Here, at the west end of Nothwest Hickory Street, is where one of the applicants for city housing funds would like to build 180 apartments.
Maybe it wasn’t a favor for the legislature to give Albany $1 million to do something about affordable housing or homelessness. Now the city council has to decide who gets some of the money, and it’s not an easy choice.
Six organizations have applied for help with a wide variety of projects.
The biggest is a request by Lincoln Avenue Capital, based in Santa Monica, for $750,000 toward a $57 million project to build 180 apartments in North Albany. The site, posted for sale as “prime multiple family land,” is at the west end of Hickory Street.
The apartments would be for households earning 60 percent or less of the median income in the area. The project depends on securing other state and federal funding.
The smallest request is for $150,000 by the Jackson Street Youth Shelter near Hackleman Park, which houses and teaches life skills to homeless young people from 10 to 17 years of age.
Other requests are from DevNW for $750,000 toward building 40 houses and townhouses; Albany Habitat for Humanities ($275,000) to help build two houses; Helping Hands ($225,000) toward parking and furnishings for a 30-bed addition to the homeless shelter; and the Creating Housing Coalition ($350,000) toward the $4.4 million estimated cost of building its Hub City Village of 27 “tiny homes.”
The requests are on the agenda of the council’s work session at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12.
It may be a long session, as each of the applicants is expected to present highlights of their proposals and respond to questions.
The applicants for the biggest project, the 180 apartments in North Albany, say in their paperwork they own 105 projects with more than 19,000 units in 18 states. They would apply for city land use approval if and when they get all the funding they need.
For a summary of the six applications, including time lines and such, find the council’s online agenda here. The summary is on page 7. (hh)
Bus the “homeless” to the Liberal Sanctuary of Portland. There was no problem in ’71 when I moved here.
If I recall, 1971 was just about when the “problems” came to Albany. Hmmm!
Get your ADUs built soon. Hartman and I are going to bus them directly to your address.
Set an application deadline (if not already set) and then divide the full amount evenly between each of the applicants. Isn’t that the “fair” way of doing things nowadays?
Where do I get the paperwork to apply? Wouldn’t the money be better used to keep people from becoming homeless in the first place?
Certainly and it appears that is the aim of most of the applicants Hasso noted. My input was to make it easier to decide what group should get it. Rather than max out on one group for 75 percent of the funds, spread it around equally. Or are you suggesting cash handouts to the homeless?
No, I’m suggesting cash handouts to homeowners that are on the verge of losing their homes.
I absolutely agree! When are the people that are working their butts off to survive going to get a break?? I am sick of supporting everyone else!! I ran in to a sweet older lady in the Marshalls parking lot who needed money to get to OHSU for her Dr. appt. Monday. There were 4 people stopped to help her, she was crying and apologizing for what she called as begging, she had $1.75 in her bank account! Why can’t we help her more, I could support that!!