Your observations here are accurate. Historically, The Sears Armory went up for sale but no one could afford to purchase it. Prior to that, Eric Sten had pushed for it to be a homeless center, but that was converted to an ODOT workstation/"Emergency Shelter." 

When the situation in PDX got out of control, Hales was easily able to declare the female homelessness situation an emergency and open the site. 

SW PDX is already home to a large # of Somalian immigrants and a large, low income housing project was built at the old Eagles Lodge under Mayor Potter. Man; The proposed building height/size violated City Building Codes and PDC rewrote the codes to allow for the structure.