Homer Williams has a new idea for homelessness. The well-known Portland developer is in the preliminary stages of pitching a plan to trade a 86-year-old golf course for low-income housing.

So far, Williams has the support of at least two city officials. But he's wary of moving too quickly after his last pitch -- turning city-owned Terminal 1 into a giant homeless shelter -- became mired in controversy and then died.

Williams wants his Harbor of Hope – a nonprofit organization made up of business leaders -- to buy the Broadmoor Golf Course near the airport in Northeast Portland. The course is zoned as open space, but is surrounded by industrial land on Northeast Columbia Boulevard.

Portland needs usable industrial land, so Williams wants the city to rezone the 125-acre golf course as industrial land. He would put together a group of investors to buy the land and sell it for industrial development – or, other developers could buy it directly.

In turn, the city would take pockets of tracts now zoned industrial throughout the city and redesignate them as residential property for low-income housing projects.

By the end of the zoning swap, he hopes the city will have 12,000 to 15,000 new units of affordable housing.

Harbor for Hope would raise money to buy the rezoned residential land and then sell it or donate it to developers and homelessness nonprofits to build affordable apartments. Williams hasn't identified the smaller industrial properties targeted for rezoning.

His selling point is that the city basically just needs to make decisions on zoning to make this happen, without ponying up money. The attraction for developers is more altruistic than monetary in the short-term. But Williams frames the issue of homelessness as one that could hurt the bottom line for the business community long term.

Williams' last plan was to use the city-owned marine warehouse Terminal 1 in Northwest Portland into a campus that would sleep up to 400 homeless people, as well as hosting service providers on site. He planned to raise the money to run the operation from the private sector. Former Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioners Dan Saltzman and Steve Novick supported exploring the idea initially. But it faced criticism from other commissioners, neighbors, business leaders and environmentalists over concerns of "warehousing" the poor and whether the building should be sold to the highest bidder instead.

The deal eventually fell apart amid the backlash, coming to a head when Williams named homeless advocate Ibrahim Mubarak as the director.

Williams said his commitment to combatting homelessness hasn't waned. He thinks the private sector can fill a crucial role that local government can't because it faces fewer obstacles and regulations to move quickly on solutions.

"The idea is really to try to unleash the private side, and working with the nonprofit side, to try to scale it up," Williams said.

He envisions about 15 of the housing projects scattered throughout the city. Homeless people who hold jobs or have children, or seniors on fixed incomes, would be the target audience.

The apartment buildings wouldn't be high rises or elaborate, but what Williams calls "workforce housing."

"These aren't going to have green roofs and lots of bells and whistles, but they'll be high-quality, good solid buildings," he said.

Multnomah County has about 4,000 homeless people, according to the latest survey in 2015. More than a third of them live on the streets, which is who Williams tried to help with his Terminal 1 plan.

In this case, he's focusing more on whoever could move into an apartment today -- if there were any in their price range.

"There's a number of people that are living in cars and couch-surfing and in tents," Williams said. "It's staggering. Most of these people have jobs. That's the scariest part."

He has met with most city commissioners so far.

Mayor Ted Wheeler said the plan is still in its early stages and he wants many more details nailed down before discussing it in public in detail, but he's glad to have Williams exploring the idea.

"Homelessness in this community is at a crisis level, and business as usual isn't going to work. We need better approaches, we need stronger approaches -- we need all of the above," Wheeler said. "Homer has demonstrated an ability to execute on visionary ideas in the past. And frankly I'm pleased someone of his talent is willing to put his talent behind this very important issue."

Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who operated the city's Housing Bureau under Hales, is also optimistic and interested to see the idea develop.

"I think Dan has very open ear to what Homer is thinking about," said Brendan Finn, Saltzman's chief of staff. "I think we're waiting at this point to see something a little more refined before Dan actually gets behind something."

Commissioner Nick Fish, who was a critic of the Terminal 1 proposal, and Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, a proponent of affordable housing, declined to comment on the proposal at this stage.

Williams also met with Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury, even though the decision to move forward lies solely with the city.

"One of the things I really appreciate about his vision is that I think he's realized, yes we need to have shelter, but we actually need housing. That's the ultimate solution here," Kafoury said. "So anyway we can work on creating more permanent affordable housing in our community -- that's the ultimate goal."

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger