Nearly 25 Years Ago: 153 HUD Nehemiah New Construction and Rehab Homes in Northeast Portland, Including Homes on One "Crack Alley" Street.

Nearly 25 years ago (September 1989) the City of Portland and a non defunct CDC, the Northeast Community Development Corporation [NECDC] received a HUD grant of $3.75 million to build or rehab 250 homes in NE Portland.  

The program was called the HUD Nehemiah Housing Opportunity Program, not to be confused with several other NON HUD funded "Nehemiah" programs that followed.  

The program featured a $15,000 grant to eligible buyers.  The City of Portland contributed operating support for the program and Multnomah County donated tax foreclosed properties for rehab and new construction.

In Oregon all the homes were Oregon bond financed with FHA insurance, and all home buyers had to be first time home buyers. Full Disclosure: At the time of the application and through the first several years of the program I was the HUD Oregon FHA Director and was involved in the program until I moved to exclusively multifamily duties around 1994. 

While cleaning out my garage over the weekend I discovered a listing of the first 153 addresses and sales prices for Portland Nehemiah homes sold from 1992-1996. Because of construction delays, I think HUD eventually approved grants to close to 170 homeowners before the non profit effectively went out of business in the late 1990's.

I thought it would be useful to have a listing of those properties in Excel so I created a workbook HERE and embedded below with worksheets that includes all Portland Nehemiah properties where HUD disbursed grant money from 1992 to 1996, a worksheet that includes properties on a street (Roselawn) that was part of the infamous "Crack Alley", and a worksheet that includes Portland metro FHFA home loan index values for this entire period. 

I will do a sample comparison tomorrow, but for any address you can compare the Nehemiah sales price to 2013 Real Market Value by entering the address in PortlandMaps and looking for the Assessor tab that will contain that information. (Keep in mind that the sales price shown in the Excel worksheet likely does not include the reduction of $15,000 that the HUD grant provided).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.