In the Belly of the Beast
Meeting the folks who are about to bomb Montavilla
Sometime next year, a group of international developers, non-profiteers, community activists, charity “servicers,” and a government bureaucrat or two will gather for a photo-op on the site of the bedraggled old TV station at 75th Ave and Glisan street.
They will pose with shovels and kick off the construction of yet another “affordable” public housing project, among the 1,859 units the city’s Housing Bureau claims have been built—mostly in the city’s not-so-fashionable neighborhoods.
If you guessed that Portland’s nabobs wanted to keep the poor folks in their place, a glance at the Portland Housing Bureau’s map makes the case.
Conspicuously absent will be a taxpayer (or his children and grandchildren) who will be the people actually paying for this clot of apartments, thanks to Portland’s dopey voters who authorized the issuance of $258.4 million in general obligation bonds in 2016. The bonds will be sold (cost unmentioned) to the kind of people who like buying municipal bonds, mostly for tax purposes. These are, let’s guess, not the sort of folks who will have to live next to the new apartment clump—the chumps whose property taxes will pay them off for many, many years.
What will the Montavilla* neighbors be getting?
Here’s an aerial rendering…
Note the small shapes surrounding this beached whale; these are what are known as single-family houses, which progressives such as Tina Kotek have proclaimed are evil. She rammed a measure through our one-party legislature that, essentially, banned all Oregon cities from zoning areas for these obstacles to her goal of “density.”
Density has now arrived in Montavilla. Bigly.
The developers, plus a gaggle of non-profits attached, like limpets, to the behemoth, on Thursday held a meeting in a neighborhood church to soften up any neighborhood misapprehensions about the whale. Out of curiosity I attended.
The first indication of what was in store for someone stumbling out of a spring hail storm was the sign-in desk. Everyone was masked. And the masked doorkeepers wanted not just one’s name but the completion of a “demographic profile.” (Declined.)
Inside, there were more masked people who all seemed to know one another and, as it turned out, was the “team” involved in the project. There they were, lined up like suspects in a heist during question period…which came after a long and entirely snoozy presentation from the various players.
The nice lady from IRCO (Immigration and Refugee Community Organization) spoke at length about how tough it is to be an immigrant; the nice lady from Catholic Charities made sure to tell us that the agency is a major player in the affordable housing game—”800-plus affordable housing units, affordable and supportive housing, financial empowerment, mental health and counseling…” the list goes on.
Catholic Charities, as it turned out, will be the “owners” of what is rendered as an inoffensive gray box in a corner of the development: the “permanent supportive housing building,” which will have cubicles for 41 households “who have experienced chronic homelessness.”
When this was uttered, a bewhiskered older gent, obviously not a team-member, edged closer to the action where I was sitting. In his hand he had a list of questions written in almost microscopic letters. His hand trembled.
Then we heard from the nice people from the Holst architecture firm, who talked about “surrounds” and such things as the multi-cultural reading room and the courtyard surrounded by the four-story blocs, where people could “mingle.” We flipped through the stapled handout replete with “renderings” of…well, decide for yourself…
My esthetic opiinion: it looks like something out of the East Berlin architectural handbook. Whatever the lipstick on the building, it will be massive…and crowded. There will be 137 units on that half-block (with 56 parking slots…but, hey, there’s a big bike storage room—if you trust the neighbors). Who knows how many people will cram into the units, 41 of which are for the homeless, leaving 96 apartments, which will be doled out to people making, variously, either 60% or 30% of the median famiily income (more on that in a moment). There will be 45 two-bedroom and three four-bedroom apartments, presumably for families or perhaps just good friends.
Back to the architectural renderings: the apartments look, well…intimate, shall we say? Maybe not for a single on the prowl in the Pearl—but a big family?
…but then what does one expect at 30% to 60% of the Portland Area Median Income (AMI) with rents between $600—$1300 a month.
