200 Units of Affordable Housing Built to Serve Families and Veterans
The Vera
Overcoming formidable challenges, Hoffman delivers a 13-story high-rise that provides over 200 units of affordable housing, targeted to serve families and homeless military veterans. The building was named after Vera Katz, the former beloved three-term mayor of Portland and the first woman to serve as Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives.
Hoffman built this 13-story high-rise in the Riverplace neighborhood, adjacent to downtown Portland. The Vera Apartments contain 203 units of studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments. Property amenities include a playground and landscaped courtyard, two laundry rooms, a community room with kitchen and community spaces, resident services office with adjacent conference area, and a community classroom. Careful logistics planning overcame the challenge of limited laydown on the tight site surrounded by light rail, streetcar, and heavy pedestrian and vehicle traffic. The project is targeting LEED Gold for Homes.
Challenge
Deliver the owner’s vision of an affordable housing project on a congested urban site, within a tight budget and an overheated construction market.
Solution
In the earliest days of preconstruction, the Hoffman team set to work developing value engineering options that would not compromise the architect’s design or the owner’s vision. We also leveraged our strong relationships in the local construction community to bring key subcontractors and project partners into the effort. In the end, the team identified innovative alternates for the building façade, windows, and other elements that kept the project on budget.
Project Story
Bringing Affordable Housing to Portland
The Vera adds a substantial amount of much-needed affordable housing to accommodate those most in need in Portland’s tight market. The building provides over 200 units of affordable housing, with rates very much within reach for families and homeless military veterans.
Of the 203 affordable units, 90 are reserved for households earning 0% to 30% of the Median Family Income, including 70 with Project-based Section 8 vouchers and 10 dedicated to homeless veterans utilizing VASH vouchers. Several units include special features for people with mobility, hearing, and/or visual impairments. Additionally, the mix of two- and three-bedroom units will allow more children and families to benefit from the amenity-rich area of the South Waterfront. Another positive outcome of this project was that through proactive outreach to the community, we subcontracted over a dozen minority, women-owned, and small business firms—15% of our subcontracts on the project—that hadn’t contracted with Hoffman before.
