A rush of bond-funded affordable housing construction in the past decade has aimed to house low-income and homeless Portlanders.
But compressing rents between regulated and market apartments, paired with administrative stumbles and rising evictions, has left a significant share of those publicly subsidized units empty — at a time when thousands of Portlanders live on the streets and languish on waitlists to get into available units.
The Oregonian/OregonLive detailed the paradox over the holiday break. Here’s what our investigation found:
Thousands of Portland metro affordable apartments sit empty
Nearly 1,900 publicly subsidized apartments are sitting empty and unused…