Construction projects can generate a lot of waste material. So why not reuse some of that material for productive or even humanitarian purposes?

That’s the rationale for a new pilot program being developed by Carleton Hart Architecture team leader Julia Mollner and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design (CPID). Together, they’re looking to convert the interior and exterior mock-ups used for large projects into tiny homes for people without housing.

Mollner, previously a graduate fellow at PSU, was one of the students who designed sleeping quarters for a proposed “village” as part of CPID’s POD Initiative. Later, Kenton Women’s Village, a cluster of tiny houses, opened in North Portland in summer 2017. She believes more can be done.

Projects “have all this usable waste,” said Mollner, now an adjunct professor at PSU. “It’s about how can we figure out a reasonable way to siphon off reusable materials that could go to community builds. The village model works and it’s about how these mock-ups can plug into the village model.”

In the program, instead of limiting a project mock-up to a single wall or a corner with two walls, a complete structure with four walls and a roof is built using samples of the project’s interior and exterior materials. The structures are even wired, plumbed and finished on the inside.

Mock-ups normally are recycled or discarded when a project is finished. But in this scenario these complete structures will be shipped wherever they are needed following their project use.

Todd Ferry is a CPID senior research associate. He has worked on the mock-ups and related initiatives with Mollner over the past several years and said the concept is “genius” in its simplicity.

“It has the possibility of being game-changing in terms of addressing homelessness and affordable pods,” he said. “It doesn’t just have to be pods. There could be thoughtfulness on how these things can strategically be used for impact and not just go into the waste stream.”

Ferry noted that Mollner is not simply building a prototype; she’s looking to enact systemic and widespread changes in how housing is provided to Oregon’s most vulnerable citizens.

“She was part of our first class of student fellows in 2014 and one of the first graduates of our public interest design graduate certificate,” Ferry said. “She’s a natural leader, she gets stuff done, and it’s amazing to see her going from a student leader to a leader in the professional world. And we’ve been really fortunate to work with her.”

The idea may be simple, but construction of a complete sleeping pod from a mock-up requires the entire design-build team, including subcontractors. The intent is to ensure professional design and keep volunteer work to a minimum so that quality is preserved.

Mollner has been working to develop a functional model for two years now and currently has assistance from two CPID graduate students. By traveling to job sites and suppliers’ locations, they have researched what types of materials work best to create usable mock-ups and how they could best be constructed.

CPID is developing a formal guidebook that outlines design parameters, specifications, sample drawings and timelines outlining how a mock-up can be built and donated.

“Knowing that this is in the early stages makes this about building awareness right now,” Mollner said. “It’s a feel-good thing for the contractors and it will save … money. It’s shifting money from waste hauling to the local community and it’s almost a one-to-one right there.”

As the earliest and most direct connection with clients and owners, she added, architects typically are in the best position to decide whether a project will be suited to such a program.

“Most projects set sustainability goals in early design, so if one has to do with waste reduction or maybe it’s for a nonprofit and there’s a way they can loop it back to the mission of the owner, then that’s a way to do it,” she said.

Scott Mooney, a senior associate at SRG Partnership, is also a CPID professional fellow. He helped design the template used for sleeping pods at Kenton Women’s Village 2.0. Now he is working with Mollner on the first mock-up intended for reuse. First, it’s bound for PSU’s Fourth and Montgomery office building, which is being built by general contractor Andersen Construction. This first mock-up is still being assembled and tested at Andersen’s Swan Island shop. A second mock-up is being constructed on-site at the Nesika Illahee affordable housing project being built by LMC Construction in Northeast Portland.

For the Fourth and Montgomery mock-up, CPID is coordinating donations of materials and shipment of those materials. Andersen Construction has committed to shipping the mock-up when it’s no longer needed on-site.

Without a support plan and infrastructure in place, Mooney pointed out, construction of sleeping pods or tiny homes will do only a small amount to address the homelessness issue.

“Huge amounts of resources go into making these mock-ups, so being able to divert those resources in a meaningful way is a really powerful concept,” he said. “It has huge potential, but we need to create places for these mock-ups to land, and it should be a priority. That way, as other pods come online, (mock-ups) have places to go.”

Catholic Charities, the group behind Kenton Women’s Village, has already agreed to take possession of the Fourth and Montgomery mock-up when that project wraps up.

