Street Roots • Aug. 10-16, 2018
Community
Housing fo r a rainy day
L ivin g Cully is exploring land banking as a way to preserve Cully
neighborhood’s affordability - especially fo r its poorest residents
BY AMANDA WALDROUPE
S TA FF W R IT E R
TT
iving Cully, the nonprofit coalition that
works to prevent gentrification and
-L y displacement in Portland’s Cully
neighborhood, is exploring a new tactic for
preserving affordability for its diverse
community: land banking.
As the name suggests, land banking
involves buying land, whether that land is
currently vacant or developed, and saving it
for future development, such as affordable
housing, a community center, or other
developments that serve the public.
If Living Cully does begin land banking, it
represents the most ambitious effort the
coalition has undertaken to preserve the
neighborhood’s affordability, specifically for
its poorest residents.
“If we don’t have housing that’s affordable
to low-income families, then we don’t have
diversity in our neighborhood,” said
Cameron Herrington, Living Cully’s anti
displacement coordinator. “And Cully
becomes an elite enclave for folks.”
But land banking is not without its
'challenges, including finding millions of
dollars in capital investment necessary to
buy property, as well as competing against
other developers and investors in a seller’s
market.
Herrington said Living Cully began
t h in k in g about creating a land banking
strategy because many of Living Cully’s
member organizations - Verde, Hacienda
CDC, Native American Youth and Family
Center (NAYA) and Habitat for Humanity -
were already buying property for future
development.
“So far, it’s been in a piecemeal fashion,”
Herrington said. “But we’re moving in the
direction ... (of being) more intentional.”
In the coming weeks, Hacienda CDC, an
affordable housing developer that serves
low-income Latino families, expects to
complete the purchase of property on
Northeast 72nd Avenue and Killingsworth
Street.
Hacienda plans to demolish the home on
the property and build 24 two- and three-
bedroom apartments that will be affordable
to low-income families. Construction is
expected to begin in early 2019.
In June, Hacienda purchased a half-acre
piece of land bordering the Villa de Clara
Vista Apartments, a 178-unit apartment
complex at Cully Boulevard and
Killingsworth, that can be developed into
high-density apartment units.
Last year, Hacienda also bought a former
strip club site and created Living Cully
Plaza, where it plans to develop 150 units of
affordable housing. Construction on the site
is expected to begin in early 2019.
“We’re taking a very aggressive position
to get as much control of as much land in
the area as possible,” said Rose Ojeda,
Hacienda CDC’s director of housing
development
Cully is Portland’s most racially and
ethnically diverse neighborhood as well as
one of its poorest, meaning gentrification
threatens to displace many low-income and
ethnic minorities. While property was
affordable, there was little urgency to bank
away land. But Ojeda said the rising cost of
land and competition to buy vacant lots
means the neighborhood is going to run out
of these higher density zoned properties
where affordable housing can be built, if
local organizations like Hacienda do not buy
the land.
Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro
East has started construction on 15
townhomes at Northeast 56th Avenue and
Killingsworth, on property the nonprofit
bought three years ago.
Two years ago, Habitat bought property
on Northeast 63rd Avenue that will not be
developed for two or three years.
Steve Messinetti, president and CEO of
Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East,
said Habitat bought both properties knowing
full well that any development would not
begin right away.
“We know that Cully is gentrifying and
becoming more and more expensive,”
Messinetti said. “Land is becoming limited.
We know that if we can just get the land,
we’ll build the homes eventually.”
The length of time between purchasing
land and developing it is a key component of
land banking strategy: buying land when it is
affordable or otherwise opportunistic to do.
so, even if there is no plan - or funding - for
Page 7
building on that land.
A land bank can maintain control of the
land for years before selling it to a nonprofit
or affordable housing developer for
development. When the sale takes place, the
land is often sold for what it was bought A
land bank, which is often a nonprofit
organization or a government entity, doesn’t
need to make the profit.
That, in turn, makes it easier for
affordable housing developers, like
Hacienda, to raise the funds to buy the land
and build housing.
“It’s about providing, affordable real
estate,” said Christi Smith, vice president of
Strategy and communications for the Urban
Land Conservancy, a Denver-based nonprofit
land bank.
Smith, Herrington and others refer to
land-banked as “market shielded”
properties: property that is permanently
taken off the real estate market and sold by
the land bank to affordable housing
developers, who then build housing that
remains permanently affordable.
Messinetti said Living Cully’s “long-term
goal is to create enough market-shielded
homes so that it’s a mixed-income
community forever more.”
Herrington thinks Cully is the perfect
place for land banking.
The Cully neighborhood, which stretches
between 42nd and 82nd avenues directly
south of the airport in Northeast Portland,
was not annexed into the City of Portland
until 1985, and was originally developed as
farmland.
Many of the lots in Cully are large, with
single-family hotties. Those hom es could be
bought and demolished, Herrington said,
and between four to eight units of affordable
housing built on the property.
Whatever land-banking role Living Cully
takes on, Herrington wants the entity to be
able to buy property throughout Cully so the
entire neighborhood has a diversity of
incomes, instead of lower-income
households being segregated from wealthier
parts of the neighborhood.
Loulie Brown, the asset manager of Sabin
Community Development Corporation, an
affordable housing developer in Cully, said
building small numbers of affordable
housing and “tucking into a neighborhood is
key” to community development.
“It is implicit on the organization to work
with the folks in the neighborhood,” she
said. “It tends not to stick out like a sore
thumb so people can’t point at a building
and say ‘poor people live here.’”
Herrington and others also said it will be
important to build different types of housing
on the land, including apartment buildings,
manufactured housing, townhomes,
duplexes and triplexes, and cottage cluster-
style housing, “all the different housing
types that people choose, for whatever
reason, given their family situation and their
lifestyle and their budget.”
There is much for Living Cully to
determine before the coalition begins buying
land.
First, the actually land bank - an
operation that can hold assets, as well as
buy, maintain and sell property - needs to
be formed. It’s possible that Living Cully
could play that role. Currently, Living Cully
is än informal organization of its four
member organizations. To land bank, Living
See LAND BANKING, page 11