This year, the Joyce will welcome residents into 66 apartments providing permanent supportive housing, which combines deeply affordable rent with wraparound services. Those on-site services are made possible with funding from the Joint Office of Homeless Services through the Metro Supportive Housing Services Measure, approved in 2020.
For decades, the Joyce Hotel, located at S.W. 11th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street, provided low-barrier, extremely low-cost housing for people with few other options. In 2016, after deteriorating for years, the hotel closed its doors.
But soon after — concerned about the loss of last-resort housing downtown — the Portland Housing Bureau purchased the building with a plan to fix it up and create affordable housing that would continue to serve the same communities who had relied on low-barrier options like the Joyce.
Revenue from Portland’s 2016 housing construction bond proved essential to the conversion. In 2019, the Portland Housing Bureau selected Community Partners for Affordable Housing as the project developer, overseeing seismic upgrades to the century-old building and creating 66 single-room-occupancy apartments with a shared kitchen and bathrooms, along with community spaces and amenities.
“The Joyce was little more than a hotel-style flophouse in desperate need of health and safety repairs,” said Molly Rogers, the Portland Housing Bureau’s interim director. “But more importantly, it was the last remaining place in the Central City, or really anywhere in Portland, where someone could rent a room for as little as $19 a night. It was a place where landlords would accept IOUs from residents who were waiting on state assistance, but didn't have access to their money, and where no one would check your criminal or rental history.”
Speakers noted the public and private partnerships that made the redevelopment and transformation into supportive housing possible.
Supportive on-site services — including care coordination, crisis intervention, housing stabilization support and wellness activities — will be provided through Joint Office funding by Cascadia Health, the Native American Rehabilitation Association (NARA NW) and Cascade AIDS Project.
Home Forward, the Portland-area’s federal housing authority, helped ensure that all 66 apartments have project-based Section 8 vouchers, ensuring that each home will be affordable for all tenants. Apartments will be reserved for individuals earning no more than 30% of the area median income.
“The depth and the diversity of support available here are possible because of Multnomah County's commitment to investing in solutions that end homelessness and to services that help the most vulnerable in our community regain and sustain stability,” said Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson. “We know that when people get the support they need to be housed and stay housed, their ability to stabilize their lives increases exponentially. This will be the daily work at the Joyce, the transformational community-building and thriving that I want for every single Multnomah County resident.”
Speakers acknowledged that many of the people who had stayed at the old Joyce Hotel were members of marginalized communities who had few other options for housing. In honor of the building’s past residents, Community Partners for Affordable Housing compiled a booklet sharing their stories, viewable here.
“We want to remember, acknowledge and honor the experiences of the people who lived at the Joyce Hotel,” said Rachael Duke, executive director of Community Partners for Affordable Housing. “Their stories speak of resilience and survival, just like the Joyce itself.”