge,” she said. “It really opens it up to maybe serve some of our folks that maybe aren’t receiving benefits.”

Both state and federal programs have made a considerable dent in the area’s population of homeless veterans. Multnomah County’s number of homeless veterans dropped from more than 1,000 in 2014 to fewer than 100 in 2016, largely due to efforts by groups like Transition Projects.

“This program has been in Portland for about six years,” Hoos said. “Now we are seeing the people who are chronically homeless who have been on the street three years or more.”

Homeless veterans often are dealing with difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and readjustment to civilian life. Supportive Services for Veteran Families is a nationwide outreach program that provides services with as few hurdles as possible.

“Our philosophy is housing first,” Hoos said. “We don’t require you to have a job first or be clean and sober before we help. We don’t have a lot of hoops for people to jump through.”

There are challenges to the progress that has been made reducing the number of homeless veterans. Funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development‘s VASH program, which provides housing vouchers for veterans, has been cut.

“This year, we were pretty dismayed to find out they wouldn’t be issuing new vouchers; they would only be sustaining current vouchers,” Hoos said.

Architecture, engineering and construction companies can help counteract some of those cuts by hiring more veterans, Hoos said.

“That veteran employment piece is not as defined as we would like it to be,” she said. “That is a piece that our veterans really need.”

Many veterans learn skills in the military that are directly applicable to positions within architecture, engineering and construction companies.

“We as an industry can’t fix that problem, but we can be part of the solution,” said Sal Nodjomian, SAME’s national president. “We have a dearth of skilled people in the industry.”

Nodjomian encouraged SAME members to reach out to veterans and try to lower barriers to life improvement.

“I get it,” he said. “We are all busy. If you only have 30 minutes to give, use it to help knock that last barrier down.”

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Existing home sales in the U.S. rose 4.7 percent between August and September, according to the National Association of Realtors. That adjusts to a seasonal rate of 5.55 million sales of single-family homes, townhomes, condominium and co-ops.

The median home price dropped from $228,700 to $221,900, but was still 6.1 percent up from last year. Housing inventory fell 2.6 percent to 2.21 million; the supply fell to 4.8 months, from 5.1 months in August.

Construction statistics were also released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week.

Housing starts rose 6.5 percent above August, to an annualized rate of 1,206,000, or 17.5 percent above last year. But building permits were down 5 percent, signaling that a slowdown in residential construction might be imminent.

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A $53 million redevelopment effort has refreshed a formerly blighted public housing facility in Southwest Portland.

The 60-unit Hillsdale Terrace affordable housing complex at Southwest Capitol Highway and 26th Avenue was built in 1968. It had become significantly depressed because of many building defects over the years.

Home Forward in 2012 looked to rejuvenate the property, and landed an $18.5 million HOPE VI grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The complex, renamed Stephens Creek Crossing, now features 122 apartments, two community gardens, playgrounds, and an “opportunity center” with meeting, classroom and kitchen space for educational purposes.

Once plagued by moisture problems, the entire property now manages 100 percent of its stormwater on-site, and features other modern sustainable features.

According to Home Forward, approximately one-third of the 49 previous Hillsdale Terrace households have returned to the property. Other incoming residents will come from a waiting list of nearly 3,000 households.

The redevelopment team, in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity, also created seven single-family homes for first-time homebuyers. They are near a children’s center at the corner of Southwest Capitol Highway and 26th Avenue.

The project’s general contractor was R&H Colas – a joint partnership between R&H Construction and Colas Construction; the architect was MWA Architects.

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Beaverton was awarded a $1 million grant to accelerate its plans for sustainable development through the , the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced yesterday.

The city will use the funds to work through its 20-year Civic Plan and move forward on urban renewal projects, focusing on the 24-acre section of Beaverton‘s downtown known as the Creekside District.

The Civic Plan, which went through 18 months of drafts and public comment before City Council approved it in April 2011, includes initiatives such as the creation of an affordable housing development strategy, the expansion of the Beaverton Central Plant, and other projects that will help establish a downtown core and connect housing to public transportation.

