Apartment Choice

There were many aspects of the four- site Capitol Hill transit - oriented development the East Design Review Board liked, but confidence was not high enough to clear it for permitting on Wednesday. Situated above the light rail station , the transit- oriented development will be Capitol Hill’s largest construction project to date, creating more than 400 apartment units in a superblock that borders Broadway , 10th Avenue, East John Street and East Denny Way. Each of the four buildings will be seven stories. Three will provide around 20 percent of their apartment units at affordable levels, while the Capitol Hill Housing B-North site will include 110 units at affordability rates of 30-60 percent of the area median income . The East Design Review Board ’s last assessment of the development, which is being led by Portland- based Gerding Edlen Development (GED), was in December. Board members agreed developers responded to the guidance provided at that time, but didn’t feel every r...

(Photo: NEWS CENTER) PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- In the midst of a struggle to get a rent control ordinance on the November ballot in Portland, a new group has emerged to tell voters why its a bad idea. "Say no to rent control" says locking down a rent price might sounds like a great idea, but it can have serious consequences. The group is composed of landlords, contractors and others who say the proposed initiative is reckless and extreme. They say housing policy is complicated, and should not be decided by referendum. ► Overall, Maine housing is considered 'unaffordable' The group Fair Rent Portland , which brought forth a rent stabilization initiative intended for the November ballot, says the initiative is modeled after West Hollywood, California and Takoma Park, Maryland. Those ordinances have been in place for 30 years. Fair Rent Portland says both cities were able to relieve the housing crisis while supporting long term development .   (Photo: NEWS C...

When American doctor Stephen Yoon thinks of North Korea, he does not think of ballistic missile tests or the threat of nuclear war. He remembers instead a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, who suffered from spastic quadriplegia that made her unable to stand or sit. Five years ago, she went to Yoon's developmental-disability program at Pyongyang Medical University Hospital , where she received treatments from Yoon and his team of local doctors. After almost a year of exercise therapy and some surgeries, she walked out of the hospital on her own. The event was heralded in North Korean state media as a national victory, but it received no notice in the U.S., where few people even know about the roughly 200 Americans like Yoon who work and live under the rule of Kim Jong Un. Carefully monitored by the regime, they have come and gone for years, doing educational, medical or infrastructural work, and sometimes raising families in a nation that has been officially at war with the ...

IN THE 1960s and ’70s, long before helicoptering emerged as a parenting style, adults had far less interest in looming over their children, frequently urging them to go play outside or downstairs. The netherworld to which these parents pointed was usually a recreation room or finished basement, clad insipidly in wood-veneer paneling and linoleum. Furnishings typically included a saggy sofa, a scratched ping-pong table and a built-in bar never used for mixing drinks; instead, the kids commandeered it as a make-believe store or a stage for puppet shows. Not even Dad’s novelty naked- lady martini stirrers lured him down once the children moved in. And the closest Mom got was to stand at the top of stairs and yell, “Supper’s ready! Wash your hands!” Perhaps these ratty rec rooms weren ’t worthy of House Beautiful, but the stints of physical distance they offered parents and offspring arguably benefited both in ways today’s airy cathedral-ceiling’d great rooms can’t. These days, peopl...