A new affordable housing development in Southwest Portland will include a 7,000-square-foot Children's Center, which will house a Head Start preschool.
A recent hard-hat tour of Stephens Creek Crossing, an affordable housing development by Home Forward, the city of Portland's housing authority, highlighted the Children's Center. The center will offer family support programs and operate in partnership with Neighborhood House, the social service agency that has been the primary Head Start provider on the city's west side for more than 20 years.
State Treasurer Ted Wheeler explained in opening remarks at the hard-hat event that the center would have four classrooms -- three dedicated to Head Start, as well as playgrounds designed to challenge kids' minds and bodies. The center's aim is to help kids advance socially, emotionally and cognitively, he said.
About 122 families speaking 11 different languages will begin moving in January into Stephens Creek Crossing, which is surrounded by the communities of Hillsdale and Multnomah Village. The development will replace the 60-unit Hillsdale Terrace, which was demolished in 2012. Relocated former residents of Hillsdale Terrace will have first claims on the 122 Stephens Creek Crossing apartments now under construction.
Neighborhood House is in the beginning stages of a capital campaign to raise $900,000, its share of the children's center's total cost of $4.5 million, of which Home Forward has provided $3.6 million. So far, Neighborhood House has raised $250,000 with $125,000 of that from Multnomah County.
"This is the kind of initiative the county wants to fund," said Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen at the event.
It's the sort of project, he added, that lets us see the connections between health and human services and public safety.
"If we don't invest in young people," he said, "we end up seeing them in the criminal justice system."
Other donations and a challenge grant have come in from community organizations, foundations and individuals.
Across from the Children's Center is what Home Forward's John Keating called the Opportunity Center. It will house an industrial kitchen where all the meals for the Head Start program will be prepared. It will also serve as a teaching kitchen – equipped as it is, with four ovens identical to those in Stephens Creek Crossing's 122 apartments.
"The idea is that residents will "come together, work together, share recipes and build community," Keating said.
It is likely that students from Oregon Culinary Institute will teach some cooking classes to residents.
Home Forward is also partnering with the Mittleman Jewish Community Center directly across Southwest Capitol Highway from the affordable housing complex. In an exchange that benefits both partners, Home Forward also will arrange the installation of a much needed stoplight at the intersection between the two facilities, and the Jewish center will provide some programming for the housing development's children.
Hillsdale Community Church, which is adjacent to the property, is working with Home Forward on a community garden project. There's also a partnership with Habitat for Humanity to build seven houses less than a mile from Stephens Creek. Families who were relocated from Hillsdale Terrace are at the front of the line to apply for these.
These kinds of community partnerships and connections with neighbors were necessary for Home Forward to secure $18.5 million in federal HOPE VI housing funding to build Stephens Creek Crossing.
Stephens Creek Crossing
To apply: Home Forward will accept online applications for the waiting list for Stephens Creek Crossing between July 9 and July 13. Applicants must meet income guidelines: for instance $41,460 for a household of four.
web.org or call 503-246-1663 x 2119
HOPE VI is a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged with eradicating severely distressed public housing. Home Forward's initial funding application for Stephens Creek Crossing failed because, says Keating, it didn't do enough to address the potential social isolation of the development. A second application, citing these partnerships and an expanded footprint in the neighborhood, was successful.
Hillsdale Terrace was an isolated pocket of poverty in Southwest Portland.
Home Forward, then the Housing Authority of Portland, built Hillsdale Terrace out of cinderblock along Capitol Highway in 1969 after a wildly contentious public battle about its location. Oregonian reports at the time describe 1,200 Southwest Portland residents crowding into a meeting at Wilson High School to protest its siting. Throughout its four decades, it was plagued by dampness and mold as well as being what Keating calls, "a super-isolated community."
This time around neighbors have been very supportive, says Pamela Kambur, community relations manager at Home Forward, which did door-to-door canvassing in the area as well as visits to Hillsdale and Multnomah Village neighborhood association meetings to discuss the design of the new development. Local residents, business owners, educators and representatives of faith communities sat on the Community Advisory Committee that was convened while Home Forward prepared its second HOPE VI application.
Challenges remain. Because of a lack of sidewalks in the area, the development's approximately 225 children, many of them under 8, will have no safe way of getting to nearby Gabriel Park and the Southwest Community Center.
But on the whole, the neighborhood has a solid infrastructure and plenty to offer the new residents of Stephens Creek Crossing.
"We call it a geography of opportunity," said Kambur, "and we really want families to be connected."
-- Rebecca Koffman
Source: southwest - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFG2qao-5n3Nfdvt8neW51e6sYx5w&url=http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/07/southwest_portland_affordable.html
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