“That’s one of the hidden costs of these villages,” Mooney said. “In order to have the next village up and running, it’s not just the infrastructure but the social infrastructure that we have to support.”

Important lessons have already been learned when it comes to making the concept sustainable, Mollner said. The biggest, she noted, is being clear about the scope of work and how much is going to be absorbed into the construction budget. Then there is the matter of building the pods and finalizing a reliable method of transporting them to where they are needed most.

“Right now we’re looking for research funding for how this can be replicated more easily,” Mollner said. “We’re working with city of Portland on streamlining processes and how it can be replicated in other jurisdictions.”

The post Converting construction waste into housing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Several weeks of work culminated Friday with a series of resounding successes for the hundreds of people involved in the Pod Build Challenge for Kenton Women’s Village in North Portland.

Twenty-one teams from the metro area have spent that time building new sleeping pods for homeless women living at the transitional housing complex. After countless hours of work to craft and install at least 14 of the new pods at a new location at North Columbia Boulevard and Argyle Way, teams engaged in a celebration.

“Today when I came here and I saw all these people showing up it just blew my mind,” said Maddy Stolowitz, director of corporate philanthropy for Andersen Construction. “All the builders have put so much thought and care into it, and you can just tell they were really thinking about these women. I feel like I’m hopeful that these women feel loved and cared for while transitioning out of homelessness.”

Each team built its pod using one of three designs provided by SRG Partnership, Scott | Edwards Architecture and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design. Teams were given freedom to express their creativity within the bounds of the floor plans.

“The guys love doing stuff like this, and for us it’s a change of pace because we’re concrete workers,” said Russ LaVaque, Andersen Construction’s general superintendent. “So, we all got to work with wood and that was great. It’s all recycled wood that came off of jobs, glu-lams that are 80 years old. The 4-by-4s underneath are all re-shores that are 40 years old. So it’s pretty nice.”

Future residents of Kenton Women’s Village participated in the judging portion of the Pod Build Challenge. Andersen Construction’s pod, made largely from reclaimed timber from past projects, received the “Best in Show” award.

“There are so many wonderful things that have been done,” said head judge Deborah Kamprath, a project manager with Catholic Charities. “There was a lot of love going into decorating and extra pieces and cool water saving things like the one with the gutter going into the water reclamation.”

Kenton Women’s Village originally was located on a different property nearby. However, it was always intended to be temporary; that property now is being developed by nonprofit REACH Community Development Corporation. Ground was broken there in January on a three-building, 189-unit affordable housing project designed by MWA Architects and scheduled for completion in spring 2020.

“We came together as a community to play one small piece in helping (the women) transition into, hopefully, affordable housing and a better situation,” Stolowitz said. “And (for) our team, it’s just been the most fun. We’ve had our superintendents and carpenters come together with our project engineers and our leadership team, and everyone played a role. And it wasn’t always people who have gotten to work together before, so it’s just been really a labor of love.”

Pod Build Challenge awards

Best in Show: Andersen Construction

Most Creative Interior Customization: Elite Development

Most Creative Exterior Customization: D.R. Horton

Best Interior Craftsmanship: LMC Construction

Best Exterior Craftsmanship: D.R. Horton

Most Creative Material Use/Reuse – Interior: ReBuilding Center

Most Creative Material Use/Reuse – Exterior: Professional Women in Building

The post Sleeping pod construction efforts celebrated appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A host of local contractors this week will unveil their creations for the Kenton Women’s Village Pod Build Challenge, a friendly design-build competition to create sleeping pods for women transitioning out of homelessness.

Teams representing multiple Portland-area commercial and residential builders have spent the past eight weeks creating 21 sleeping pods for the Kenton Women’s Village transitional housing community in North Portland. Each team donated labor and materials to build a structure based on one of three proven designs by SRG Partnership, Scott | Edwards Architecture and Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design.

Teams were encouraged to create their own custom touches within the bounds of the original floor plan, and residents of the village will help judge the designs as part of a community celebration of the volunteer effort. Participants will be putting the finishing touches on their creations during Friday’s event, which runs from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Kenton Women’s Village site at North Columbia Boulevard and Argyle Way.