Let us digress for a moment about AMI. It is a slushy-mushy number from the feds that drives $-millions in real estate investment, government subsidies, handouts. It’s a census estimate, and it doesn’t count anything beyond salaries, thus missing the many dollars that the officially poor receive, for example, medical insurance, higher education, SNAP, Section 8 vouchers or—for that matter—the difference that a lucky tenant gets between commercial rent and what they’ll pay in the “affordables.” Meanwhile, just to distort the number more, wage-earners are estimated using pre-tax dollars.
In reality, at 60% of AMI, a family of four could rent a brand-new “affordable,” with all sorts of “wrap-around” services, if they make up to $58,020. This is not chump-change.
Back to the meeting. First question: how come the colorful handout doesn’t actually tell us what the project will cost?
Here’s where Stefanie Kondor, Senior Vice President, Development, Related Northwest, gives the questioner (me) a slight stink-eye. After some hem-n-haw she allows that this will cost $53-million.
This is not a number that developers in the “affordables” game really like to discuss. That’s because the typical project of this type is far more expensive than conventional apartment construction. One south-county project came in at an astounding $2-million per unit.
Nor does Related Northwest supply one key datapoint: the whale’s square footage, the base number for calculating the actual cost of a project.
We’re left with the per-unit cost. Do the division and you’ll get (give or take) $408,759 per unit.
Wow.
A national source has this to say about typical construction costs:
According to the most recent cost estimates, multifamily apartment construction currently costs between $64,500 to $86,000 per unit. This estimate uses contractor fees of between $85 and $200 per square foot (psf) to provide a reasonable range between the most and least expensive markets…
Portland is an expensive place to build—but most of that comes in government nose-under-the-tent stuff. Which raises the question: will this project be paying the city’s obscene SDC—System Development Charge—which have stopped many developers dead in their tracks?
There was a natural follow-up question: How much is Related Northwest, international powerhouse real estate developer, going to make on this deal? Do you, dear reader, think I would get a straight answer?
Nope; the question results in a gusher of terminology from Ms. Kondor that might be drawn direct from her Related Northwest web bio: “…complex transactions with multi-layered funding along with new market tax credits to Related.”
Ms. Kondor invited the questioner to submit a query to the project’s web site—especially when asked how much Catholic Charities and other providers of “wrap-around” services for the tenants will be paid—maybe forever. Nor would any of the formerly chatty representatives of Holst Architecture, whose web site is heavily lathered with feel-goodisms such as, “We believe that everyone deserves good design, and we strive to make a social impact with every space we create,” be willing to discuss what they’re charging for their design.
Which, I feel safe in saying, will not be on any Architectural Heritage tours very soon.
Meanwhile, my table-mate, who said he had lived in the neighborhood for a long time, asked if this project would be like another one sponsored by the city in the neighborhood where “the cop cars came every day.”
Not to worry, neighbor. Hadn’t Ms. Kondor herself mentioned that tenants would be “vetted,” although she skinned-back when asked what that meant. Well, there will be a rental agent on-site, and questions will be asked…and maybe someone won’t “fit in the community.”
And here one might be a bit suspicious: after all, the big pitch is all of the “services” that will be available, courtesy of Catholic Charities, for the tenants. Which begs the question:
Other than a cheap roof over their heads, why give the tenants all these “services.” Why do they need them? Beyond playing with a big doll-house paternalism, which is endemic to progressives, what is Catholic Charities going to deliver as it “wraps around?”
And then there’s the corner building, chock-full of people “exiting homelessness.” Who will “vet” the tenants? Why, it’ll be the Joint Office of Homeless Services…the public agency under the thumb of Commissioner Dan “Ten Feet” Ryan,*** which has yet to make the smallest dent in the tent-favelas, chop shops, tweeker dens…and can’t seem to get any neighborhood excited about “Safe Rest Villages” crammed with various street-campers jammed into 9-foot plywood boxes.
With “supervision”—of course.
The next morning, your correspondent read an interesting squib in the Oregonian. It was one of the numerous shootings that are becoming so regular that they don’t make the front page any more. If you missed it…
A methamphetamine smoking session ended in fatal gunfire after a man shot one woman dead and pistol-whipped another, then claimed he acted in self-defense, authorities allege.
