Agency will build 16 homes in Lents

Habitat for Humanity is broadening its focus to Southeast Portland as land prices continue to climb
Monday, June 20, 2005
MATTHEW LOPAS
The Oregonian

Habitat for Humanity has broken ground on not just a new housing project but a new focus as well: Southeast Portland.

When completed, the 16 homes in the Lents neighborhood will be the first major project outside of North or Northeast built by the Portland branch of Habitat for Humanity, a national nonprofit organization focused on building affordable owner-occupied housing for people with low incomes.

Habitat for Humanity's Portland branch has built more than 100 homes in its 23-year history, including a recent 14-unit project on Northeast Killingsworth Street at 44th Avenue.

In light of skyrocketing housing costs, the organization had to step out of its comfort zone, said Steve Messinetti, the local executive director, at a groundbreaking last week.

"We're having a terrible time finding land now," Messinetti said. "We have to do a lot more advanced planning and think what we're going to do three years from now."

The project in the 8300 block of Southeast Lambert Street will be the largest ever for the Portland branch. It began when the organization got a good deal on the land about two years ago. The 16 units will be in eight buildings. Owners are chosen through an application process and agree to contribute 500 hours of "sweat equity" to a Habitat project. Many materials are donated, and much of the work is done by volunteers, which will allow the new homes to be sold with no-interest loans for about $100,000.

The location is included in the Lents Town Center urban renewal area, meaning it has been singled out by the city as in need of revitalization.

Aside from being one of the few places where the organization could afford to buy land, Messinetti said he thinks the project will help meet the goal in Lents of providing more homeownership and help bring the organization into a new area of need.

"We're just getting to know the neighborhood," Messinetti said, "but we hope to do a lot more here."

Lents eager for homeowners

Judy Welch, president of the Lents Neighborhood Association, said she is glad to see anything that brings more homeowners and, with them, pride in the neighborhood. She said neighbors don't mind low-income housing because many fall into the same category themselves and understand they live in one of the few areas that remain affordable.

"I'm a homeowner," she said. "But if you moved my home to Sellwood, I wouldn't be able to afford it."

Habitat for Humanity is not the only organization to feel the pinch of the soaring costs of land and homes. Bob Repine, director of Oregon Housing and Community Services, said at the groundbreaking that he never thought the statewide costs of homes would reach the level it has. The result has made it unaffordable for a lot of people to become homeowners.

"Housing costs in Oregon are just running away from Oregonians," Repine said.

The lack of affordable housing is what drew 150 applicants to the Habitat for Humanity project. Jill Giedt said she considers herself lucky that she and her 3-year-old son will be moving into one of the homes when they are completed, likely at the end of next summer.

Her job tutoring dyslexic children does not leave much time or money to focus on homeownership, which has been outside her reach without the financial help and education on how to become a homeowner.

"They are the best support system," Giedt said. "You're never really alone."

Meeting new challenges

Remaining a strong asset to low-income families remains an important goal though the difficult times, said Rey Ramsey, chairman of the organization's international board of directors, who was in town for the board's annual meeting. The board is trying to build a strategic plan to combat the new challenges brought by increasing housing costs.

The board will focus on developing planning methods as well as repackaging the organization by tapping into the current emphasis on values, said Ramsey, who got his start with Habitat for Humanity at its Portland branch and has served as the director of Oregon Housing and Community Services.

"What better value than to say that each person deserves a safe, affordable home," Ramsey said.

Look closer; Portland no utopia

Published on: 06/07/05
Metro Atlanta's fascination with Portland, Ore., remains a great mystery.

Traffic congestion's worse. Between 1986 and 2001, rush-hour traffic in Portland increased 33.3 percent, tops among the nation's 75 largest urban areas, according to independent transportation consultant Wendell Cox.

Housing is far less affordable. The average cost of a house in metro Atlanta is $135,300; in Portland, it's $165,400. And transit use in the decade ending in 2001 was flat, despite heavy spending. Actual train ridership may or may not be climbing on a percentage basis, but its market share is minuscule.

Portland has become the national magnet for urban planners and for delegations like Atlanta's, drawn in periodic pilgrimages to the West to find solutions to managing growth. "Portland validates, theoretically, but not in practice all the strongly held biases of the urban planning community," says Cox, who also serves as a visiting professor of transport and demographics at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Meitiers, a national university in Paris.

John Charles, president of Portland's Cascade Policy Institute, a free-market think tank, was among those who spoke to the Atlanta delegation. "What's going on in Portland is a Potemkin village where they put up these false fronts," he said Monday. "You create a false image, and this week people from Atlanta come in, and next week it's a delegation from somewhere else . . . Intellectually, there's no there there. There is no rationale for what we're doing."

Charles says Portland attempts to drive high-density development to rail lines with heavy subsidies, such as 10-year property tax abatements. But, he says, "it creates this Hollywood movie set so out-of-towners come out to see, which is nice, if you don't ask how much money was spent to put these people there."

Charles and a group of volunteers have a project around train stations. "I've spent countless mornings between 6 and 9 a.m., sitting outside five-story apartment complexes and all I do is watch. With other volunteers, we count how many people are leaving by foot, by bike, or by car. You know what? Very few are using the train."

Density and rail don't cause people to abandon their cars. Instead, he says, they park in surrounding neighborhoods. "I'm not against high density, and I don't care how people get around," Charles says, but Portland's approach, with streetcars and slow trains, is "low-capacity, high-cost transit."

Portland was a planner's dream for years, too, because of an urban growth boundary, an arbitrary line that allowed property owners on the inside to develop while those on the outside were told to provide the scenery, thus driving up housing costs. Last year, however, fair-minded voters overwhelmingly approved a measure requiring compensation when one guy's property is taken for another guy's view, as the urban growth boundary does.

Portland's approach has been to avoid adding road capacity, thereby making traffic worse while using all authority of government to favor high density. That is not a model for metro Atlanta.

Government's aim, always, should be to determine how citizens wish to live — and facilitate it, regardless of whether that results in "sprawl." Says Cox: "Atlanta is the fastest-growing high-income urban area in the world. Yet no place sprawls more than Atlanta. One could very well make a strong case that sprawl and auto ownership are strongly associated with economic growth — it would be almost impossible to refute that."

Charles' solution is to start getting rid of the gas tax, while adding new road capacity in the public and private sector and converting highways to toll roads with time-of-day pricing.

The first step, though, is to measure traffic congestion, set goals for relief and apply cost-benefit analysis to every project proposed — with each competing against all proposed solutions.

Let people live where and how they choose. Government's job is to act on those choices and eliminate obstacles that diminish the quality of our lives. Traffic congestion heads the list.