Nicole Cmar More affordable housing is coming to Portland, courtesy of your friends at Airbnb. Or something like that. As we previewed last week, Portland City Council took up a resolution today that will scoop up a minimum $1.2 million in “short-term rental” lodging taxes collected by Airbnb, VRBO, and similar services, and plop them […]
Housing
Posted inHousing
Hate Airbnb? At Least It’s Going To Help Pay For Affordable Housing
For all the controversy, and occasional shadiness, surrounding Airbnb’s emergence in Portland, the service—and those like it—have produced a reliable income stream. Last year, the City of Portland reaped an estimated $1.2 million from short-term rentals that are dotting the city. Now the city’s going to use that money building affordable housing. Mayor Charlie Hales […]
Posted inHousing
Rehab or Raze: A 107-Year-Old Central Eastside Apartment Building is Up for Sale
Portland Maps The Union Arms The real estate listing for the 107-year-old apartment building calls it “one of the more historically significant apartments located in what is now considered the Burnside Bridgehead area of close-in east Portland.” The 8,000-square-foot brick-and-mortar building holds 36 studio apartments and seven one-bedrooms. Some of the residents have lived there […]
Posted inHousing
California Couple Tricks Portlanders into Selling Home with Fake Offer Letter—Now it’s an Airbnb
Mercury staff WHEN KURT MORRIS and his wife, Carol, put their four-bedroom Sellwood-Moreland home on the market last spring, they were immediately struck by one early offer—from a family that Morris says reminded him of his own. “They had crafted a very nice offer letter, explaining how much they loved our home and how they […]
Posted inHousing
Would You Pay to Stop the Demolition of a 105-Year-Old Home?
Photo: James Rexroad LIKE SO many Portland renters these days, Suzana Levy and her partner Erika Guynes received a no-cause eviction notice recently. “The first thing the landlords told us was, ‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’” Levy says. “They said, ‘You’re great tenants.’” The house is owned by Holladay Park Plaza, a nonprofit retirement community […]
Posted inHousing
No-Cause Evictions Affect Monster Population
THINK IT’S HARD to find a home in Portland? At least you’re human! Monster advocacy groups are reporting that, in Portland’s tight rental market, they’re receiving complaints from houseless monsters that landlords are discriminating against them just for being who they are. Take Werewolf, for example. Over the summer, because of record-high temperatures, he kept […]
Posted inHousing
Mayor Charlie Hales Wants to Declare A Housing State of Emergency
KATHLEEN MARIE Portland Mayor Charlie Hales on Wednesday morning announced intentions to declare a housing emergency in Portland. He’ll ask city council to approve in two weeks. The move would allow the city to waive zoning codes and convert city-owned buildings into shelters more nimbly, Hales’ office says. The city also plans to work with […]
Posted inHousing
Study: Portland’s Got the Nation’s Fastest-Rising Rents
Kathleen Marie Here’s a crazy figure: In the last year, average Portland rents rose by more than 15 percent, according to a Texas firm that studies rental markets. If that’s true—and the company, Axiometrics, says it’s confident in the finding—rent in Portland is likely rising faster than at any point in the city’s history. It’s […]
Posted inHousing
Affordable Housing, Tenant Protections, and Developer Penalties. Oh, My!
Jason Sturgill More money for affordable housing! Portland City Council made some important tweaks today to an existing program that could mean the area will see an increase in affordable housing development. The Portland Development Commission’s Multiple-Unit Limited Tax Exemption (MULTE) program allows developers to get out of paying property taxes on new multifamily housing […]
Posted inHousing
Low-Income Housing Gets a History Lesson
For the past decade or so, we Portlanders have had to reconcile our need for sufficient housing to accommodate our rapidly growing population with our desire to maintain our city’s ecological and cultural integrity. The former has been more or less accomplished with the help of our regional government Metro’s urban growth boundary, which prioritizes […]
Posted inHousing
The City Almost Forgot to Prioritize Affordable Housing on its Excess Land
Johana Dooley The City of Portland wants to get rid of property, and it wants you to know it’s getting rid of it. At a city council hearing last week, Portland financial officials trotted out a new plan—in the works since 2013— focused on transparency, and ensuring the city does a better job of giving […]
Posted inHousing
Here Are the Affordable Housing Projects You Can Expect in Coming Years
Levi Greenacres A couple weeks ago, I bemoaned in print how difficult it is to get a comprehensive sense of incoming affordable housing in Portland. While there’s plenty of dissent about how this city should handle displacement and gentrification, everyone agrees we’ve got a dearth of affordable options (typically regarded as reasonable for people who […]