Last week, local community-based organization Self Enhancement, Inc. hosted a naming dedication and opening celebration for the Dr. Darrell Millner Building in North Portland’s Overlook neighborhood. The affordable apartment community has 17 apartments reserved for households with incomes under 30% of the area median income, and 45 for households with incomes between 31-60% AMI.
This new apartment community is part of SEI’s Alberta Alive initiative, an ongoing collaboration with Community Development Partners. According to the project website, Alberta Alive’s mission is to “celebrate and strengthen Portland’s historically Black North/Northeast neighborhoods by providing affordable housing, supportive services, and a shared community for underserved individuals and families.”
The Dr. Darrell Millner Building is the third Alberta Alive apartment community to open, and the first of two to receive funding from Metro’s voter-approved affordable housing bond. The bond contributed almost one third of the building’s total construction and development costs. The Strong Family Apartments will break ground later this fall, bringing 75 affordable homes to the Humboldt neighborhood. The Metro bond will also contribute about a third of the total costs.
Both bond-funded apartment communities are part of the Portland Housing Bureau’s N/NE Preference Policy. The program aims to redress the harm caused by urban renewal initiatives that began in the early 1990s, by giving preference to residents who were displaced from their community and to their descendants. These neighborhoods - known collectively as Albina - are where Portland’s vibrant Black community has historically been located, due to redlining and other racist policies and practices that occurred in the decades prior to urban renewal. Read more about neighborhood segregation and disinvestment in Portland’s Black community.
Tony Hopson Sr. established SEI in 1981 as a basketball camp for Black youth in Albina. The summer offerings soon evolved to include academic enrichment and SAT preparation, and eventually became a year-round program. Today SEI offers a wide array of family and youth programming and employs 225 people.
“When I think about what used to be here and the people who used to be here, who are no longer here,” said Hopson, at the apartment community’s groundbreaking ceremony in 2022, “to have the opportunity to be a part of partnerships that are putting together low-income housing for some of those folks to have a pathway back, is just really really important and really really meaningful to me personally and for the future of SEI and our community.”
SEI’s vision for all Alberta Alive apartment communities centers on going beyond the “sticks and bricks” of the actual housing structures to focus on creating a positive living experience for residents. “We know that we are very good at building community,” said SEI’s director of community and family programs, Sahaan McKelvey, in an interview with Metro last summer. “We know that we are very good at establishing culture and relationships and creating an environment that is conducive to people being able to win and succeed. So we will be able to bring that to these spaces.”
To achieve this, the organization provides resident services at the Dr. Darrell Milner Building. According to Sahaan, this will entail staff knowing residents by name and knowing some things about their lives; providing consistent opportunities for people in the building to get to know one another and form community; and ensuring that everyone is aware of and has access to broader services. “I want a community that is full of residents who love the place that they live,” explained Sahaan, “[and] love the community that they're a part of in that space.”
Before Hopson founded SEI he was a student at Jefferson High, where he played on the school’s basketball team; the first all-Black team to win a state championship in Oregon. While there, he met a young teacher named Darrell Millner, who started teaching at the school in 1970. Millner later attended the University of Oregon, earning his doctorate in education in 1975. After returning to Portland, Dr. Millner accepted a teaching position in Portland State University’s newly formed Black Studies Department. A decade later he became the department chair, and over time, the leading expert on Oregon’s Black history, uncovering information that had not previously been taught in schools or widely known.
Dr. Millner lecturing at Portland State University in the 1970s. Courtesy of University Archives and Special Collections, Portland State University Library.
Dr. Millner and his family settled in a house in Albina, just around the corner from the building that now bears his name. He recalled how his daughter was born at the local Kaiser medical center and the family spent time at Peninsula Park and the Matt Dishman Community Center over the years. “Family and community: nothing is more important than that,” said Dr. Millner in his remarks at the event. “Words really don’t describe the journey I’ve been through, just watching this building be built and watching the process of the art being selected and being involved in those decisions.”
The building’s walls feature paintings by some of Portland’s most celebrated Black artists, like Isaka Shamsud-Din and Adriene Cruz. The selection was curated by Portland-based artist and educator Sharita Towne. “Curating this particular building and getting to work so close with you, Dr. Millner, is a singular joy in my life,” Towne reflected, addressing Dr. Millner in her remarks.
As a grandchild of the Great Migration – a time when many Black families moved from the Southern states to regions in the North, West and Midwest United States – this project felt especially meaningful to Towne. She enjoyed seeing residents’ positive reactions when art pieces were introduced to the building: “Every day when folks come home there’s medicine waiting for them outside of that elevator and they’re seeing reflections of themselves.”
Dr. Millner recalls driving down Interstate Ave and seeing his name on the building for the first time, “I can’t explain what a powerful feeling and an emotional feeling that was for me. Because I feel that this is my neighborhood; this is my community.”
The Metro affordable housing bond has supported the creation of over 1,800 affordable homes throughout greater Portland, with nearly 2,800 more in development or construction. Many of these apartment communities were developed in partnership with community-based organizations like SEI, which offer culturally responsive services to help residents thrive.