With average home prices in Vancouver stretching past the $460,000 mark this year, the need for more deeply affordable housing in Clark County and Southwest Washington continues to grow unabated.

While market pressures still favor the construction of large single-family homes, a growing number of multifamily affordable housing projects are also being developed in Vancouver. One of the larger projects in this category in recent years is the 69-unit being developed by Mercy Housing Northwest. The six-building development was designed by Vancouver-based MWA Architects and is being built by general contractor Walsh Construction. Funding for the $22.2 million project is being provided by a variety of sources, including the City of Vancouver’s Affordable Housing Fund, PeaceHealth, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and private investors.

“PeaceHealth donated capital for the construction and they also donated 2 acres of land for the project,” said Alisa Huber, a senior project developer with Mercy Housing NW. “They are highly committed to the mission and highly committed to the community and to positive outcomes. Mercy organized the other financing resources and the development team and planned the project.”

It’s taken a while to get to this point. Talks to build the project began between Mercy Housing and PeaceHealth in 2016 and originally centered around a different property north of the PeaceHealth campus off Mill Plain Boulevard. The current project broke ground last July on 2 acres on NE 93^rd Avenue, with that street bisecting the development north to south. Completion is expected by August 2022.

“We went through a number of designs and the goal was to work with the local community and with PeaceHealth to develop something that was really a match for the neighborhood,” Huber said. “We started out with a denser design on a different parcel north of the hospital, but it evolved that this was a better match for what we were looking for.”

The six buildings are all three-story wood framed structures. Building A on the east side of the street is the largest of them and features a 7,500-square-foot footprint. It will house a community multipurpose room with a kitchen that will not only host tenant gatherings but also be used for classes on financial literacy and other subjects. It will also host visits by health care providers and other services, many of which will be offered by PeaceHealth.

“It’s a partnership aimed at affirmative health outcomes by focusing on the social determinants of health, things like housing stability, education and health care access, social connectedness,” said Colin Morgan-Cross, director of Real Estate Development for Mercy Housing Northwest. “All of these things are emphasized in Mercy Housing’s approach to housing and to resident services.”

The three-story structures are all rectangular in shape and provide little in the way of construction challenges, said Walsh Superintendent Pete Bruns. Where the difficulties have come, however, are largely the same as virtually every project going over the past two years: supply and material issues.

“The building itself is no challenge,” Bruns said. “The challenge was being able to procure product and materials for framing, like everyone who is having the same issues. That’s the biggest challenge for this project. I-joists are tough for flooring; the manufacturer only let out so many per project a month because that’s all they could handle.”

Other products in short supply include things like certain types of plastic pipe for plumbing; the popular Hardie plank siding, which is being removed from the company’s commercial offerings going forward; and numerous electrical components, including transformers.

“Hardie is going away,” said Walsh Project Manager Erik Wahrgren. “We got the last stick they made; and then our transformers we ordered in June last year, we won’t get them until March, so that was a challenge. But other than that, as far as the structure goes, it’s a friendly development.”

Like Mercy Housing Northwest and PeaceHealth, which share a common founder in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, Mercy Housing and Walsh Construction have a long and productive history together.

“Walsh has been a very reliable partner for us,” Huber said, noting that Mercy and Walsh will also break ground on the Marylhurst Commons project in Lake Oswego in July. “We have probably developed around 700 units of housing with Walsh in the last eight years.”

All of that work has previous been done in the Seattle market, however. The Mercy-Peach Health Family Housing and Marylhurst Commons projects are the firm’s first forays into the Portland area.

One hundred percent of the units at Mercy-PeaceHealth Family Housing will be affordable to families who earn less than 60 percent of the area median income, and half of the total units will be affordable to families who earn less than 30 percent.

“It’s a highly affordable project and it’s designed for families,” Huber said, noting that 31 of the 69 units will have two bedrooms and 15 of them will have three bedrooms.

“We have a long history of success with Walsh Construction and really appreciate that shared partnership over time,” Morgan-Cross said.

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