The Morrison mix

City’s housing experiment puts low earners next to ex-homeless, upscale condos

By peter korn

The Portland Tribune, Mar 21, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (38 Reader comments)

The taller Civic has condos for sale, but at the Morrison (foreground, with courtyard), rents are very low for formerly homeless tenants and slightly subsidized for working-class people who don’t make much money.

TRIBUNE PHOTOS / JIM CLARK

Travis Howe has this problem. It’s not a big one — more of a situation, really.

Three weeks ago, the 23-year-old Howe, who recently graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in international marketing, was living with his parents in Gresham, where he grew up.

Howe hopes to go to law school — eventually. For now, Howe says, he would be satisfied with a job at an eco-friendly company. But not one that pays too much.

That’s the problem.

Howe is among the first wave of apartment dwellers at the Morrison, the city’s newest subsidized housing building, on West Burnside Street, a few blocks west of downtown. City housing officials and developers recognize the Morrison is part of a significant social engineering experiment.

Ninety-five of the Morrison’s 140 subsidized units are available at below market rates — $695 for the one-bedroom unit that Howe rents. But there is another type of housing at the Morrison — 45 of its apartments are offered nearly rent-free to the chronically homeless. And that is a mix that hasn’t been tried before.

In fact, the entire development next to PGE Park, of which the Morrison is a part, is something of an experiment in bridging the gaps that normally exist between people. The Morrison was built as part of one overall project that includes the Civic condominiums next door, where most units have sold for between $250,000 and $600,000.

The Morrison and the Civic are the type of experiment — sometimes criticized — that is happening in public housing in cities across the country, according to Robert Bruegmann, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bruegmann calls it “high-level social engineering in a top-down way.”

But experiments can fail, Bruegmann and others point out. If the 45 previously homeless tenants in the Morrison — most with histories of substance abuse or mental illness — prove to be difficult tenants, the building, which opened in November, won’t long retain its value as the new jewel among Portland affordable housing properties.

And if the Morrison should lose luster, it could affect property values in the condominiums next door.

The Housing Authority of Portland, which built and runs the Morrison, is well- aware of the risk. In fact, as originally planned, the Morrison had as its tenants a broad range of subsidized units that did not include the chronically homeless.

When the housing authority found it did not have money to complete the Morrison, it went to the city, which agreed to put up the last $3 million on the condition the building put aside apartments for the homeless.

“Nobody has really done this,” says Benjamin Wickham, asset manager for the housing authority, of placing housing for the homeless next to high-end condos.

College grads pick part time

Travis Howe doesn’t sense any risk — he’s ecstatic with his one-bedroom apartment at the Morrison.

“I feel alive again,” he says of living blocks from downtown. Howe, who is single, says he is able to pay his $695 with money from his part-time modeling career.

“It’s paid off my college, my Land Rover, and it pays my rent,” Howe says.

Full-time work would suit Howe, but he says he doesn’t want to exceed the $28,500 income limit that would force him out of the Morrison.

He calls this period of his life his “mental break” before a career or law school. If he weren’t able to live at the Morrison, he says, he’d probably go back to Gresham and live with his parents awhile, saving up money.

Seattle native Nick Martinez has been living at the Morrison about as long as Howe. He recently graduated from Willamette University in Salem. He’s working part time behind the counter at Banana Republic, and he’s looking for a job downtown in either public relations or journalism.

Martinez, 23, says the Morrison’s location is ideal for his downtown job hunt.

Martinez wants full-time work, but if it is going to put him over the $28,500 income ceiling for staying at the Morrison, he wants it to be a lot more than he’s making now. Otherwise, he says, it’s hardly worth it to earn a little more and spend it on higher rent at a market-rate apartment building.

“I really don’t think I would move out for anything less than $40,000,” Martinez says.

Will the mix work?

Martinez says that if he hadn’t secured a one-bedroom apartment at the Morrison, he could have found a market-rate studio apartment for about the same rent. He’s especially pleased with the mix of people at the Morrison.

“This is the most eclectic group of people living in one building I’ve ever experienced,” he says.

But the government’s subsidizing that eclectic mix is bad public policy and won’t work, according to Howard Husock, vice president of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute and author of a book critical of traditional public housing policies.

Husock says that in the long run, working-class people leave public housing to the poor.

“Middle-class people with prospects and income will move into these places when they’re new,” Husock says. “They moved into (20th century) public housing when it was new. When it started to become hard to maintain they moved out. Things look good when you cut the ribbon.”

Steve Rudman, executive director of the Housing Authority, says the alternative to mixing incomes in a public housing project makes the experiment worth trying.

“It’s not without risk,” Rudman says of the Morrison. “A lot of planning is needed to make this work. But at the end of the day the trade-off, where people of poverty are isolated, is not a good idea.”

Alma Abrams isn’t sure Howe or Martinez should be living in subsidized housing anyway. And she supports diverse housing. Abrams, a senior citizen who lives in the nearby market-rate Trinity Apartments and says she lived in subsidized housing in Chicago years ago, walks by the Morrison nearly every day. She doesn’t like what she’s seeing.

“My tax dollars went to build that with the assumption that people who are in there didn’t have any other place to go,” Abrams says. “This is not what I envisioned.”

Abrams’ vision included more people close to her age. “I was hoping there would be more seniors in the building,” she says.

Public housing projects in Portland — especially in the Pearl District — have for years been subjected to similar criticism as they try to balance the need for rental income with helping the city’s poorest citizens find housing.

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