A new shelter venture funded by the private sector is taking shape. The shelter would be separate from the city and county's homeless efforts, but has the blessing so far from Mayor Ted Wheeler.

Don Mazziotti, the former head of the Portland Development Commission who now runs nonprofit Harbor of Hope with developer Homer Williams, said the organization is close to looking for a location for a 150-person 25,000-square-foot shelter, likely close to services downtown.

The shelter -- which Mazziotti is calling a "safe harbor" -- would have on-site connections to medical and mental health services, job training and housing support.

The business leaders behind last year's Terminal 1 plan to turn a city-owned marine port into a campus for hundreds of homeless people recalibrated their approach after city commissioners abandoned that idea.

Now, Mazziotti said, committees of homeless people, advocates and service providers are putting together different pieces of the design for a series of smaller centers that would have beds, food, showers and help with accessing city and county services.

The group released a study Friday of more than 100 homeless people about what they want to see in a shelter. Many asked for privacy and hygiene facilities.

They prefer places that resemble actual homes, rather than more "institutional" settings. They want to have good relationships with neighbors – for instance, they could help the community with gardening, cleaning outside and holding regular meetings.

Opsis Architecture, working for free, has created designs based on that input. A Harbor of Hope committee is now looking for suitable locations, which haven't been identified yet.

Mazziotti and Williams would raise funds from the private sector and ask for donations to fund the shelter.

Harbor of Hope also is working on a model for transitional housing, which would focus more on drug and alcohol rehabilitation and job training for people who need a boost to be successful in permanent housing on their own.

Meanwhile, Williams is promoting an ambitious affordable housing initiative that would require the city's support to rezone the Northeast Portland Broadmoor Golf Course from open space to industrial land and rezone unused industrial pockets around the city as residential property. Developers or nonprofits would then turn those newly residential pockets into affordable housing apartments.

But most of the work Williams and Mazziotti are doing around homelessness isn't expected to require the city or county's approval -- or money.

"There's a big, big heart in the community and we see it every day," Mazziotti said. "We're trying to get the private sector involved in this effort and they've been extremely generous in the planning effort and funding studies."

The mayor's office has been briefed on the plans, though, and is encouraging.

"We understand that this is still a work in progress but the early concepts we've seen we think show promise," said Wheeler spokesman Michael Cox. "This idea of shelters being directly connected to service options like this is a concept that's shown promise elsewhere and we think it will here too."

Harbor of Hope's efforts are toward a single shelter now, but Mazziotti said they plan to sprinkle these throughout the Portland area once the first shows success.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger