The Hub City Village construction site off Waverly Drive on Oct. 4, 2023.
Construction of Hub City Village continues apace at 241 Waverly Drive S.E., and people hoping to live there there may be interested in what the Albany Community Development Commission was told last month.
The commission, one of the advisory groups to the city council, heard from Stacey Bartholomew, president of Creating Housing Coalition and a former city council member.
The minutes of the commission’s Sept. 19 meeting came out last week as part of the agenda for the next meeting, on Monday, Oct. 16.
Among the points Bartholomew made, according to the minutes, is that Hub City Village is not a shelter and that residents must be willing to follow rules and cooperate with each other in the community of 27 tiny houses.
The residents will have to be able to pay rent, so they need income. People with an income of between 30 and 50 percent of the area’s median income, or about $18,000 a year, will be eligible to afford to live there.
Rent with one-year leases will be fixed, not variable, and will be based on operating costs. Creating Housing Coalition hopes to start accepting applications this winter.
According to the summary of Bartholomew’s remarks in the minutes, she emphasized that Hub City Village will not be a shelter. It is intended for people who have an income but not enough to afford the going rate for rentals in Albany. A “peer support specialist” will live at the site.
The $4.7 million dollar project to build 27 so-called tiny homes arranged as a planning unit development has been in the works since 2019. It is being funded by grants and donations.
The target date for completion of construction is this coming spring. (Bartholomew told me in June the coalition hoped to have it finished by March 31, 2024.)
Occasional visits to the site on my bike rides around town showed me that the contractors, led by JBLC of Philomath, have been making steady progress as they shoot to finish by that date. (hh)
From the street, passersby get a view of the community building at Hub City Village.
I am so happy this is actually happening
Albany will get their reputation of too costly to live here changed to a more accommodating housing for their barely making minimum wage individuals.
Awesome…!
This is a well thought out community. We need to rally around Hub City Village!
So so pleased! Very interested in this… following