Jolene’s first cousin — renewable energy meets affordable housing

Jolene’s First Cousin is Guerrilla Development’s first project to be powered using renewable energy. It serves as a model for sustainable development within affordable housing.

Our new solar panel system could not have been possible without the generous PGE Renewable Development Fund award which is supported by PGE customers who have committed to renewable energy through PGE’s Green Futures program. We would like to thank Elemental Energy for installing this bad boy, Forage Design for grant writing and education support, and the Creston-Kenilworth Neighborhood Association for supporting this project.

CLICK HERE to see Jolene’s solar array in action at the Enphase monitoring site!

Below is an short Elemental Energy Drone video of the solar array:

JOLENE'S FIRST COUSIN | COMPLETED 2020

2828 SE GLADSTONE ST.
PORTLAND, OR

Homelessness is an endemic problem in Portland and the numbers are sobering. According to 2017’s Point In Time Count, there are as many as 4,177 people without permanent homes on any given night. Nearly 1,700 of those folks sleep on the street. While there are many contributing factors, skyrocketing residential rent looms large among them. In the last two years alone, rent in Portland has risen twenty times faster than the median income.

We owe it to our City and to our citizens to find solutions. Enter Jolene’s First Cousin. It’s Guerrilla Development’s way of using our tool kit (real estate, finance and design) to put a dent in Portland’s homelessness problem.

Jolene’s First Cousin is two two-story buildings on a single lot in the heart of the Creston-Kennilworth neighborhood. It has a total of six units: three retail spaces, two market rate lofts and one containing 11 rooms in a single resident occupancy (SRO) arrangement. The 100-SF SRO rooms will share amenities: fully-outfitted kitchen, living and dining room, private landscaped courtyard, showers, toilets, and laundry facilities. Each room will have its own bed, closet, and sink. SRO renters will secure their spot in Jolene’s First Cousin for $425/mo. The SRO unit is master leased by JOIN—a homelessness non-profit in Portland with 25 years of experience—who place houseless folks into the project. The SRO residents self-govern, establishing ground rules and operational systems.

The project is innovative on other fronts as well. We crowd-invested $300,000 of equity in Jolene’s First Cousin thanks to a Rule 504 Exemption of Regulation D (qualified by the State of Oregon) in less than 72 hours. Our offering created an opportunity for Permitted Oregon Purchasers and Accredited Investors an annual 5% preferred return and both the return of their principal and a percentage split of the proceeds of a refinancing event in Year 10. Our goal? To create an opportunity to participate in real estate investment with a tangible social impact. You can read more about this specific process here.

Guerrilla won’t stop at Jolene’s First Cousin. There will be Jolene’s Second, and Third, and Fourth... We will nestle these projects into every major neighborhood in Portland. They will bring jobs, beautiful market rate rental apartments, and housing for our homeless population, a handful of rooms at a time.