LMC Construction is putting the finishing touches on the first phase of NAYA Generations, an intergenerational affordable housing development for seniors and families adopting foster children.  The 40-unit project was designed by Carleton Hart Architecture for co-general partners Native American Youth and Family Center and Guardian Real Estate Services.

The project was built on the site of the former Foster Elementary School at Southeast 85^th Avenue and Steele Street in the Lents neighborhood. It includes a total of four buildings and units ranging in size from one to four bedrooms. Common spaces will include offices, a community lounge, and laundry center. Large courtyards are intended to draw residents into common outdoor space, and planter boxes will be built for community gardening.

All four buildings are two stories, wood framed with slab-on-grade foundations. Cedar is incorporated throughout the project in siding, columns, trellises, fencing, and eaves. A temporary certificate of occupancy was expected to be issued this week, and residents begin move-in on January 10. A second phase of the project will include an approximately 32,000-square-foot early learning academy and community center.

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The NAYA Generations affordable housing complex planned for seniors and families in Southeast Portland is not Carleton Hart Architecture‘s first foray into intergenerational housing.

The Portland-based firm also designed Bridge Meadows, which was completed two years ago. The North Portland affordable housing development pairs elderly residents with families adopting children from foster care. This model has been lauded for its health benefits to seniors who volunteer to support families and as a means to facilitate the adoption of more children out of the foster care system.

Native American Youth and Family Center‘s $10.5 million NAYA Generations project was heavily inspired by Bridge Meadows. Guardian Real Estate Services is the developer, and the complex will serve a similar population with 30 housing units for seniors and 10 for families. But this project is definitely different, Carleton Hart principal Brian Carleton said.

“This is not Bridge Meadows II,” he said. “We’re taking some of things we’ve learned about intergenerational communities and bringing it to our Generations project, (but) there are some physical differences in terms of the site. It’s going to be a much denser project.”

Unlike Bridge Meadows, the NAYA Generations complex in Portland’s Lents neighborhood will focus on Native American culture. It also will include an educational component via a partnership with Portland Public Schools. In the second phase of the project, crews will construct a learning academy for kids in early preschool through kindergarten as well as an attached community center designed to look like a traditional Native American longhouse.

The Bridge Meadows model resonated with the Portland-based NAYA Family Center because of the large number of Native American children in foster care, NAYA Deputy Director Rey Espana said. Additionally, the role of elders as vital and contributing members of a community is a strong part of Native American culture, he said. NAYA Generations is geared toward attracting Native American seniors and adoptive families, but will be open to all races and cultures.

“We want to reduce the number of native children in the foster care system,” he said. “The second part is our agency’s commitment to education.”

One advantage of the NAYA Generations project following Bridge Meadows is that the Carleton Hart team can apply design elements that worked in the previous development and avoid those that are less effective, Carleton said.

Like Bridge Meadows, NAYA Generations will have a central shared courtyard and other communal space geared to encourage interaction among residents of all ages. One lesson learned from Bridge Meadows is that not all residents felt that they had easy access to the courtyard, Carleton said. The four two-story residential buildings of NAYA Generations will have porches that face a series of sub-courtyards as well as a central courtyard to equalize connections to shared outdoor space, he said.

“The design work that we’re doing with the Generations project is being very careful to make sure everyone has access to the community spaces,” he said. “You have to physically support that with the design work … It’s making sure that everyone feels like an equal member of the community.”

Throughout the project, the Carleton Hart design team is working to incorporate various elements that evoke Native American culture. This will be most apparent in the community center that is directly inspired by Native American longhouses, Carleton said.

“We’re using that traditional form so it’s going to be heavy timber construction with an open ceiling,” he said. “Throughout the learning academy and longhouse we’re trying to use indigenous materials.”

This was an especially important aspect of the project design for NAYA leaders, Espana said.

“It’s really to see what native and Northwest features can be incorporated into the design to really add that flair of native peoples in our area,” he said.

When complete, the development will encompass nearly three acres – the entire site that houses the former Foster Elementary School, which will be torn down to make way for the early learning academy. So, housing buildings had to be much more compact than at Bridge Meadows, Carleton said.

“It’s going to be a more attached housing approach where even the families will be in townhomes,” he said.

A big design challenge, Carleton said, has been finding ways to connect the development to the neighborhood because the site feels isolated and is surrounded by backyards. But the project team worked with the Portland Bureau of Transportation to create a new street that will cross the northern end of the site and connect to surrounding residential streets. Also, a nearby alley will be developed into a bike and pedestrian path.

These efforts impressed Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Portland Housing Bureau, another project partner.

“I’m particularly pleased with the design of NAYA Generations and how it fits into the neighborhood,” he said. “You see a lot of Bridge Meadows in the NAYA proposal. I think it’s got a great feel to it. It’s a community within a community.”

Construction of the first phase – approximately 35,000 square feet of housing – is scheduled to start in summer 2015 and require about a year. Ground is slated to be broken on the second phase – the approximately 32,000-square-foot early learning academy and community center – in 2016 and wrap up in 2018. LMC Construction is the general contractor.