The new pods will be judged in four categories: Best Innovative Use of Materials, Most Creative Modifications, Best Craftsmanship, and Best in Show. Winners will be announced during a ceremony that begins at 1 p.m. The pods will also be available for viewing during a Portland Design Week open house event on Sunday, April 7, from 2:30-4 p.m.

The Pod Build Challenge was created by Catholic Charities in partnership with the Andersen Construction Foundation, PSU Center for Public Interest Design, the City of Portland Joint Office of Homeless Services, SRG Partnership, Home Builders Foundation, Home Builders Association, Kenton Neighborhood Association, and others. LMC Construction has spearheaded the effort to prepare the site for the installation of the pods, and has been working pro bono since last fall to install concrete pads, utilities, and landscaping.

The post Pod Build Challenge creations to debut appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

At the new location of Kenton Women’s Village, a collection of tiny homes for homeless women, space is waiting to be filled.

On April 5, representatives of teams building 21 new modular homes will unveil their creations. Thirteen of them will be chosen for installation at Kenton Women’s Village, while the remaining eight will go to another site overseen by Catholic Charities.

The Pod Build Challenge is being led by Andersen Construction to help populate the village at 2420 N. Columbia Blvd.

“We are still fleshing out some of the competition details,” Maddy Stolowitz, director of philanthropy for the Andersen Construction Foundation, the main sponsor of the Pod Build Challenge, said last month. “But I’m hoping that we can ask some of the women from the village to be the judges.”

Recently, a “Build Out Event” took place. Professional Women in Building teamed with the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland to help roof four of the new modular homes at the Mods PDX warehouse in North Portland.

“This is just a way for the residential building community to come together and give back to the community doing what they already know how to do,” said Brenda Ketah, executive director of the Home Builders Foundation, a Portland nonprofit dedicated to building new housing for the homeless. “So they are leveraging their relationships by getting donated labor and materials.”

The contractors building those four homes in partnership are Stephens Homes and Legend Homes. Other contractors involved in the roofing effort included BC Homes and Elite Development.��������� Integrity Insurance and Bonding, a company that specializes in representing contractors, had staff volunteers involved.

ABC Roofing, Columbia Roofing and Sheet Metal and Bliss Roofing each sent a group of employees to help roof the new modular homes. Metal panels were donated by Taylor Metal.

“It just felt like a good opportunity for (National) Women in Roofing to partner with Professional Women in Building to provide temporary housing for homeless women,” said Stephanie Baird, general manager of Clackamas-based Bliss Roofing and co-chairwoman of the Oregon chapter of the National Women in Roofing. “It just felt like full circle to me.”

The new homes being built are next-generation models in both design and construction.

“Several architecture firms around town came together, so there are three pod designs that were randomly given to the builders,” Ketah said. “There’s a little bit of a variation in the village and they won’t all look exactly the same, but they’re all put together using best practices based on what has and has not worked at the previous Kenton Women’s Village.”

The original Kenton Women’s Village, at 2221 N. Argyle St., was intended to be temporary. The community, sponsored by Catholic Charities, was built on property that is now being developed by nonprofit Reach Community Development Corporation. Ground was broken there in January on a three-building, 189-unit affordable housing project designed by MWA Architects and scheduled for completion in spring 2020.

Kenton Women’s Village homebuilders:

Andersen Construction
Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter
BC Custom Homes
Bremik Construction (sponsoring Constructing Hope)
Builders FirstSource
DR Horton
Legend Homes (sponsoring Professional Women in Building)
LMC Construction
O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders
P&C Construction
R&H Construction
The ReBuilding Center
Skanska USA Building
Stephens Homes (sponsoring Professional Women in Building)
Turner Construction

The post Pod Build Challenge keeps moving forward appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A cluster of tiny homes in North Portland that serves as a shelter for homeless women has been moved to a new location thanks to the efforts of a small army of volunteers and the support of the local building industry.

Kenton Women’s Village opened in summer 2017 as a one-year pilot project on a city-owned lot in the Kenton neighborhood. The idea was to create a transitional housing community for women experiencing homelessness without the constraints of a traditional overnight shelter environment, where women’s safety can be at risk and a sense of permanence is lacking.

“This is more individual; it’s their home,” said Deborah Kamprath, development project manager with Catholic Charities, which operates the shelter. “They have privacy and a place to put their stuff, where with shelters you don’t have that. You’re just going in for the night and leaving in the morning.”

