NOWHERE TO GO
PORTLAND — Charles Coleman's life has been rapidly transformed since he moved into the Hattie Redmond, an affordable housing complex for Black people in Portland built with taxpayer-funded bonds.
"It's been a relief," he explained. "It's been joy. Clarity of mind. You know, just finding myself because for a long time I didn't have that privacy that you normally have. So yeah, it's hard to put into words."
Coleman, 62, became homeless after injuring himself so badly that he was unable to work. The bills kept piling up, and a studio in Portland was renting for $1,400 a month.
So he was homeless for what he says was a "long time," living in his van or with relatives or in different shelters.
He got connected with the Urban League of Portland, a civil rights and social service organization that empowers African Americans and others to find stable housing, employment, health, education and economic security.
The Hattie Redmond apartment complex provides 60 permanent, stable homes with services for people who have experienced homelessness. The project was funded in part by $4.4 million from Portland's Metro Affordable Housing Bond, and supportive services are paid for by the supportive housing services fund (explored in the Wednesday edition of the Missoulian).
In 2016, voters in Portland passed a bond that will raise $258.4 million to build roughly 1,300 low-income apartments. Then in 2018, voters approved the Portland Metro Affordable Housing Bond that will raise $652.8 million to create homes for approximately 12,000 people.
The Hattie Redmond is one of the affordable housing projects that has been built with bond funds, and the project is aimed at addressing the affordable housing crisis in Portland.
Home Forward, Portland's housing authority agency, selected applicants for the building based on a housing preference policy that aims to address the harm caused, primarily for the Black community, by government-led urban renewal initiatives. Applicants who have personal or generational ties to the area are prioritized for residency.
"In this case, this housing is for Black people who have been chronically homeless and have a disability and have requested culturally appropriate services from the Urban League," said Amanda Saul of Home Forward.
Harriet "Hattie" Redmond was a pillar of Portland's Black community and a leading voice for women's voting rights.
Residents have access to physical health, mental health and drug and alcohol addiction services.
"They also provide community-building events, meals and there's a GED program," Saul said. "And then they're doing like a survey with the residents to find out what kind of strengths or interests people have. So for example, there's two folks who moved in who were barbers, so they hold sort of like a periodic barber shop and are able to give haircuts to other residents."
Saul said it's important to have an affordable housing complex specifically designated for the Black community.
"Because we know that based on race, people are underserved in our housing system in general," she said. "We know in Multnomah County that there's a disproportionate number of Black people in our homeless population. Like 7% of Multnomah County is Black but 16% of our homeless population is Black. So we were very specific in targeting that community."
Portland is far more diverse and larger than Missoula, of course, but there are similar disparities in both places. Both have experienced drastic rises in rent and home sales prices.
In Missoula's Coordinated Entry System for homeless people in 2021, 4.5% of unhoused people in the city were Black. According to U.S. Census data, Black people make up just .9% of Missoula's overall population.
That's the type of disparity that Portland's city leaders and voters were trying to address with the housing bond, and Saul said it can be replicated in other places successfully.
"The Hattie Redmond has only been open for a little over two months and we have over 37 people moved in already," she said. "And they were all formerly homeless. People feel really happy to have a home. They feel safe. They feel secure. They feel like they can ask the supportive services staff for support when they need specific things."
Eventually, there will be 60 or more people that are off the city's streets and into stable housing. At the building, the residents pay 27% of their actual income for rent, which means if they have no income they pay no rent.
Emily Lieb, the affordable housing program manager for Portland Metro, said the city and the region would be in a much more dire crisis without the two bonds. As in Montana and Missoula, the pandemic and other economic factors have exacerbated the shortage of affordable housing.
"I joined Metro in 2015 at a time when rents were rapidly increasing far beyond incomes," she said. "You know, housing had become issue number one from a public perspective. We didn't have the homelessness situation that we have now. It's gotten so much worse. But housing affordability was a huge concern."
Like Montana, Oregon doesn't have a sales tax and relies on property taxes for state revenue. That's why a bond was chosen over other forms of generating money for housing.
She said the Metro Bond has the goal of helping to finance the creation of 3,900 units available to people who make at or below 60% of Area Median Income. And 1,600 of those units will be "deeply affordable" for households that make 30% of Area Median Income or below.
Still, the number of units that it will build represents just 10% of what experts say is needed to address the shortage.
"I think the common thing that was said at the time (the bond passed) was we're like, we're not going to build our way out of this crisis," Lieb said. "We need a whole range of solutions. So I think this was really kind of intended to be one tool in the toolbox to address our housing affordability challenges."
She said there was "tremendous voter support" in all three Metro counties in 2018 to pass the bond, especially because affordable housing funds can be leveraged to get more federal money.
"Polling has consistently shown that this is like the number one issue," she said. "And I think that affordable housing and the argument of not leaving federal resources on the table really resonates."
As of June 2022, a total of 1,353 homes were either under construction or had been completed, and 1,826 homes were in development. Both Saul and Lieb said local contractors have benefited from the bond, but that rising materials and labor costs have been challenging.
It's unclear whether Missoula voters would support an affordable housing bond, as one has never been on the ballot here. A levy that would have funded crisis services failed here last November. Although voters within city limits were in favor, the voters in the county as a whole were opposed. Property tax increases have been a huge issue in Montana in recent years.
Portland obviously is much larger than Missoula, but Lieb said affordable housing bonds have been passed in smaller cities.
In 2016, Vancouver, Washington, voters approved a $42 million, seven-year Affordable Housing Fund for very low-income households within the city who earn 50% or less of the area median income. That bond has funded the creation of 250 units and another 251 are in the works. Several hundred other affordable housing units have been preserved with the money. By comparison, Missoula County voters approved a $42 million Parks and Trails bond in 2014.
"Yes, I think it is possible to develop a funding tool at a smaller scale," Lieb said.
Coleman, who found a place to live in the Hattie Redmond, isn't sure where he'd be living if the building hadn't been built.
"I would probably be an unimportant speck in a far-flung universe," he said. "I would be looking. I would either be in my van, you know, maybe at a relative's house. It's hard to say where I would be."
Coming Sunday: What Missoula city leaders and housing experts say about solutions to the affordable housing crisis that have been tried in other places, what options are available here, and the possibility of attempting to get an affordable housing bond on the ballot here.
David Erickson is the business reporter for the Missoulian.