NAYA Generations (first phase)

Location: 5205 S.E. 86th Ave., Portland

Estimated cost: $10.5 million

Anticipated construction start date: summer 2015

Anticipated construction completion date: summer 2016

Owner: Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA)

Developer: Guardian Real Estate Services

Architect: Carleton Hart Architecture

General contractor: LMC Construction

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On any given day there are more than 8,000 kids in Oregon’s foster care system. Last year, Renee Scott knitted sweaters for 25 of them.

“There’s always somebody here that’s willing to help, and that’s what (is) really nice,” said Scott, a 75-year-old resident of Bridge Meadows – a North Portland affordable housing development in which elderly residents are paired with families adopting children from foster care. “I think there’s a lot of talent here, whether cooking, baking, babysitting … cutting up pieces of paper.”

Scott sat at a table painting watercolors with friend and fellow resident Louise Fuller. Ordinarily they have several kids around them, but on this day Fuller was babysitting just one toddler. Scott and Fuller regularly hem pants, cook casseroles and host painting and sewing classes.

“We’re grandmas – extended grandma family,” Fuller chuckled.

The $11.4 million Bridge Meadows development opened in the Portsmouth neighborhood more than two years ago. It has helped facilitate the adoption of more than 20 children, and its unique composition (27 affordable senior housing units coupled with nine family homes) is contributing to better health for seniors as well as crucial support for families.

Project leaders say the development, which required complex financing, has already saved the state an estimated $1 million. The state would have had to pay that much during the childhoods of the adopted children if they had stayed in the foster care system. Plans are in the works to replicate the model in other parts of the city.

“We see the project as an enormous success,” said Thomas Brenneke, president of Portland-based Guardian Real Estate Services LLC, which worked with the Bridge Meadows nonprofit to develop the complex. “We’re talking about number two, and we hope there’s going to be a number three – and why not?”

Guardian is partnering with the Native American Youth and Family Center to develop an intergenerational adoptive community at the site of the former Foster Elementary School in the Lents neighborhood. The 40-unit NAYA Generations complex will be similar to Bridge Meadows, but with a focus on Native American culture.

The development will include an early preschool through kindergarten learning center, via a partnership with Portland Public Schools. Ross Cornelius, vice president of development for Guardian, said his team has found that affordable housing by itself is not enough to enact change. Guardian’s philosophy is to build housing that contributes to desired social outcomes.

“It does require a novel way of going about it,” Cornelius said. “We try to look for projects that have multiple benefits to them – not just straight-up family housing, but one that crosses other lines.”

In the case of Bridge Meadows, the desired outcome is adoption – each family is required to adopt two to three children. With that obligation, however, comes support in the way of social services, recreational activities and a built-in community willing to lend a hand when the going gets tough.

Derenda Schubert, executive director of the Bridge Meadows operational nonprofit, said the concept comes from an Illinois neighborhood called Hope Meadows.

“The idea is if you created a nurturing community, the healing would happen more quickly and be more sustained,” she said. “That’s exactly what we’re seeing.”

For instance, while most foster children move an average of three times while in the system, those who have come to Bridge Meadows haven’t relocated once. Also, for every child that is adopted, the state saves an average of $700 per month.

Meanwhile, Schubert is hearing anecdotally from doctors that her elderly residents are outliving their cohorts, which she attributes to a higher level of community involvement – all elders are required to volunteer 100 hours each quarter.

Bridge Meadows’ design helps facilitates that interaction. Housing units wrap around a central courtyard with gardens, patches of grass and walking paths. Mailboxes are located to encourage chance meetings, and community picnics are frequent. Carleton Hart Architecture was the project’s designer and Walsh Construction was the general contractor. Carleton Hart also is working on NAYA Generations, and LMC Construction will be the GC.

Guardian helped finance construction of Bridge Meadows’ 27 affordable housing units via a plethora of obscure state and federal sources – approximately $5.32 million came from the sale of low-income housing tax credits. The Bridge Meadows nonprofit added money from private donations and grants, including approximately $1.75 million in tax increment financing from the Portland Development Commission.

Rental income helps pay for the property, but the nonprofit is engaged in ongoing fundraising to pay for its services. Partnerships are critical.

“In order to make the resources go farther you have to do a lot of (partnering),” Cornelius said. “That’s something we’ve been able to distinguish ourselves on. We don’t go out there and try to do these (developments) on our own … It’s a great marriage because we bring the ability to bring capital and do the real estate, and they do the services – and when you put those together, it’s a real powerful combination.”

For NAYA Generations, Cornelius said he will seek low-income housing tax credits in the spring, as well as numerous sources of public and private dollars. The project team failed to land tax credits via its first application; however, if it were to secure funding next year, construction could start nine to 12 months later. The city of Portland has already committed $500,000 to help NAYA secure the property.

Brenneke said pulling so many sources together can be a bear that not many developers are willing to wrestle. His team does it for the social impact, but it doesn’t hurt that it’s profitable.

“We make money on it too,” he said. “I’m not ashamed to say that.”

Scott, meanwhile, is enjoying the result. She grew up two blocks away from Bridge Meadows and was one of the first people to sign up when she saw construction start.

“This is a good place for us old people because it does keep you active and keep you involved with young people,” she said. “It keeps people like me young.”

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