The original village had capacity for 14 residents, all whom were housed in small sleeping “pods” designed and built by the Partners On Dwelling Initiative, which included Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design and several local architecture firms. The goal was to create a replicable model for tackling the homelessness issue by building small, inexpensive housing units that would be easy to mass-produce and transport.

The village proved to be a success, and when the yearlong trial period expired the Kenton Neighborhood Association voted overwhelmingly to allow it to stay in operation. Imminent construction of a low-income housing development on the village site meant a new location had to be found, and a suitable one on another city-owned parcel just a few hundred feet away was chosen.

LMC Construction has spearheaded the effort to prepare the new site, an approximately three-quarters-acre parcel at 2420 N. Columbia Blvd., for the move. The firm has been working pro bono since this past fall to build concrete pads for the housing pods, grade and landscape the site, and install electrical, plumbing and sanitary service.

The project has come to fruition thanks to the help of multiple contractors, suppliers, design and engineering firms who have donated labor and materials to make the move happen. Scott Kotlarz, a superintendent with LMC Construction, said he has received overwhelming support from firms that are eager to support the effort.

“I don’t have submittals (and) I don’t have contracts with anybody, but everybody has stepped up,” he said. “They’re here no matter when I call. It’s been great.”

The Northwest College of Construction (NWCOC) has been instrumental in supplying labor, Kotlarz said. Students have helped with multiple scopes of work, including concrete, framing, site work and landscaping. Late last month, students in a Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center pre-apprenticeship program, led by a NWCOC instructor, helped put the finishing touches on the new site by framing a trash enclosure, laying hog’s fuel paths and building decks.

Residents are expected to return this week to the village, which will reopen with six of the original pods, one donated tiny house and two donated temporary tiny homes on wheels. A second phase of work will bring the site up to its capacity of 20 pods; volunteers last week kicked off an effort to build additional units.

A total of 21 commercial and residential builders have committed to participation in the Pod Build Challenge, during which they will each construct a unit over the course of the next couple of months before installation on site in April. The units will be installed with the help of Andersen Construction. The remaining eight units will be installed at a second village location later this year.

For Kotlarz, whose work on the project will be wrapping up with the completion of this phase, it has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of his nearly 40-year career.

“It’s been neat to see this process develop as it goes,” he said. “It’s not so much a job; it’s more an honor to be present and be a part of this.”

The post It takes a village … to move one appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A relatively small residential project in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood could provide a glimpse at the future of wood-framed construction.

In addition, the project aims to revive a long-disregarded housing type – single-room occupancy – now found only in a few aging hotel buildings scattered around Portland.

The first phase of the proposed would provide 35 studio apartments, a one-bedroom manager’s apartment and six additional single-room dwellings. They would fill four buildings on property at 2310 N. Hunt St. According to a request for design review filed with the Bureau of Development Services on Oct. 15, three of those buildings would each hold two single-room units. The apartment building would also have a community room.

The project, developed by Portland nonprofit Transition Projects, is part of the same initiative that produced the Kenton Women’s Village and is aimed at much the same demographic. All units are intended for persons earning no more than 60 percent of the median family income for the metro region.

Holst Architecture has designed the project; a voluntary design advice hearing before the Portland Design Commission took place in July. In total, LISAH will provide 72 residential units, it was split into two phases because of funding concerns centered on low-income housing tax credits. The first phase is now before BDS staff and calls for 42 total units.

“The project finally got its approval for the competitive tax credits from the state,” Holst Architecture marketing director Abigail Carlen said. “That will fund the whole thing eventually, but right now they’re going forward with the first phase. They’ve been working on it for quite some time. It’s been three years now, so it’s good that they got those credits secured.”

Modular components will be used to piece the four structures together.

“We were brainstorming with Transition Projects on how to bring the cost of housing down and what we could do differently,” Holst Architecture principal Dave Otte said. “They were interested in tiny houses, and we quickly came to the realization that with any kind of scale or adaptability to different parts of the city, doing something bigger made more sense. So, the way these duplexes came about was we thought, ‘What if we took tiny houses and stuck them together?’”

To accomplish this, Holst Architecture turned to Mods PDX, which manufactures prefabricated wood-framed walls and other residential construction components.

