A total of 1,130 units in 15 Portland affordable housing projects are approaching expiration of their 30-year regulatory agreements in the next 10 years.

The agreements are regulated by either the Portland Housing Bureau (PHB) or Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) and affect housing projects that are not owned or operated by nonprofit organizations, according to the PHB.

Some of the sites nearing expiration include the Rose City Center Apartments, The Belmont Dairy, Cherry Blossom Estate and Pier Park Apartments.

Danell Norby, housing investment and portfolio preservation manager at Portland Housing Bureau, said the Rose City Center Apartments expired in October and the owner, GFT Rose City LLC, has withdrawn from OHCS-regulated affordability. Plans for the 11 regulated units on the property are currently unknown by the bureau.

Pier Park expires in 2027. PHB received notice that the owner, Post Investment Group, plans to go market-rate. The owner had reached out to the city to see if there were possible tax exemption options they could access to facilitate preservation but there are not, Norby said.

Post Investment Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rose City Center Apartments, The Belmont Dairy, Cherry Blossom Estate and Pier Park are regulated by the OHCS. If an owner chooses to opt out of affordability housing when it expires, there is a mechanism in place to offer a three-year transition period for residents.

The Belmont Dairy’s PHB 25-year regulatory agreement restriction expired in 2022. The state’s 30-year regulatory agreement expires in 2026. The Portland Housing Bureau is working with a buyer, Vital Housing, which plans to preserve it as affordable housing. PHB is facilitating the preservation with a $6 million investment. The project will have a new 99-year affordability covenant, as the city’s current practice is 60-99 years of affordability for housing funded with city allocations.

For Cherry Blossom Estate – which expires in 2026 – the state is in communication with the owner, BCC Corp., which is interested in maintaining affordability, but the property would require rehabilitation. Cherry Blossom would have to go through a competitive process to obtain resources for renovation. OHCS spokesperson Delia Hernandez stated in an email that the owner can apply for OHCS’s Physical and Financial risk of loss funding that is geared toward rehabilitating affordable multifamily properties at risk of losing affordability.

The state’s Publicly Supported Housing Contract Preservation (PuSH-CP) process is a program for preserving the contract that qualifies a property as publicly supported housing.

“There is a framework in which the state-regulated projects have a three-year period where there is this window for notices that need to happen, both to the jurisdictions and to the tenants about what the owner’s intentions are,” Norby said of the PuSH-CP process.

If the owner is opting out of affordability, there is also a period after the expiration date where there are some controls in place, Norby said. The process is the state’s mechanism to get up-to-date information on what will happen with these projects and gives a softer transition period for expiring projects that turn to market rate.

Projects are required to notify OHCS at least 30 months prior to affordability expiration and again at least 24 months prior to affordability expiration if the owner is choosing to convert the property to market rate. Tenants must be notified at least 20 months before the conversion to market rate. Projects scheduled to expire from affordability restrictions are subject to a three-year safe harbor period to protect existing tenants from market rate level rent increases.

In addition, OHCS works with local governments and other interested parties before affordability expiration with the intent to file a right of first refusal, reserving a three-year period for which an offer to purchase could be matched by an OHCS-appointed designee who intends to preserve the property’s affordability.

Norby said PHB is interested in preservation of affordable units, however there are not a lot of resources currently available for this use. Portland’s Housing Bond and the Metro Housing Bond, a big part of PHB’s funding, have been used for newly regulated units. Most of the resources that exist for existing developments are aimed at rehabilitation.

Norby said investments in preservation of existing units and new construction should go hand in hand and there is a large need for affordable units at zero to 80 percent of area median income.

Norby added that it is more cost-effective to preserve existing sites rather than new construction, adding that some of the sites are in excellent locations, like The Belmont Dairy.

“There’s not that many regulated units in the Belmont-Hawthrone-Division area,” Norby said. “To lose units there, in a place where it would be very difficult and cost-prohibitive for us to do new construction, would be a real shame.”

PHB had one preservation Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) in 2023 and is looking to do more preservation funding around pairing multiple PHB funds with Portland Clean Energy Funds. Money would be deployed for energy-efficiency upgrades and other improvements to help preserve existing buildings. As part of that funding, PHB is looking at extending its regulatory agreements with any PHB-regulated development that is awarded those funds.

Through the 2016 Portland Housing Bond, PHB will have produced over 1,800 affordable units in a 10-year period. At the same time, 1,100 existing units could disappear as regulatory agreements expire.  Through the 2018 Metro affordable housing bond, PHB’s allocation is producing over 2,000 units.

“There are different ways that OHCS assists in preserving affordable housing,” Hernandez stated on resources available for expiring properties. “For example, one preservation opportunity may include extending the affordability of developments with expiring program restrictions, such as in the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. Preserving affordable housing is especially important for stabilizing rents at an affordable rate and ensuring property is well-maintained and up-to date.”

More details on funding categories, eligibility and how to apply for preservation funding can be found on the

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