Huston Commons

Huston Commons provides efficiency apartments and essential 24-hour support services, including a medical care room to accommodate regular practitioner hours and telemedicine services for tenants, all of whom were chronically homeless and have disabilities.

A Home for Good

Huston Commons is the third Housing First program in Portland and was completed in 2017. Avesta Housing developed, owns, and manages the building, and Preble Street provides on-site staffing, including social work services for tenants.

Together, the 30 tenants of Huston Commons spent thousands of nights in Portland shelters, in the woods, or under bridges before finding their way home to a furnished efficiency apartment at Huston Commons. A home for good. Tenants pay 30% of their income toward rent, while HUD funds cover the balance. Portland Housing Authority provides project-based rental assistance.

Like Logan Place and Florence House before it, Huston Commons is changing — and even saving — the lives of the tenants who live there.

We know that Huston Commons will make a demonstrable difference in the city’s overcrowded emergency shelters.

And we know that Huston Commons will save the community money, as it has been proven over and over again that providing “housing first” apartments and services is less expensive than the endless cycle of shelters, emergency rooms, jails, and detox programs that chronically homeless people endure year after year.

The “housing first” model is an effective solution to chronic homelessness.