“Now we’ll be able to get serious,” said Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle, adding that five city staffers will work through various development plans and associated coding issues. “We are anxious to deliver the projects we outlined for urban renewal, and this (grant) will help us plan and do it right.”

HUD received applications for more than $500 million through its Sustainable Communities Challenge and issued approximately $96 million to communities throughout the country.

Beaverton will manage the grant in partnership with Portland State University and Clean Water Services and with support from the State of Oregon Regional Solutions Center, Friends of Beaverton Creek and the Central Beaverton Neighborhood Association.

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The Housing Authority of Portland in the last week took two big steps forward. First, the agency adopted a new name: “Home Forward.” And then one of its large housing redevelopment projects got the funding it needed to move ahead: an $18.5 million Hope VI grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Hillsdale Terrace will be among the last Hope VI grant recipients, because the program is expected to sunset this year. For years, the housing development on Southwest 26th Avenue in the Hillsdale neighborhood has been run-down and expensive to maintain, according to spokeswoman Shelley Marchesi.

“If the housing authority didn’t get this money (it) would have had to knock it down,” said Rick Nitti, executive director of Neighborhood House, a nonprofit provider of social services. Nitti lives in the area, and his organization works with Hillsdale Terrace residents. “It’s a horrible facility,” he said. “It was built in an area without adequate drainage: there’s mold in and outside.”

Home Forward’s application for a Hope VI grant to redevelop Hillsdale Terrace was rejected in 2009. The agency completely reworked the application, in particular where HUD focuses: community connections. The second time around, Home Forward also had more money secured for the project, including some that it had budgeted for the Resource Access Center/Bud Clark Commons project; it didn’t need it after receiving federal stimulus money.

The existing 60-unit Hillsdale Terrace complex is at the end of a dead-end road in Hillsdale, nearly invisible to those nearby.

“People who live two or three blocks away don’t even know it exists,” Nitti said.

“One of the biggest design efforts is going to be that connection,” said Bill Lanning, project manager with Michael Willis Architects. MWA is working with Home Forward to design the development.

“There’s really no grid for us to connect to,” Home Forward planning and design manager Julie Livingston said of the property, which slopes to a low grade. “The site is a big hole in the ground,” she said.

Home Forward acquired properties containing three duplexes along the entrance road to Hillsdale Terrace, leading up to frontage on Capitol Highway. Livingston said that physical presence should help create a greater community connection.

In addition, the design team is looking at ways to connect the community to nearby California Street, an unfinished road that Livingston imagines as a “linear park” that could serve as a walking path for Hillsdale Terrace residents and others.

“I think the linear park idea could be surprising, delightful and well-used,” Livingston said.

The $47.3 million redevelopment project calls for tearing down existing units as well as the three duplexes on adjacent lots to create a 6.6-acre site. Then 122 residential units will be constructed in several two- or three-story buildings, as well as two community buildings where residents can access a computer lab, employment help, early childhood education and a community kitchen connected to a garden.

The existing Hillsdale Terrace has three-bedroom apartments of 1,000 square feet each, and 83 percent of the households have children. The new units will include a mix of one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom units, with slightly larger floor plans, green building features and more daylight than the existing housing.

The plan calls for 73 of the units to be operated as public housing, 36 as section-8 affordable housing, and 13 with no rent subsidy to people who make up to 60 percent of the Portland area’s median family income.

Also, a new Habitat for Humanity project nearby will have seven houses available for purchase, with preference given to qualified Hillsdale Terrace residents.

Home Forward expects to issue a request for proposals for a general contractor this summer and then help residents relocate this fall. Demolition is planned for spring 2012. Tenants could begin moving in late in 2013, and Livingston expects the units to be leased completely before the buildings open.

Hillsdale Terrace will be the last of three (following New Columbia and Humboldt Gardens) big redevelopment projects Home Forward has led in the past 10 years, all funded by Hope VI grants. The agency operates 6,300 units it owns either solely or through partnerships.

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Three affordable housing complexes in Oregon next week will receive grants to perform energy retrofits from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to Leland Jones, HUD spokesman.

