As rents continue to skyrocket, increasing numbers of renters across the United States are scrambling to come up with the funds to keep a roof over their heads. Affordable housing is a pressure relief valve, but there’s simply not enough of it, so the Native American Youth and Family Center of Portland, or NAYA, is seeking to expand its footprint in affordable housing development in Portland.
NAYA provides a variety of ‘family-centered, youth-driven, Elder-guided’ services to the Native American community of Portland.
Offerings include an alternative high school for Native youth, homeownership workshops, a community garden and, increasingly, affordable housing. The organization already maintains three affordable housing developments comprising 165 units in the Cully neighborhood. Next year, the organization hopes to break ground on a new development project in the Portsmouth area.
A new venture
NAYA’s venture into affordable housing development began in 2008 when it inherited the assets of the now-shuttered Low-Income Housing For Native Americans (LIHNAPO), which consisted of 44 units of affordable housing in three buildings.
Oscar Arana is the community development director for NAYA. He says the acquisition of the LIHNAPO portfolio presented an opportunity for the organization.
“So NAYA saw an opportunity of being able to not only deliver the wraparound services that it did within the organization, but it saw this housing as an opportunity to be able to complement really important educational, cultural programs with housing as well,” Arana said. “So, from there, the organization kind of started doing more development work.”
Native Americans are at dramatically increased risk of homelessness and poverty.
NAYA’s first development was a nine-unit modular housing project in the Lents neighborhood called Kah San Chako Haws, which means “East House” in Chinook Jargon. NAYA worked to design the units sustainably, earning the project recognition by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a case study in sustainable construction in Indian Country and the title of “Modular Building of the Week” by the Modular Building Institute.
Following the success of Kah San Chako Haws, NAYA began work on a larger, 40-unit affordable housing project called Generations. During the construction phase, then-Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber designated Generations as an “Oregon Solutions” project, eventually leading to an official declaration of cooperation on the project between NAYA and several state and private agencies, including the Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Housing and Community Services and Multnomah County.
The development, which NAYA designed to be “an intergenerational housing community supporting foster children, parents seeking to adopt, and community Elders,” opened its doors in 2017.
Generations was just the beginning of NAYA’s housing development venture.
“You can start seeing that our capacity in this work starts to grow, and then, through some of those experiences, as we're growing and we're doing these projects, our level of knowledge and experience is also being enhanced,” Arana said. “One of the things that we learned through some of our earlier-on projects was just the challenge of being able to house our tribal and Native community with traditional affordable housing developments.”
Serving the Native community
The Fair Housing Act covers all affordable housing projects in the United States, which makes it illegal to discriminate based upon race, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation), family status, disability, color, national origin or religion.
“There's just sort of this blanket like, everybody's going to be treated equally,” Arana explained. “But when we're trying to target a very focused community — that sort of approach — it … kind of creates additional barriers that we're trying to overcome. Because we are being so targeted (in approach), we want to support the Native American community getting access to housing.”
Beginning in 2017, NAYA began construction on what would become the first two of three major new affordable housing developments; Nesika Illahee, which means “Our Place” in Chinook, and Mamook Tokatee, which means “Make beautiful” in Chinook Wawa.
To offer the units more specifically to Native community members, NAYA began collaborating with the Siletz Tribe to incorporate the Tribe’s Indian Housing Block Grant funding into its new developments. Indian Housing Block Grants are typically used to fund affordable housing development on reservation lands. Still, the Siletz Tribe collaborated with NAYA to incorporate the dollars into funding Nesika Illahee and Mamook Tokatee.
The use of the Indian Housing funds allowed NAYA to institute a tribal preference for its units, meaning the first preference for applications at the two developments would go to applicants who are members of the Siletz Tribe or applicants with household members who are members of the Siletz Tribe. Second preference goes to applicants who are members of a federally recognized tribe, Alaska Native or members of a state-recognized tribe.
As tribes are recognized as sovereign nations that exist within the United States, tribal members are recognized as citizens of both their tribe and the United States. This dual-recognition grants tribal members a unique political status and allows for policies like tribal member preference in federally-funded Indian housing.
“That was a really big game changer in terms of being able to bring tribal members to the top, and continue to bring tribal members to the top of our waitlist,” Arana said of implementing the tribal preference policy.
The units are not considered transitional housing, meaning tenants can stay as long as they want.
Cully neighborhood
All three of NAYA’s housing developments are located in the Cully neighborhood of Northeast Portland, which is also the location of NAYA’s main office. Nesika Illahee, Mamook Tokatee and Hayu Tilixam, NAYA’s newest development, are all located a relatively short distance from each other as well as NAYA’s offices.
The housing developments are close to public transportation, stores and schools, including NAYA’s alternative high school for Native children, the Many Nations Academy.
“There's these beautiful parks, there's grocery stores, there's job opportunities; so this is pretty critical to be able to create these housing opportunities close to these additional community assets,” Arana said. “That’s what really, according to specialists, what really makes folks kind of move in this continuum of self-determination, self-sufficiency.”
Marisa Zapata is a professor of land-use planning at Portland State University and the Director of PSU’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative. She says housing is fundamental to a person’s ability to live their best life but that Portland is short thousands of units, including affordable housing.
“When we think about people, from day-to-day existence, they need food and water, but if people are going to actually be able to maintain jobs, take care of their health, go after an education — they absolutely must have access to housing,” Zapata explained. “We have chosen to treat housing as a commodity that is open to the highest bidder, and when housing prices, like they are now, exceed what people can actually make in a job, they can't afford the housing.”
