Oregon's affordable housing industrial complex is awash in billions in taxpayer money, federal tax credits, private investors...as well as serious questions surrounding lack of accountability and corruption.

Oregon’s affordable housing industrial complex is awash in billions in taxpayer money, federal tax credits, private investors…as well as serious questions surrounding lack of accountability and corruption.

And now the person who overseas the lion’s share of that system (Oregon Housing and Community Services – or OHCS), is facing a serious ethics review.

OHCS executive director, Andrea Bell, failed to disclose her husband’s employment with JH Brawner, a consulting firm involved in the multiple affordable housing projects that received 10’s of millions of dollars from her agency.

Bell only amended her financial disclosures once reporters began asking her questions.

But there’s an even bigger story here:

OHSC has distributed more than $1.4 billion in state housing subsidies over five years. That doesn’t include the enormous value of federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) allocated through the agency.

Here’s how LIHTC works: Developers receive allocations of federal tax credits, which are then sold to private investors in exchange for capital. Investors then receive federal tax benefits over ten years, while developers receive financing for projects.

It’s an incredibly complex system that brings together government agencies (such as OHCS), private developers (such as Community Development Partners – or CDP), banks and financial institutions, and large investment firms. And the public deserves to know exactly where the money goes.

Nearly two years ago, we investigated Milepost 5, a Portland affordable housing complex that had descended into deplorable conditions (as affordable housing properties tend to do) despite millions in public subsidies and tax-credit financing.

Our investigation revealed that the investment entity CDP, a private California company that develops many affordable housing projects in the Portland-metro area, is a subsidiary of Aegon Group, an international hedge fund worth north of $300 billion.

Although OHCS awarded CDP $3.3 million for upgrades and repairs at Milepost 5, serious maintenance problems persisted, along with drug dealing, squatters, and repeated complaints from residents and neighbors. At one point, there was even a raid by Homeland Security Investigations at the property, in which they arrested multiple drug dealers who had taken up residence in the building.

CDP claimed that seismic upgrades consumed most of the $3.3 million, despite an earlier estimate of approximately $350,000 for the seismic work. According to CDP, this left insufficient funding to address many of the property’s other problems.

After contacting multiple people within CDP, OHCS, and local government, we were unable to obtain a satisfactory accounting of exactly how the $3.3 million was spent. Everyone involved just wanted the questions about the funds to go away.

In fact, a local whistleblower who lives near Milepost 5 was threatened with arrest after U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley’s office allegedly identified him as a man who had been behaving threateningly outside the senator’s office. There was just one problem: the whistleblower was out of town on a fishing trip at the time, and the man in question bore no resemblance to him. Nevertheless, the accusation reportedly led to an attempt to have the whistleblower arrested. Even after the mistaken identity was established, neither Merkley nor his office offered the whistleblower an apology. Senator Merkley needs to answer to this egregious behavior.

While OHCS did publicly admonish CDP for its failures at Milepost 5 at a meeting, two weeks later, the agency approved $43.6 million to CDP for the Julia West affordable housing project.

In a news story by ProPublica (see below) the publication exposed how Oregon law shields detailed financial information about subsidized housing developments from public scrutiny.

There are billions in state subsidies. Federal tax credits benefitting private investors. Complex ownership structures. Limited public access to financial records.

And now an ethics review involving the director of the agency responsible for overseeing much of it.

Both the Bell controversy and Milepost 5 raise fundamental questions about oversight, transparency, and whose interests Oregon’s affordable housing system is actually serving.

Because it doesn’t seem to serve the people who are unfortunate enough to have to live in places like Milepost 5 or any of the other dozens of affordable housing projects in this city that are constantly falling into disrepair. It seems to mostly serve out of state corporations and huge international hedge funds.

The state (i.e. Gov. Kotek) and local government tell us that affordable housing should be about providing safe, stable homes for the people who really need them – not for moving enormous sums of public money through an increasingly complicated financial industrial complex, one that appears to be rife with corruption.

Below are the articles from ProPublica and our article about Milepost 5.

— PDX Real (@PDXReal1) October 10, 2026