A new 206-unit “affordable housing” apartment complex has opened in the Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood – it’s across from the Cleveland High School athletic field. Low-income Portlanders started moving into the Hazel Ying Lee Apartments in mid-July.
“It’s really going to be just a true community of folk of all ages, varying backgrounds or in various stages of their housing journey,” Home Forward CEO Ivory Mathews said. “I consider this a model project for what these partnerships can mean, and have meant, for our community.”
Finishing touches were still being put on hallways in late June, but the property management company Key Property Services had already begun processing applications. Mathews said they expect the building to be fully occupied by the end of the year.
Nestled between Hopworks Brewery and the Powell Boulevard Motel 6, the H-shaped apartment building at 3000 S.E. Powell Boulevard occupies the site of a former strip club. That building was demolished in 2018, after the City of Portland announced plans to develop affordable housing on the property.
Now, six years later, the Hazel Ying Lee Apartments have been completed for $87 million. The voter-approved Portland Housing Bond provided $33 million of that. The building includes 123 studios, 18 one-bedroom units, 59 two-bedroom units, and 6 three-bedroom units.
“As these new neighbors move in, they’ll be greeted by a beautiful, thoughtfully-designed building with a large outdoor courtyard, barbeques, outdoor spaces, an indoor playroom, ample community spaces, and so many great amenities that typically are not available to communities like these,” Portland City Commissioner Carmen Rubio said, at the building’s grand opening.
Roughly two-thirds of the units will be affordable for households making no more than 60% of the area median income. The other third will be for households making no more than 30% of area median income.
Project-based vouchers will be used for 50 units, meaning residents of those units will pay 30% of their income, and the voucher will cover the rest.
IRCO, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, will provide on-site permanent supportive housing services for residents in 30 units who are exiting homelessness. IRCO “will be a strong community partner here, and so we certainly are looking to them to get referrals” for tenants, Mathews said.
A large immigrant and refugee population is just a few blocks down Powell: Catholic Charities of Oregon houses more than 100 families in buildings right across from Cleveland High School. Many of those residents are immigrants or refugees, with the largest population coming from Somalia.
As for the name, the Hazel Ying Lee Apartments are named for the first Chinese-American woman to earn a pilot’s license and fly for the U.S. military. And, in fact, Hazel Ying Lee graduated from Cleveland High School – before earning her pilot’s license in 1932.
In 1943, Lee completed training to become a Women Airforce Service Pilot, or WASP. She died after a crash with another U.S. P-63 plane in November 1944. Just days after her death, Lee’s family was notified that her brother Victor, who was serving with the U.S. Army in France, had also been killed in action. The two were buried side-by-side in Portland’s Riverview Cemetery.
“Lee didn’t get the honor she deserved in her lifetime. In fact, she experienced tremendous discrimination, tremendous racial violence, tremendous lack of opportunities,” remarked Mary Li, member of the Oregon Housing Stability Council, at the grand opening.
“We now have the ability to remedy this, through this building, through living her values of bravery and courage and family and honor. All of that is coming here today, in this building and moving forward as our new neighbors come and inhabit this building.”
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