“We’re still working on details on how they’ll be divided up and go together,” Otte said. “But basically the idea is to make the boxes in the shop to ensure quality control and bring them out to the site and save a lot of time. You can be doing your site work while you’re building the boxes in the shop. While you’re grading, you’re building at the same time.”

Otte said he hopes modular construction will reduce the construction time frame by several months.

“The question is: How do we get housing on to the market to folks who need it the most as soon as possible?” he said. “So that’s why as soon as we got the funding we were all systems go.”

The property, near Kenton Park, currently hosts the 14 tiny houses of Kenton Women’s Village with its 14 tiny houses. The village opened last summer as a temporary housing solution that eventually would be replaced by permanent affordable housing.

The 9 percent federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit allows Transition Projects to complete the purchase of the site from Prosper Portland and move ahead with construction, which will cost an estimated $11.2 million, according to a city report. A $500,000 grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust also was a key piece of funding.

“We are now finally moving full steam ahead,” Otte said. “It has been a difficult process getting people to buy in to the model.”

The post Affordable housing development advancing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When it comes to local efforts to create the next generation of housing for the homeless, computer-aided saws and plywood will be as instrumental as hammers and nails.

“We thought there was some technology that could lead to some really interesting options,” said Todd Ferry, Portland State University research associate for the Center for Public Interest Design.

The results of the computer-aided process of building, part of the next stage of the center’s POD Initiative to create housing for the homeless, will be presented Sunday at the Portland Art Museum as part of an exhibit of pod design that will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Members of SERA Architecture and PSU students will build a plywood pod home in front of the museum from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The larger exhibit will feature 15 other pod designs created by Portland-area architects

“We did something called the plywood pod initiative,” Ferry said. “The museum wanted to partner with us.”

The plywood pod effort is an extension of an earlier project that used traditional wood-frame construction to build pods that now make up Kenton Women’s Village in north Portland.

The plywood pod, which measures 8 feet by 16 feet, is built using a Maslow Computer Numerical Control (CNC) cutting machine. Sheets of plywood are hung vertically by chains, and perfectly measured individual pieces are cut by a computer-controlled saw. The pieces then fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

“It’s a way to quickly and perfectly create something,” Ferry said.

The new approach also allows for easier assembly. The pods that were built for the Kenton Women’s Village required heavy machinery to move them from the where they were built to the final site. The new pods can be disassembled and moved easily, and then reassembled quickly.

“These are built in four sections that can be put up separately,” Ferry said. “This could completely change how big they could be. That is an exciting development in this whole process.”

“It was a little more of challenge,” said Tim Bestor, SERA’s senior job captain, designer and product manager. “The only downside is the innovation process. Conventional wood construction has been done for so long, it’s down pretty well.”

The learning curve aside, the technology has the potential to open up new horizons in the world of pod design and construction, Bestor said. He can imagine using the process to make warehouses full of pieces for pods. Those pieces could be shipped and put together in a fraction of the three to four weeks it took to make the first pods.

“It’s a great system,” Bestor said. “With further refinements, the possibilities are endless.”

Once the exhibit ends, the plywood pod that SERA and the PSU students build, with assistance from employees with Maslow, will be added to those already in place at Kenton Women’s Village.

Eventually other plywood pod homes will be built that will become part of a pod village planned for an industrial site in Clackamas County. Some of the pods in that village also will be built using trusses that PSU students built for the stage they designed for the annual Pickathon music festival last month.

Ferry said the exhibition will offer a chance to see some ways the issue of homelessness is being dealt with in the Portland-metro area. Attendees will be able to get information on how they can help solve the problem in their own communities.

“The exhibits will be about pods and houselessness,” Ferry said. “It’s this rich architectural problem of creating a dignified structure for the issue.”

The exhibition is part of the larger exhibit, Quest for Beauty: The Architecture, Landscapes, and Collections of John Yeon. Stephanie Parrish, the art museum’s associate director of education and public programs, said the pod presentation was a natural extension the larger exhibit.

“When we worked on the Yeon exhibition, we were thinking how to contextualize Yeon and how to contextualize it in Portland,” Parrish said. “He used plywood and we thought this would be a good exhibition showing how architects are solving problems today.”

If you go:

What: Miller Family Free Day — Exploring Architecture, Building Community

When: Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave., Portland

Cost: Free

The post Next generation of pod home design arrives in Portland appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify the status of Clackamas County‘s zoning amendment.

