City leaders and housing officials broke ground on a new apartment building in Portland’s South Waterfront district Tuesday.
Geoff Norcross / OPB
The building is a long-promised commitment to provide housing for low-income residents.
Portland promised to build 430 apartments or condos for low-income residents when it started developing the South Waterfront eight years ago.
This first stab at making good on that promise will be 209 units on a block of city-owned property.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Oregon Congressman Kurt Schrader said having residents with different income levels is good for a community.
Kurt Schrader: "It’s nice to know as an old planning commissioner from Canby, Oregon, that we’re still understanding that you gotta have low income housing interspersed amongst all other sorts of housing and resources to make a community whole, and not end up with a segmented or segregated community."
The units are available to households earning 50 percent of the median family income. That’s about $25,000 a year for a single-family household.
Forty-two of the apartments will be set aside for veterans earning about $15,000 a year.
The company in charge of construction says it should be complete by November of 2012.