The rent for a unit at one of NAYA’s developments depends on the size of the apartment, which ranges in size from studio units to three-bedroom, and the applicant's income. The affordable units target people making 60% or less of the area median income as calculated by HUD, and NAYA adjusts the rent proportionally.
Nesika Illahee, which houses 59 units, operates in contract with the Native American Rehabilitation Association, or NARA. NAYA designed the development for tenants in addiction recovery, so NAYA contracts with NARA to be the on-site service provider for the development. NARA provides drug and alcohol support services, behavioral health services and medical resources to tenants.
Arana says that in addition to the NARA staff, NAYA provides wraparound services to tenants like female cultural connection, educational programming, access to individual development accounts and homeownership classes. NAYA currently offers these services remotely, as NAYA’s offices are closed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, Nesika Illahee is located less than a mile from NAYA’s main offices, and when the offices reopen, the organization’s wraparound services will be near the development.
Zapata says that when people need support, providing those services is key to helping them move forward, and it is important to tailor services to people’s individual needs.
NAYA geared the 56 units of affordable housing at the Mamook Tokatee development towards serving Native families and artists. In addition to tribal preference, there is a third consideration at Mamook Tokatee: if you are an artist. The building features Native American art and sculptures throughout, as well as five apartments designed specifically for artists. At Mamook Tokatee, there is a resident services coordinator to assist with additional services and, soon, a cultural arts coordinator who will be dedicated to bringing cultural arts and arts programming to the building.
Zapata says an often-overlooked aspect of affordable housing is the creation of opportunities for residents to hang out amongst themselves and form community relationships. A unique aspect of NAYA’s developments is its commitment to fostering community and providing community spaces in its buildings.
NAYA’s newest development, Hayu Tilixam, which means “Many Nations” in Chinook, is still under construction. It will provide an additional 50 units of affordable housing in the Cully neighborhood.
The four-story building incorporates community spaces, like an outdoor courtyard, and trauma-informed design concepts, which Zapata says are critically important, yet typically absent components of affordable housing. NAYA is again contracting with NARA to provide services to all residents. NAYA designated nine of the units as permanent supportive housing.
Although NAYA’s housing developments are primarily located in the Cully neighborhood, the organization seeks to expand its footprint into other parts of North Portland.
From Northeast to Northwest
In addition to its existing portfolio of affordable housing developments, Arana shared that NAYA is in the process of expanding its reach into a new neighborhood — Portsmouth.
NAYA is in the pre-development phase of a new development in the Portsmouth neighborhood in Northwest Portland.
The property for the new development was a part of the LIHNAPO portfolio NAYA inherited in 2008. The development will be situated in a building from the 1970s with significant deferred maintenance, but not so much that it would require a complete redevelopment.
NAYA secured the majority of the funding for the project, according to Arana, and is awaiting the approval of permits currently under review by the city. He said NAYA hopes to begin construction on the project in 2023.
“We're hoping to continue doing this work,” Arana said. “We've seen a huge, really big success with the properties in the Cully neighborhood.”
Ongoing success
The success of NAYA’s existing developments is not without challenges. The need for affordable housing is overwhelming.
NAYA experiences overwhelming demand for its units, and Arana said the organization sees hundreds of applications.
“(We saw) 300 applications for the 59 units that were available; that's kind of what we saw,” Arana said. “So clearly, there's demand out there for these types of housing opportunities.”
The success of NAYA’s existing developments is not without challenges. Many of the tenants in the buildings come from traumatic backgrounds or previously experienced homelessness and need the support of wraparound services. Indigenous people are wildly overrepresented in Portland’s homeless population.
“We've had a pandemic since a lot of our properties were built, so there has been lots of pretty traumatic experiences that have occurred within the residents and society that really have an impact on how the community reacts,” Arana said. “We are serving people that have a lot of challenges, that have a lot of barriers in life, that have had a lot of trauma, and we're trying to support them. Our thing is, we're going to provide as many life support services as possible to make sure you're okay.”
Zapata said permanent, affordable housing, rather than transitional housing, is crucial in reducing homelessness.
“The best way to actually end homelessness is a notion of permanency,” Zapata said. “If you've been evicted, or you've lost your housing, that is a real trauma, and asking someone just to hang out in a transitional shelter for a period of time, or a pod while they're waiting for housing, is never going to get someone the base that they need to really start living their life in the direction that they want to.”
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, NAYA is still providing wraparound services to thousands in the Portland area and working to expand its housing development portfolio.
During a virtual groundbreaking ceremony for the Hayu Tilixam development in April 2021, Freya Wilis (Sauk-Suiattle), a mother who experienced homelessness in Portland with her children, described the impact NAYA’s housing programs had on her as “life-changing.”
“I can remember the time we were actually camping on the side of the road,” Willis said. “We had set up such a campsite that our tent had a tent in it for our daughter’s room, that was her room. And I think at that moment, I thought, ‘we’re never going to have a home.’”
Willis said the support of NAYA housing coaches kept her hopes alive, and eventually, with NAYA’s support, Willis and her children got an apartment.
“We’d been homeless for six years — so, I mean, homeless-homeless, living in cars and tents,” Willis said. “(When we got an apartment) it was amazing, it was fantastic. We were so happy, we couldn’t be happier — we had nothing in our apartment, but we were happy.”
Arana, who has been with NAYA since 2015, says seeing the years-long efforts to help these developments come to fruition is gratifying — designed with the Native community in mind, with walls covered in Native American art.
“What has been really rewarding is going into the buildings and seeing Native children, Native families, just like living there and being happy,” Arana said. “You don't see that very often.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2022 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404