For managers of Vancouver’s aging Smith Tower, the early months of the Trump administration have been a bumpy ride. In January 2025, tens of millions in federal grants that had been awarded for a major building renovation were put on ice. Then last month, a federal judge ordered those funds unfrozen.
Smith Tower, a circular 15-story high-rise at 515 Washington St., is the tallest building in downtown Vancouver. Its 170 units are home to about 200 seniors who live on less than $26,000 per year. And it has long and strong union ties.
It was built in 1965 with union labor and federal funding. Today it’s managed by Manor Management, which runs other union-built complexes for low-income seniors in the Portland area. Its janitors, maintenance workers, and administrative office workers are union-represented.
Smith Tower turns 60 this year, and it’s showing its age. It was built before the widespread adoption of sprinkler systems, and Manor Management president Greg Franks says that’s increasingly making the tower uninsurable. Several years ago, Manor Management started making concrete plans to renew the building.
“Everything in it has exceeded its life expectancy,” Franks told the Labor Press. “Everybody has maintained that building beautifully. The problem is, it’s just old.”
With help from a local nonprofit called the Housing Development Center, Manor Management lined up financing and developed plans for the renovation.
Travis Phillips, director of real estate development at the Housing Development Center, said the planned renovation will keep Smith Tower viable for another 60 years. It will include a fire-safety sprinkler system, efficient heating and cooling systems, plumbing and electrical upgrades, disability access improvements, seismic retrofit, and a new building envelope with triple-glazed window units.
That’s where the federal government comes in. Under contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Smith Tower provides long-term affordable housing. Tenants pay 30% of their income and the federal government pays the rest. For the retrofit, Smith Tower applied for and was awarded two federal loans: a $10 million loan from HUD’s Green and Resilient Retrofit Program and a $11.5 million loan from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
Smith Tower’s other funding sources include a $1 million grant from the City of Vancouver, a $13 million bank loan, and $38 million in state-approved funding from the sale of a tax credit. Construction — using union workers — is expected to cost $51.6 million, and total project costs will be $96.9 million.
Then came a Trump executive order in January — declaring a freeze on the billions of dollars in Biden-era green retrofit funds that had been approved but not yet disbursed. Phillips and Franks learned about it in the news. It created two problems, Phillips said. Not only was it a $21.5 million hole in their retrofit funding package. But it also put the $38 million tax credit fund at risk, because the state would want to use those funds for projects that will actually move forward.
Phillips reached out to HUD and found that the staff who administer its programs were in the dark — they didn’t know which funds had been frozen or for how long. For months the project was in limbo.
“Prices aren’t going anywhere but up,” Phillips said, “and the longer it takes to get the project done the more expensive it’s going to be.”
The project was saved April 15 — by order of a judge in Rhode Island.
A dismayed coalition of nonprofits affected by Trump funding freezes sued five federal agencies in federal court for freezing their approved grants. Defending the freeze, lawyers for the Trump administration lied to the court. They said the overnight decision to pause all funds from two Biden laws — without any explanation to grantees — amounted to “thousands of individual decisions made by agencies about … particular grants or other funding.”
Judge Mary McElroy didn’t buy it. In her ruling, she said the scope of power that the administration was claiming was breathtaking. “Its ramifications are massive: an indefinite pause of all money awarded under two of the largest spending statutes that Congress has passed in recent memory.”
The freeze was arbitrary and capricious, she ruled, saying the White House had no statutory authority to freeze funds that had already been awarded. She issued a nationwide injunction, ordering the agencies to “take immediate steps to resume the processing, disbursement, and payment of already-awarded funding” and “release awarded funds previously withheld or rendered inaccessible.”
Word of the decision travelled fast. Franks and Phillips were greatly relieved. Unless there’s some reversal, they expect work to begin on Smith Tower in early 2026. And a new generation of union trades workers will get a chance to improve on the work of their grandfathers
