A new building in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood of North Portland is providing an essential community asset: affordable housing for people with ties to the area.

Charlotte B. Rutherford Place, a 51-unit apartment complex at 6905 N. Interstate Ave., opened earlier this month. Central City Concern spearheaded the project, and Home First Development Partners was in charge of overall design and development. Doug Circosta, Architect designed the project, and Silco Construction built it.

A celebration took place Dec. 4 to mark the arrivals of the first residents. The building may be new to them, but the vicinity is not.

“One hundred percent of the residents in Charlotte B. Rutherford Place have family or historical ties to the neighborhood,” Central City Concern President and CEO Rachel Solotaroff said at the grand opening.

The other main determining factor for residency at Charlotte B. Rutherford Place is income. Three units are reserved for persons making 30 percent or less of the regional median family income, 28 units are for those making 50 percent or less of the MFI and 20 units are reserved for those making 60 percent or less of the MFI.

The building itself is a standard wood-framed structure with masonry cladding adorning the exterior of the ground floor and entrances. The remainder of the building is clad with two-toned blue siding. There are 34 one-bedroom units and 17 two-bedroom apartments.

Charlotte B. Rutherford Place is one of three projects that comprise Central City Concern’s Housing is Health initiative, which in 2016 brought together six separate metro-area health care organizations for the purpose of funding affordable housing. Those organizations are: Adventist Health Portland, CareOregon, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University, and Providence Health & Services Oregon.

The other affordable housing projects being developed via the initiative are the 153-unit Hazel Heights on Southeast 127th Avenue and the 175-unit Blackburn Center on Northeast 122nd Avenue. The latter also has a large clinic featuring mental health and addiction treatment services.

The total budget for Charlotte B. Rutherford Place was slightly more than $12 million. KeyBank contributed $5.14 million, Oregon Housing and Community Services provided $3.5 million, the Portland Housing Bureau chipped in $1.56 million and Multnomah County added $1.24 million.

In addition, the Housing is Health group contributed $500,000 and PGE contributed $84,000 for installation of a rooftop solar array.

The new facility is named for the Honorable Charlotte B. Rutherford, a Portland community activist and former civil rights attorney, journalist, administrative law judge and entrepreneur. Her grandfather, William Rutherford, operated a barbershop in the former Golden West Hotel, which is now a residential building managed by Central City Concern.

Rutherford’s parents, Otto Rutherford and Verdell Burdine, were president and secretary, respectively, of Portland’s NAACP chapter in the 1950s, and each played an important role in securing passage of the landmark Oregon Civil Rights Bill in 1953.

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