Affordable housing sprouts in downtown

The triangle-shaped parcel at West 15th and Columbia streets used to be a parking lot. There’s still a parking lot today, but also 120 affordable housing units stacked on top of that.

The 15 West Apartments will soon be open for business, and neighboring 13 West Apartments should be complete a little over a year from now. Even though 15 West hasn’t opened, there’s a wait list of 306 people vying for its 120 units, said apartment manager Corina Ferris during the complex’s open house Thursday.

Developer Walter “Skip” Grodahl, doing business as DBG Properties, bought the 15 West parcel first. After seeing the market’s demand for rental housing, he soon scooped up 13 West’s parcel.

“We kind of wanted to be early,” he said, adding that downtown parcels are becoming difficult to come by. Grodahl plans to do more projects in Vancouver, and his niche is affordable housing.

This is DBG Properties’ first project in Vancouver. In the past, focus has been on Portland and its Oregon suburbs, along with cities in New Mexico. Kurt Creager, director of the Portland Housing Bureau and former director of the Vancouver Housing Authority, told Grodahl about the development opportunities in Vancouver.

15 West was awarded a 12-year tax abatement through the city’s multifamily housing tax exemption program. In theory, residents will spend money in the downtown area that offsets the loss of property tax income. Residents of 15 West are estimated to collectively spend $704,000 annually on food and entertainment. When the building was 50 percent complete, property taxes for the building were estimated at more than $188,000. The exemption does not include taxes on the land.

Under the abatement’s guidelines, at least 20 percent of the units would need to be affordable to qualify. However, because all of the units at 15 West are affordable, the project also qualified for low-income housing tax credits and tax-exempt bonds, which were the primary financing tools.

Each applicant has to have their income verified because these are income-restricted units. Residents can make no more than 60 percent of the area’s median income. That would allow incomes of up to $30,900 for a one-person household, $35,280 for a two-person household and $44,100 for a four-person household, using Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates from 2015.

The 92-unit 13 West will have a similar accent, though the colors haven’t been finalized yet. The waiting list for 13 West will open closer to the building’s anticipated completion in March 2017. 13 West will be similar to 15 West, though there won’t be any three-bedroom units, Grodahl said. It will have the same rents and income restrictions.

World-class city

Bringing more people downtown and expanding its commercial and retail scene has been a long-term goal of Vancouver, said Mayor Tim Leavitt. With the right mix of businesses and housing it’ll become a world-class city, he said. The downtown neighborhood of Esther Short has 6,029 residents, as of the 2014 U.S. Census estimate.

“That vision was developed, but it take a lot of persistence, a lot of patience,” Leavitt said.

Similar parking lots and vacant parcels around the downtown area are getting bought up by multifamily housing developers. In the main downtown area, south of 16th Street, there are eight current multifamily projects expected to add 633 housing units. That’s not counting the uptown area, where a handful of projects are in the works.

Qualifying multifamily projects in the downtown area and in the Fourth Plain corridor receive tax exemptions. Market-rate projects get an eight-year tax exemption, while projects with units reserved for low- to moderate-income residents get a 12-year tax exemption.

The project is meant to boost population density and overall housing supply. One of the top recommendations of Vancouver’s Affordable Housing Task Force was to expand this program, perhaps citywide. Changes could include targeting lower incomes and increasing the percentage of affordable units required to get the exemption.

The city council hasn’t addressed this recommendation yet, said Peggy Sheehan, the city’s program manager for Community and Economic Development.