Housing & Facilities Development FAQ
Need more information about the real estate development process and HDC’s Housing & Facilities Development services? Call our front desk at 503-335-3668, and we’ll be happy to connect you with a member of our development team.
What types of real-estate developments does HDC assist?
HDC assists projects that advance equity and help people overcome barriers to meeting their basic needs. Our clients’ projects vary widely in their
Program types. We assist affordable rental-housing and homeownership projects, health clinics, human-service facilities, and mixed-use developments.
User populations. We assist developments that serve working families, seniors, members of culturally specific communities, and special-needs populations.
Locations. We assist projects in urban, suburban, and rural communities across Oregon and southwest Washington.
Construction types. We assist new-construction and rehabilitation projects, including projects that use innovative strategies to reduce construction costs and energy use.
The developments we assist use specialized capital funding sources and subsidies to achieve programmatic goals in a financially feasible way. These sources include low-income-housing tax credits, tax-exempt bonds, and many others. A focus of our work is to help clients access these funds and navigate development-phase and operational-phase requirements attached to them.
HDC typically does not provide development services for…
For-profit projects.
Projects located outside Oregon and southwest Washington.
To view some of HDC’s recently completed projects, please visit our Development Projects page.
What role will HDC play as my development consultant?
As your development consultant, HDC will act as your partner, representative, and technical consultant, assisting you to understand opportunities and risks and weigh competing priorities throughout the development process. As part of our services we will help you to
Map out your project’s critical milestones.
Assemble and coordinate the work of the finance, design, and construction team members involved in the different phases of your project.
Manage your project to meet timing and budgetary goals.
For organizations that have internal development capacity, HDC provides specialized expertise and added staffing resources to handle temporary workload upswings. We work an average of 4,000 hours on each project we assist, time our clients use to focus on day-to-day operations. We offer up-to-date knowledge and broad skill sets gained from working on a large volume of diverse projects.
What does a typical development process and timeline look like?
A development project usually proceeds from visioning to completion over a period of three to four years. The process starts with planning the project, assessing feasibility, and acquiring property, followed by financial structuring, programming and design, construction, and lease-up/operations. Unlike many developers, HDC ordinarily works on projects over the course of their entire development periods. This Development Flowchart outlines a typical project’s key phases and players.
If I hire HDC as my development consultant, how will my project be staffed?
Projects are usually staffed by a two-person team, composed of a finance project manager and a construction project manager. Your finance project manager will work with you to structure and close financing for your project; your construction project manager will work with you to manage the design and construction process. Your two project managers will work closely with each other to assure your project proceeds from planning to completion in a timely, well-organized, and cost-efficient manner. Many of our development clients also take advantage of HDC’s Asset Management services.
What qualifications do HDC’s staff bring to this work?
Our staff bring a broad set of on-the-ground knowledge, skills, and relationships to the development of affordable housing and human-service facilities. We have acquired our qualifications through a combination of formal training and cross-sector work experience in architecture, construction project management, and affordable housing finance and development. You can view our team members’ professional bios on the Our People page of this site.
As my development consultant, how will HDC get paid?
During your project’s earliest stages, we will charge an hourly fee. Once it has been determined that your project is feasible, we will enter into a development services agreement with the project sponsor. Under this agreement, our fee will be set as a portion of the project’s developer fee, a line item in the development pro forma. The developer fee will be equitably split between the project sponsor and HDC, and it will be covered by project financing sources that HDC will help to assemble. HDC’s portion of the fee will depend on your project’s cost, complexity, and other factors.
Why should I hire HDC instead of another development consultant?
We appreciate that it can be difficult to evaluate the qualifications of a specialized technical consultant. To better understand how HDC’s qualifications and approach relate to your specific needs, we encourage you to contact a member of our team for a preliminary, no-cost conversation. Briefly, here are three things that differentiate HDC from its competitors:
Experience and relationships. Developing and sustaining affordable housing and human-service facilities is the only thing HDC does, and we’ve been doing it for more than 25 years. We understand the nuances of working with funding sources and regulatory structures specific to these types of projects, and we have trusted relationships with entities that act as key partners.
Capacity and breadth. Our development team is made up of roughly 15 senior and associate project managers who have diverse backgrounds and skills. Our robust staffing structure enables a high degree of specialization and provides flexibility to adapt to our clients’ changing needs.
Commitment to core values. HDC is a mission-driven nonprofit. We are committed to partnering with community organizations to develop housing and facilities that strengthen opportunities for people who are underserved by the market. We believe in creating developments that are beautiful, comfortable, energy-efficient, cost-efficient, and built and financially structured to last.
Learn more about our values and goals and view some of our completed development projects.
Contact Our Staff
Julie Proksch
Director of Real Estate Development
503-335-3668 ext.106
Travis Phillips
Director of Real Estate Development
503-335-3668 ext.124