Nearly 1,900 affordable Portland apartments sit empty while thousands need homes – oregonlive.com:
Nearly 1,900 publicly subsidized rental units are sitting empty across Portland, according to new estimates.
New data from real estate analytics firm CoStar reveals that 1,863, or 7.4% of the city’s 25,409 affordable apartments, are vacant. That’s a stunningly high vacancy rate compared to what industry insiders consider an equilibrium rate, where supply and demand are in balance and units are being efficiently utilized.
Basically, Portland built a bunch of units and they’re all too expensive.
The $258 million affordable housing bond Portland voters passed in 2016, for example, will produce nearly 1,900 units — about the same number that sit empty today.
A little quick math: That’s $135,000 per unit. That’s well beyond what society owes people as a safety net.
Meanwhile, more than 16,000 people are homeless in Multnomah County, with close to 7,500 people living outside or in their vehicles, according to the latest county data. Most live in Portland. That’s about 2,000 more people without a place to call home than when Mayor Keith Wilson took office in January.
And, like in California where they’ve spent billions, the problem is worse than when we started.