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July 1, 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Oregon AFL-CIO HQ to become worker housing
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Paula
By Don McIntosh
Associate editor
When the Oregon AFL-CIO
bought its Portland office from
the Machinists union in 2011,
the 1967-vintage union hall got
a facelift. Now it’s about to get
a new body.
If all goes as planned, the
Oregon Labor Center will meet
a wrecking ball in mid-2017 to
make way for a four-story de-
velopment combining union of-
fice space with underground
parking and up to 120 units of
affordable housing. Union pen-
sion funds would pay for it, and
union workers would build it.
And unlike most residential
apartments going up in inner
Southeast Portland today, these
would be priced at rents afford-
able to working people.
If feasible, the project could
even include an indoor-outdoor
child care facility and a commu-
nity meeting space available to
neighborhood residents.
Oregon AFL-CIO President
Tom Chamberlain conceived
the project, and pitched it to his
Executive Board June 17. Emily
Johnstone, business develop-
ment director for the national
AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment
Trust, joined the meeting on
If all goes according to plan, the former Machinists hall will be torn down to
make way for affordable apartments for working families.
speaker phone.
“You will be a model for
every other labor organization
that owns land,” Johnstone told
the board.
The AFL-CIO Housing In-
vestment Trust is interested in fi-
nancing the project’s estimated
$28 million in development
costs, with help from other
sources, including a federal
Low-Income Housing Tax
Credit that the state of Oregon
would issue. To oversee con-
struction, the Oregon AFL-CIO
would choose an experienced
local developer that has worked
well with unions in the past.
The Oregon AFL-CIO Exec-
utive Board voted unanimously
to move forward with the proj-
ect, and approved funds to de-
velop a site plan, conduct a fea-
sibility study, and create a
separate non-profit entity to
limit organizational liability.
Chamberlain met June 27
with an architect to begin work
on a site plan, and will begin in-
terviewing prospective develop-
ers July 8. The plan is to choose
a developer by mid-August, ap-
ply for tax credits in January,
and break ground in June 2017.
Located at 3645 SE 32nd
Ave., just south of Powell
Boulevard, the 0.78-acre parcel
currently consists of a low-slung
4,300 square foot building and a
20,000 square foot parking lot.
But as a four or five-story build-
ing, the same parcel could house
up to 120 units in a mix of stu-
dio, one-, two- and three-bed-
room apartments. Four-fifths of
the units would be offered at
rents affordable to low-income
households (those below 60 per-
cent of area median income).
The remaining fifth would be
affordable to those making up to
80 percent of area median in-
come.
Portland is in the midst of an
affordable housing crisis. At a
June 16 breakfast organized by
the Northwest Oregon Labor
Council, Portland Commis-
sioner Dan Saltzman said the
city is short 24,000 units of af-
fordable housing, even as an es-
timated 1,000 people a month
are moving to Portland.
“Finding developable land for
affordable housing is really hard
in Portland right now,” John-
stone told the Labor Press. “This
is an example of labor giving
back to the community by using
its real estate to create affordable
housing and also creating jobs
that can support a family.”