Village transitional housing developments like Kenton Women’s Village can face challenges due to zoning and land use restrictions.

When Clackamas County sought a site for a transitional housing project, officials chose a parcel on the far reaches of the Portland-metro area: on Southeast 115th Avenue, along a stretch of distribution warehouses for companies such as Fred Meyer, Bob’s Red Mill and Dave’s Killer Bread.

The property in an unincorporated area is owned by the county and zoned for industrial uses.

The site is far from ideal for transitional housing for a number of reasons. It’s remote from social services and employment centers, and poorly served by public transit.

Yet for local governments looking for somewhere to establish a site for homeless individuals, the options are few. In addition to frequent objections from neighbors, zoning and land use regulations are common obstacles.

Zoning schemes meant to separate industrial areas and residential neighborhoods, or apartments and single-family homes, make it difficult to find a home for the homeless.

“Traditional zoning approaches aren’t always set up for dealing with houselessness, so sometimes it takes some creativity in developing new tools,” said Andrew Yaden, a Clackamas County planner.

Clackamas County’s Board of Commissioners on June 27 approved moving forward with negotiations with Catholic Charities to operate a transitional housing facility.

Concurrently, the Planning Commission and Board of County Commissioners are considering a zoning ordinance amendment to allow for transitional housing.

“The county’s current land use regulations do not provide a clear pathway for organizations that would like to develop a transitional shelter community for houseless people,” county staff members wrote in a memo to commissioners.

Clackamas County is looking to house veterans at the site. The facility will be equipped with a community kitchen, showers, restrooms, a community room and a work shed. Catholic Charities will operate the site. Officials with the nonprofit are looking into what issues the location could present.

“We’re looking into that right now to see what challenges that’s going to pose to us in terms of managing the community,” spokesman Heli Del Moral said.

The county will bring plumbing and electricity to the 2-acre lot, clear blackberries and erect a new fence.

Yaden said the improvements are “pretty minimal because the site is realistically ready to go.” The changes also will give the county more flexibility if the site is ever sold.

“These are improvements that will make the site more marketable in the future,” Yaden said.

Fifteen sleeping pods will be ready to accommodate people by December. The remaining 15 pods will be built on-site by residents, who will gain basic carpentry skill, county spokesman Scott Anderson stated in a news release. The pods will be weather resistant and fully insulated and ventilated.

The sleeping-pod camp is just one response to homelessness, Yaden said. Clackamas County has formed a policy group of elected officials and department heads to examine other options.

“We’re trying to take a holistic approach, and this particular zoning amendment is hopefully just one of the tools we’ll be able to employ,” Yaden said. “We don’t think of this as the only site or only solution or only answer.”

The sleeping-pod camp is a similar approach to an existing facility for homeless women in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood. That facility at 2221 N. Argyle St. is also managed by Catholic Charities. The parcel is zoned R1 for medium-density residential use.

Oregon City officials are also considering building a pod for the homeless in a church parking lot.

“Everyone’s doing it a little bit differently, but this village approach is something that seems to be a common theme throughout the different projects that are finding success,” Yaden said. “There’s neat stuff going on up and down the West Coast.”

New proposals often come into conflict with decades-old land-use regulations.

The broad outlines of Oregon’s land-use system date to 1973, when Senate Bill 100 was signed into law. That legislation was led by Sen. Hector McPherson, a dairy farmer who was concerned about losing agricultural land to suburbanization.

“It’s certainly time to look at this again in a modern context,” said Jennifer Bragar, a Portland land-use attorney.

Existing land-use regulations are often a poor fit for innovative approaches to housing, Bragar said.

“The tiny homes example is one where it’s such a new form of housing that most codes haven’t caught up,” she said. “Are they manufactured homes? Those kinds of models don’t yet exist for tiny homes, so you’re looking at a new kind of use where you’re having to think about the residential infrastructure needed to house them.”

Zoning quashed an attempt by the city of Portland last year to move the Right 2 Dream Too camp from a lot on West Burnside Street to a city-owned parcel in the Central Eastside. The Central Eastside Industrial Council successfully argued the camp is similar in use to a mass shelter, and is prohibited by industrial zoning that is meant to create an industrial sanctuary within the city.

