This part of the Clayton Meadows property, fronting 2080 Queen Ave.S.E., is where the Linn-Benton Housing Authority hopes to build more apartments.
Everybody these days is talking about the need for affordable housing in Albany. In that connection, a couple of things are going on.
Early this month a notice in the legal ads of the local paper caught my attention. The Linn-Benton Housing Authority was advertising for a development consultant to work on an “affordable housing project in Albany Oregon.”
I stopped by the office on Queen Avenue to learn more and later heard from the housing authority’s executive director, Donna Holt.
The agency, it turns out, hopes to build an additional 35 one-bedroom apartments on property it owns at 2080 Queen Ave. S.E. It’s a lot of about six-tenths of an acre in front of Clayton Meadows, a development owned by the housing authority and operared for seniors.
The consultant the agency intended to hire would look for financing of the project and then manage its construction. The deadline to apply was Dec. 15.
The other housing news I found is on the agenda of the Albany City Council’s meeting Wednesday night.
The council will be asked to award $225,000 to something called the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation, which says it wants to build 70 apartments on property at 4400 Spricer Drive S.E.
The requested money is what’s left of a $1 million grant the city got from the legislature last year to alleviate “housing insecurity” and the homeless situation.
The farmworker corporation’s application said it would close on the purchase of the 8.6-acre property, occupied by a house and a farm field, by the end of November. Construction of the “farmworker and workforce housing” would be finished by the end of 2025.
The development is a $25 million venture. The group counts on $9.5 million from federal housing programs, $9.8 million from the state, and the rest from donations and loans.
The organization already has completed housing projects in Lebanon, Independence, Woodburn, Salem, Sublimity, Stayton and Silverton.
The figures confirm what should be obvious, namely that affordable or subsidized housing is not cheap to build. The application says the cost per unit of the Spicer Drive development would be $369,000.
Of the $1 million Albany got from the state, Habitat for Humanity got $275,000 toward construction of two houses, Creating Housing Coalition received $350,000 toward its planned Hub City Village of 27 “tiny houses,” and $150,000 went toward operations of the Jackson Street Youth Shelter. (hh)
Postscript: The city council Wednesday night (Dec. 28) voted 5-1 to grant the application by Farmworker Housing Development Corporation. Councilwoman Bessie Johnson voted “no.”
Making the address to be on Queen appears a stretch? Am I wrong?
Not a stretch. Clayton Meadows is at 2080 Queen S.E., and the vacant site is right in front of it.
Oregon’s population declined in the past year according to the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.
Deaths outpaced births and negative migration happened. Low & middle income folks can’t afford to live in Oregon.
Housing affordability is a driver.
And more government meddling is the solution?
Maybe Oregon should look at the other side of the coin and commit to getting government out of the way.
Is the Farm Worker Housing the one that built the apartments south of Walmart in Lebanon?
I believe so.
Our city “leaders” catering to racism. You would’ve thought lessons learned from the past would put an end to this bs.
So how much is the rent going to be?