Portland, Oregon

Rosemont

The city of Portland's most ambitious and successful CDBG project to date, Rosemont involved the redevelopment of an eight-acre site to preserve the historic Villa St. Rose School and Convent while creating a range of affordable homeownership and rental housing opportunities.

Rosemont is not only unique because of its scale, it demonstrates innovative public-private collaboration in the provision of housing and services. It used creative redevelopment strategies to return an abandoned local landmark to use and placement on the National Register of Historic Places. And in the best Portland tradition, the Rosemont redevelopment engaged the broader community and many neighborhood residents in the planning process.

Completed in 2002, Rosemont integrates several different housing types, provides a spectrum of affordability, and includes much-needed community services. A visitor to Rosemont today would see young children and seniors living and playing next door to one other in a community made up of:

• 100 units of senior rental housing in the preserved and expanded Villa St. Rose convent building;
• 18 new family rental units;
• 17 affordable homes for first-time buyers;
• 30 row houses, town homes, and
• single-family units for sale at market rate; and,
• a Head Start facility under construction that will have five classrooms and administrative offices.
  

Among the 165 units at Rosemont, the 118 senior and family rentals owned and managed by Northwest Housing Alternatives all have rents affordable to households with incomes less than 60 percent of the area's median. Habitat for Humanity and HOST Community Development Corporation built and sold 17 of Rosemont's homebuyer units to low- and moderate-income families. All of these units are on land held by the Portland Community Land Trust to ensure permanent affordability.

In addition, the city of Portland provided more than $3.9 million in permanent CDBG financing to develop senior housing at the Villa St. Rose, help with site planning, make street and other public improvements, and provide homebuyer assistance.