Kirk C. Mickels, 36, is charged with second-degree murder, second-degree assault and being a felon in possession of a gun after police said he fatally shot a woman inside his sixth-floor apartment in downtown Portland.
Reporter Zane Sparling, in an afterthought, noted…
Mickels told police he had been living at the apartment building for about six months and was previously experiencing homelessness.
As it turns out, that building, Hamilton West, is part of the vast, government-subsidized Center City Concern portfolio for 60-and-30 percenters.
Center City’s apartments have been the scene of other grisly murders, such as the October 2021 murder of two people by a tweeker at the Biltmore Hotel, a single-resident occupancy hotel run, according to an Oregonian story, "by Central City Concern, with most residents receiving rent subsidies through Section 8, according to the organization’s website.”
Fair enough: Center City is not the poster-child for housing the homeless. But Catholic Charities will have their work cut out for them in rehabbing the people dropped off by Commish Ryan’s bureaucracy. Who, presumably, will be free to visit their neighbors in their tents; old habits die hard and Montavilla has a lot of street-campers and RV clusters. Will any of the 41 formerly homeless be under any scrutiny when it comes to one of the roots of their plight—hard drugs?
And what will Catholic Charities be paid for this possibly hopeless task—most probably in perpetuity, since no one in the progressive machine really, truly wants to end homelessness (and thus their raison d'être) ?
Drop a line to the project’s email.
I did. There’s been no reply.
*I live in Montavilla, but not adjacent to the apartment complex. My advice to immediate neighbors: Catch what’s left of the insane real estate market and sell.
**One of the biggest private companies in real estate, which keeps their financials nicely private as well.
***Ryan mandated that a homeless person could erect a tent if ten-feet away from a home’s front door. The standard setback for a R5 house is 10.5 feet.
This project looks like a slightly nicer version of a Central City Concern apartment building that went up in the Hazelwood neighborhood in East Portland. Not enough parking, no security, an open invitation to any and every tenant who could claim some kind of victim status.
At one time, the Hazelwood neighborhood might have been headed towards "gentrification." I know, an ugly word. But most people -- whatever their skin color or ethnicity -- would rather live in a nice neighborhood or one that is becoming nicer.
About a year after that apartment building went up, a Portland woman who lived nearby had her car stolen. She had just bought this car, and there was a mix-up with the transfer of title. The police refused to take her stolen car report, because she did not have proper title. Eventually, a man driving the car was pulled over by police in Salem for an unrelated crime, and the car was towed. It racked up a $1,900 lien.
The Portland woman filed a complaint against the police for refusing to take her stolen car report. The police and the DMV did not do right by this woman, who was also a veteran. But city planners also failed her. They made her neighborhood more welcoming to criminals (yes, I know, it's an old-fashioned word in Portland).
One of her neighbors, who lives in a house across the street from the apartment building, told me that after it opened, he had to put up a security fence when his car and home were repeatedly burglarized. He pointed to another house adjacent to the apartment building and told me it was bought by a first-time homebuyer, a teacher. A dangerous sign of gentrification? The teacher bought into the neighborhood before the apartment building went up. After it opened, she ended up with a homicide victim in a yard next to hers. There are worse things than gentrification, and that's one of them.
Most people are not criminals. They live where they can afford to live and try to make the best of it. Portland is hoping the law-abiding will rehabilitate the dirtbags. It isn't working because the law-abiding don't have enough support.
Let me guess, free questioning was not allowed, all queries were vetted, and the claim was failing to support high density housing meant you were a rich, evil racist?
In Astoria common sense finally prevailed against a similar project ($34 million) but in tiny Astoria 105 units would be like 3000 in one place in Portland. Like Cabrini-Green? You’ll love this. When the true cost of the project became know (it was a proposed mental health center and ultra-low cost housing in the small, historic city center) the three (outgoing) councilors changed their votes, and the City Council voted unanimously to deny.
Bringing high density, affordable housing into an incredibly expensive market like Portland is very difficult. I could not afford my home there, but I don’t expect the powers that be to force others to allow me there (a purely hypothetical question in this case).