The Land Use Board of Appeals ruled against the city, reasoning that residential uses are generally prohibited in industrial zones such as the IG1 zone proposed for the R2DToo site. The collection of tents used by R2DToo is legally indistinguishable from a mass shelter structure, according to LUBA.

“In our view, it cannot possibly be consistent with the purpose and policy of protecting industrial sanctuaries from residential and similar uses incompatible with those sanctuaries, to categorize as an outright permitted use a use that is functionally similar, if not functionally identical, to a use that is prohibited outright in the city’s industrial zones because of its quasi-residential character,” the appeals board explained in its ruling.

The ruling, Bragar said, was a result of the city trying to adapt existing zoning for a use for which it was never designed.

“The City Council was trying to get pretty creative when the code was pretty clear,” she said. “The code says you can’t have this kind of living, so you can’t just call it something else and try to get away with it.”

R2DToo has since moved to another site near the Moda Center.

In Clackamas County’s case, commissioners are attempting to bring land-use regulations in line with the 115th Avenue parcel’s proposed use. The goal is to be the first fully permitted site of its kind, Yaden said.

The post Transitional housing headaches appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Portland’s Kenton neighborhood saw its population jump a bit over the weekend. At the bottom of a hill north of Kenton Park, ringed by $400,000 homes, 14 tiny homes now cater to homeless women. They were built via the Partners On Dwelling () , which is geared to help designers and volunteers become involved in the effort to address homelessness.

The first residents of the moved in Saturday.

“We are excited about it and what it portends for the future,” said Michael Cox, director of communications for Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office.

After more than seven months of planning, the POD village is a first for the city. The one-year pilot project is providing temporary housing on city-owned land. Catholic Charities is overseeing the project, including selection of residents.

The search for space for the village largely fell to Ben Mauro, program coordinator of Portland’s Office of Management and Finance. The office coordinated with Catholic Charities and Village Coalition to find a suitable property.

“I spent a lot of time looking at property across the city,” Mauro said. “We came across this piece of land that was owned by (the Portland Development Commission). We came up with the idea of individual structures.”

LRS Architects is one of the firms involved in the POD design effort.

“The goal here was to make sure these weren’t a shack,” said Russell Wisniewski, design team lead at LRS Architects. “Even though these are temporary, it shouldn’t feel temporary.”

The POD homes are very small. The largest one is just 8 feet wide by 12 feet long, while the tiniest is 6 feet wide by 8 feet long. The tallest home stands just 10 feet, 8 inches.

They are not hooked up to water or sewer. A tank at the village provides water for cooking and bathing, and a separate tank collects gray water. Two shipping containers have been converted into a communal kitchen and a separate bathing facility; portable toilets are also at the site.

The North Portland property also provides easy access to MAX light rail and other services aimed at helping residents improve their lives.

“These (POD homes) give residents an opportunity from which to transition to permanent housing,” said Catholic Charities’ Trell Anderson, director of community development and housing. “A lot of it has to do with income – maybe they have bad rental resumes. We help them work through that.”

Part of the site selection process involved community engagement.

“It’s been quite the journey,” said Tyler Roppe, chairman of the Kenton Neighborhood Association. “Obviously not everyone, but the vast majority of the neighborhood is very excited.”

Kenton residents were generally receptive to the village concept. They voted 178-75 in favor of issuing their approval.

“There was less resistance than I would have thought,” Wisniewski said. “I was kind of surprised at how positive people were.”

A big selling point of the PODs is that they’re designed more like homes and less like the tents and ramshackle structures that often make up such camps. Another feature of the village will even benefit Kenton residents.

“One of the coolest parts is the community garden,” Wisniewski said. “It will be used by both campers and neighbors and (become) part of the neighborhood.”

The post Unique village opens in Kenton neighborhood appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

As Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design (CPID) seeks to help alleviate the city’s housing crisis, it has garnered contributions from professional architects.

“Architecture and design usually only serve the wealthy,” said Todd Ferry, a research associate for the CPID. “We wanted to figure out how we can take our ideas to benefit underserved communities.”

A coalition including the CPID started the Partners On Dwelling (POD) Initiative. Fourteen teams signed on to create prototype housing pods that could help alleviate homelessness in Portland. The goal was for the pods to be able to be mass-produced easily and occupy a relatively small space.

