The average wait time for one of Portland’s subsidized, affordable housing units is five years, according to data commissioned by Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office.
The data, produced by Home Forward, used the 35,758 households currently on waitlists for 5,373 units that are owned, managed, or subsidized by Home Forward to calculate the average wait time. Willamette Week reports this likely captures anywhere from a quarter to a third of the city’s total deeply affordable units.
The report finds that one-third of the applicants currently on the Home Forward building waitlists are Black, another third is white, and of the 1,621 current applicants on the waitlist, 1,400 are categorized as “extremely low income.”
“Spiking increases in untreated mental illness and drug addictions make these years-long housing wait times deadlier than ever. We need more affordable housing and we need to connect more houseless to health services while they wait,” said Mayor Wheeler in a press release published last week.
Read more at WWeek.com