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The Portland Housing Bureau yesterday announced the results of its efforts to invest funds from a 2016 housing bond which provided the agency $258 million to expand the city's deficient supply of affordable housing.
The results: PHB says that it added 314 new units last year and has another 1,110 units in early stages of development. The good news is the total of 1,424 units will exceed the 1,300-unit goal bond proponents established earlier.
The slightly less good news is this: Of the two projects counted toward the goal in 2109, the larger one, the 263-unit Ellington, was a pre-existing project the city purchased for $47 million. The units will now be preserved as permanently affordable, which is a big win, but the acquisition does not add to the number of housing units in the city. (Bond proponents were clear from the outset that PHB would seek both to preserve existing unit and when possible, construct new ones.)
The second project, a 51-unit East Burnside Street apartment building, is sort of a hybrid of preservation and new construction: it was already under construction when PHB agreed to buy it when it was nearly complete.
So for 2019, the units PHB is counting toward the bond's goal would have existed even if the bond never passed. The 10 projects in various stages of development, however, mostly represent new construction that would not have happened otherwise. Details on those projects can be found here.
