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Brad Ketch, the former tech executive turned nonprofit director who once ran Multnomah County’s largest family shelter, has halted plans to build 56 units of affordable housing in the Rockwood section of Gresham, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the metro area.
After submitting 66 planning documents, East County Housing LLC, an entity controlled by Ketch, emailed the city of Gresham on Jan. 7 to withdraw its application during design review of the $7.9 million project, according to city records. Design review is the process by which counties and cities evaluate the layout, function and appearance of proposed developments.
East County withdrew from the process after the owners of a property next door appealed the project’s approval, arguing that it required a traffic analysis, which East County Housing hadn’t done. Nor did East County submit a statement showing how it would conform to affordable housing rules, the appellants wrote. The matter was scheduled to go before the Gresham City Council on Jan. 20, but East County withdrew its application, mooting the appeal.
The withdrawal comes as Ketch suffers setbacks in other ventures. Last June, Multnomah County halted rent payments and pulled homeless families from East County Housing’s Rockwood Tower, a former Best Western hotel that Ketch purchased with state money and turned into a shelter. The county alleged that East County had billed it for empty rooms and charged inflated prices for maintenance, allegations that Ketch denied.
Until the split with Multnomah County, Ketch was an up-and-comer in Gresham’s social service network. His Rockwood Community Development Corporation functions as an umbrella organization for a cluster of nonprofits, including East County Housing that provides meals, health care and language instruction.
In a book he wrote about his work in Rockwood, Ketch called the neighborhood “my Calcutta” because, like poor neighborhoods in the Indian megalopolis, it sits near to wealthy Portland but reaps none of the benefits, which galled him.
Ketch didn’t return an email seeking comment on why East County Housing abandoned what it calls the Ash & Pine Multifamily apartment project. East County had purchased three adjacent lots between Southeast Ash and Pine streets for the development.
To restart the project, Ketch would have to resubmit all the documents, says Gresham spokesman Nate Jones, because the old one is “now nullified with the withdrawal.” East County spent $73,425.76 on fees during planning, according to Gresham records.
East County Housing made headlines in May 2021 when it won a $6.8 million grant from Project Turnkey, a program run by the Oregon Community Foundation that distributed $125 million in state money to community groups to buy distressed hotels and turn them into shelters for people displaced from their homes by fires and impoverished by the pandemic.
East County Housing used the money to buy a beat-up Best Western in Rockwood and fill its large rooms with bunk beds to accommodate families. Multnomah County became a client of the newly christened “Rockwood Tower” soon afterward. In 2022, Rockwood CDC hosted a meeting about the neighborhood’s plight with U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, then-Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and then-Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, among others.
Ketch leveraged Rockwood Tower by taking loans against it, including one for $2.37 million from Washington Federal Bank a year ago. East County Housing used the borrowed money for capital and operational expenses, repairs to Rockwood Tower, “and to fill gaps in the pre-development of Ash & Pine,” a spokeswoman said in an email in August.
The Oregon Community Foundation has denied multiple requests for a copy of the application that East County Housing submitted to get the $6.8 million. A red flag: Rockwood CDC’s board chair Mary Edmeades resigned in 2017, saying in an email to Ketch that she had lost confidence that the “organization is operating with financial integrity and for community benefit.”
WW has asked the Oregon Department of Justice to compel the Oregon Community Foundation to release the application. DOJ expects a decision on the matter by Jan. 30.
Before joining the social service world, Ketch ran Rim Semiconductor, a company that aimed to speed data along copper wires with specialized computer chips before faster technologies arrived. Rim raised millions from investors and closed in 2008 without selling any products. Its only revenue came from producing Step Into Liquid, a surfing documentary that showed people riding waves in the Great Lakes, among other oddities.