REACH Community Development Corp., the Salem Housing Authority and Volunteers of America will receive a total of $2 million in grants to perform energy-efficient renovations on aging housing complexes. The projects will be performed in Portland, Salem and Estacada.

“These are facilities that are perfectly good but that were built in the ’70s and aren’t as efficient as they could be,” Jones said. “Our goal with this grant program is to provide energy retrofit assistance to 100 of these complexes around the country.”

REACH will use its funds at the Powell Boulevard Apartments at 2105 S.E. Powell Blvd., which provide housing for low-income families in Southeast Portland.

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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s adoption of LEED for Neighborhood Development certification as a determining factor for its community planning grants could bode well for Portland.

HUD that they will use the LEED-ND designation to determine the location efficiency of a neighborhood, one of the key factors in receiving the community planning grants. The community grants are designed to help neighborhoods offer more affordable housing and transportation by providing capital to get projects started.

This news could give Portland a leg up when competing for these grants considering the city had five communities take part in the pilot program for the LEED-ND certification last year.

HUD has the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation to create a Federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities. The goal of the group is to take housing, transportation and the environment into account when planning neighborhoods. HUD has over $3 billion set aside for grant funding this year.

During a meeting with the Congress for New Urbanism, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, said, “It’s time that federal dollars stopped encouraging sprawl and started lowering the barriers to the kind of sustainable development our country needs and our communities want.”

Portland’s LEED-ND certified neighborhoods include the Eliot Tower, Ladd Tower, a 40-acre subdivision near Northeast Killingsworth Street and 64^th Avenue, Hoyt Yards and the Central District, a 35-acre site in South Waterfront.

The grants would be welcomed in Portland where the economy has really put a damper on public funding for things like planning. Like always, Portland has grand asperations for transit-oriented developments, but the economy hasn’t allowed many of the proposed projects to get out of the planning stages.

So, Portland, jump on this opportunity and remember why the city is a leader in urban planning.

The post HUD using LEED-ND for grant assessment, could help Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s adoption of LEED for Neighborhood Development certification as a determining factor for its community planning grants could bode well for Portland.

HUD that they will use the LEED-ND designation to determine the location efficiency of a neighborhood, one of the key factors in receiving the community planning grants. The community grants are designed to help neighborhoods offer more affordable housing and transportation by providing capital to get projects started.

This news could give Portland a leg up when competing for these grants considering the city had five communities take part in the pilot program for the LEED-ND certification last year.

HUD has the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation to create a Federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities. The goal of the group is to take housing, transportation and the environment into account when planning neighborhoods. HUD has over $3 billion set aside for grant funding this year.

During a meeting with the Congress for New Urbanism, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, said, “It’s time that federal dollars stopped encouraging sprawl and started lowering the barriers to the kind of sustainable development our country needs and our communities want.”

Portland’s LEED-ND certified neighborhoods include the Eliot Tower, Ladd Tower, a 40-acre subdivision near Northeast Killingsworth Street and 64^th Avenue, Hoyt Yards and the Central District, a 35-acre site in South Waterfront.

The grants would be welcomed in Portland where the economy has really put a damper on public funding for things like planning. Like always, Portland has grand asperations for transit-oriented developments, but the economy hasn’t allowed many of the proposed projects to get out of the planning stages.

So, Portland, jump on this opportunity and remember why the city is a leader in urban planning.

The post HUD using LEED-ND for grant assessment, could help Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Thursday the agency is giving 18 regional housing authorities across the state of Oregon a total of $11.5 million. These funds can be used for capital improvements to the public housing stocks of the various housing authorities.

The funds are part of HUD‘s annual , which this year totals more than $2.3 billion nationwide. Often the funds are used to make large-scale improvements such as new roofs or energy efficient upgrades. But they can be used for developing, financing or modernizing any public housing units owned by a housing authority.

The Housing Authority of Portland was the big winner receiving $5.1 million. The Housing and Community Services of Lane County received $1.3 million, and the Housing Authority of Clackamas County received $1.2 million.

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