“The idea behind them is that these would be longer-term transitional housing,” Ferry said. “So these would be somebody’s home for an extended amount of time.”

The pods are very small. The largest of the designs is just 8 feet by 12 feet while the tiniest is 6 feet by 8 feet. The tallest stands just 10 feet, 8 inches.

They lack almost all amenities. There is no electricity, heat or running water.

What the pods lack in creature comforts, they make up for in functionality. The houses are heavily insulated, and their small sizes help trap body heat. The tiny homes also have bedding and a variety of design features that help address challenges faced by the homeless. One pod includes a dry sink. Another structure features bunk beds and a second entry to allow multiple people to sleep. The pods also are designed to allow for storage and to be locked for security.

In addition, the pods’ sizes allow significant flexibility for location.

“Faith organizations were interested, and 6-by-8 (units) could fit on a parking spot and use the organizations’ infrastructure,” Ferry said.

The hope is that these structures could be used in a village setting, similar to other encampments like Right 2 Dream Too or Hazelnut Grove. One such “transitional village” for up to 14 women is already in the works at 2221 N. Argyle St. The project is currently receiving public input.

The pods were built in a fashion to require minimal, simple maintenance. Pod residents would be responsible for cleaning and maintaining the structures. In a village setting, a communal infrastructure of bathrooms, showers and sinks can be used.

A large effort was invested in making the structures aesthetically pleasing.

“Part of this is about changing perceptions,” Ferry said. “We are hoping that people would be willing to have these near where they live.”

Another big issue was keeping construction costs to a minimum. Each design team was given $2,000 through the mayor’s office to produce a prototype. Some teams invested their own money or raised additional money through GoFundMe websites to push the average amount spent to $3,000.

They were built fast. The project began with a design charette attended by nearly 100 designers, social workers, activists and houseless individuals on Oct. 1. The prototypes were on display by Dec. 5 on a parking

lot at Northwest Glisan Street and Park Avenue.

The time and design parameters posed a variety of challenges for project teams.

“We usually do these enormous projects with unlimited budgets (in class),” fourth-year architecture student Heather Peterson said. “This was the first time we have been pulled down to earth. It was a great dose of reality.”

One of the biggest challenges Peterson’s team faced was bringing light into the structure and giving the occupant a sense of separate living and sleeping spaces.

“We used a strip of polycarbonate to allow in filtered light,” she said. “We wanted to make something that had elements of luxury that you wouldn’t normally see in a structure like this.”

Each team used different features like small porches to maximize the space they had to work with and make the structure more than just a place to stay for the night.

“For our team, we thought it was important to give the people enough space that they could make it their own,” said Reid Weber, a project assistant on SERA Architects‘ team.

The teams also spoke to homeless individuals to see what elements they wanted in the structure.

“They said they tend to have a huge rat problem,” Weber said. “We made the floor as durable as possible. We used a wire mesh to stop rats from getting in.”

Even items such as insulation had to considered carefully with potential residents in mind.

“They said that staying dry was a big concern,” Weber said. “We used a rigid insulation to (keep the unit) drier.”

Heat was a big focus of LRS Architects‘ pod. Team members focused on the idea that it would be maintained with almost no resources from the person living in it.

“We wanted to make it as close to a passive house as possible,” said Kelsy Colvin, a project manager for LRS Architects’ team. “We designed it so it could be heated off of body heat.”

The architects found that many of the techniques used for their pod projects can be used elsewhere.

“I think one of the unique constraints was looking at how you move these,” said Scott Mooney, an architect with SRG Partnership. “How wide it can be and how tall can it be before you can’t get it on flat bed on a freeway. Those ideas are useful in context of prefab houses. How those elements get from A to B and how those elements are transported to another site.”

The pods nevertheless have significant drawbacks, according to Stuart Emmons, vice president of strategic development at Blokable, a company focused on modular stackable housing.

“These pods are what they are,” he said. “It’s better than staying outside. That’s fair enough; I get that. It’s dry.”

Emmons has focused on housing solutions for the homeless for much of his career. He said that the space needed for a pod could be a significant hurdle for use in Portland’s core, where property is so valuable. However, he acknowledged that the pods can be a part of the overall solution.

“These aren’t the only solution, but it is one solution,” Ferry said. “There are going to be many solutions to solve this problem.”

The post Stakeholders eye pods as housing for homeless appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.