Bienestar and HDC are partnering to achieve organizational “firsts” with Nueva Esperanza joint venture.

A pedestrian alameda will traverse the north end of Nueva Esperanza, where a one-story community center will be flanked by two of the development’s twelve residential buildings.

For Bienestar, the Washington County-based organization that builds housing, hope, and community for the wellbeing of Latinxs, immigrants, and all families in need, Nueva Esperanza is a first in two respects.

The 150-unit, 13-building complex—soon to begin construction in Hillsboro—will be the largest and most complicated development project that Bienestar has undertaken in its 40-year history as an affordable housing provider.

And it will be Bienestar’s first housing community designed to meet the needs of two culturally specific communities: Latinx families and Somali immigrant families. Bienestar’s outreach to Somali residents is a new step for an organization that was founded to serve the housing needs of Latinx farmworkers, and is now expanding the focus of its mission to include other immigrant communities.

For HDC, Nueva Esperanza is also a first: it is our first joint-venture development. Though HDC has previously served as a development and asset management consultant to Bienestar, this is the first time we have partnered with Bienestar—or with any organization—in the role of codeveloper.

The partnership is the test-run of a new HDC pilot program, which supports organizations serving culturally specific communities to achieve hard-to-reach housing goals, including operational and capacity-building goals, by offering an enhanced level of technical support and risk-sharing. The program, and the partnership itself, tie to five-year goals established by HDC’s recently adopted 2021-26 strategic plan.

With a project team that includes Scott Edwards Architecture and LMC Construction, Nueva Esperanza is scheduled to begin construction early next year. One of the first developments funded by a $653 affordable housing bond passed by Metro voters in 2018, it will be built on land donated by project sponsor the City of Hillsboro. Other major funding partners and investors include Oregon Housing and Community Services, Meyer Memorial Trust, Enterprise Community Partners, Citibank, and JPMorgan Chase Bank.

The undeveloped parcel on which Nueva Esperanza will be built, visible at the center of this image, was once surrounded by open fields and campos (migrant camps).

We look forward to reporting out on the exciting work the Nueva Esperanza project team is doing to advance housing-justice goals—including taking innovative approaches to barrier reduction in areas such as minority contractor recruitment and resident screening. But first, we invite you to look back. We’re honored to share with you Bienestar’s capsule history of Nueva Esperanza:

Not long ago, the undeveloped parcel of land on 53rd Avenue, located in the heart of Hillsboro, Oregon, was surrounded not by tech companies, parks, and housing, but open fields. Latinx farmworkers nearby lived in campos (migrant camps) operated by the farmers who relied on their labor.

Migrants were drawn to Washington County, Oregon, and they brought with them the transformative power of esperanza (hope). They hoped for work that could sustain their families. They hoped for new opportunities for their children to flourish. They hoped for safe, stable housing.

Even when these promises proved to be false—when the hope for decent affordable housing was replaced by the reality of a migrant camp without running water or electricity—they persevered and kept hope alive. Without social services for people who looked and spoke like them, they developed institutions to serve their community, institutions whose legacy endures today.

“The esperanza in this project is the hope that those who came in the 1960s and 70s were dreaming of,” says Hector Hinojosa, one of the members of Bienestar’s Nueva Esperanza Project Advisory Committee. “Finally, we could have the hope that we came for all those years ago.”

Hector, like the other members of the committee, came to this region as a migrant worker in the 1960s. Together with his colleagues on the committee, he helped Bienestar develop Nueva Esperanza to bridge the past, present, and future. Our goal is to honor the legacy of those whose hope and determination led them to blaze the trail, while building quality affordable housing to serve the diverse community carrying those dreams into the future.