As Kathy Talton snipped a ribbon on a sparkling new townhouse at Eastview Terrace, Senator Christopher Dodd called for more investment in homes like these to tackle a “silent crisis.”
Dodd showed up at Wednesday morning’s festive ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the on-time, on-budget $45 million rehabilitation of 102 affordable housing units at the formerly troubled Eastview Terrace in Fair Haven Heights.
Although a cool wind whipped around the bucolic setting and around neighboring Bella Vista’s imposing towers, the sun came out in time for the dignitaries to cut a ribbon and welcome back former residents like Talton (pictured above) to their shiny new digs.
“We need to create much more affordable housing in Connecticut,” said Dodd (pictured with Fair Haven Alderman Robert Lee, center, and HANH board member Lee Cruz).
Talks began in 2001 on resuscitating the crime-ridden complex. Work began six years later to rehabilitate all 21 buildings and to build 12 new townhouses. The first shovel hit the ground in November 2007: Click here for a past story.
In his remarks, Mayor John DeStefano said that 16 percent of the total inventory of affordable housing in the state is in New Haven.
“Silent Crisis”
Dodd referenced the breaking of the housing bubble, a politically sensitive topic and one very much close to home in Dodd’s capacity as chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
“While home ownership is an important goal for many, it’s not for everyone,” he said.
What he described as a “silent crisis” is that nationally, some 40 percent of people who lose their shelter due to foreclosure are renters.
The ceremony was Dodd’s second public appearance in the city in a week. On Monday, he promoted local non-profits’ use of neighborhood stabilization funds to reduce blight and other impacts in New Haven of the foreclosure crisis.
Wednesday, he focused on affordable shelter. To afford what’s considered “affordable rental housing” in Connecticut, a person has to earn at least $21 an hour, which is out of reach of many, Dodd said. “That’s why a lot of young people are leaving the state.”
In introducing him, HANH’s Jimmy Miller, deputy director for special projects (at right in photo, with associate project manager Mark Guerrera), praised Dodd as a champion of public and assisted housing — “even though we haven’t gotten our Hope VI yet for West Rock. But we’ll be back.”
Dodd referenced steps taken early in the foreclosure crisis in limiting Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac from kicking out renters in foreclosed buildings; he said much more needs to be done. And he called for 100,000 additional Section 8 housing voucher units to be made available.
Trust Fund Pitched
Dodd also said he hoped soon to work with the new administration to fund a national affordable housing trust fund. Such a fund was part of the previous administration’s housing recovery legislation. It was meant to create resources for 1.5 million units for the most housing-vulnerable. However, the “fund” has still not been funded.
Dodd proposed to put $1 billion in it. “We need to renew the commitment to affordable housing made 60 years ago during the Truman administration so we make sure decent shelter is not only for those who can afford it but for everyone.”
Eastview, Part 2
Miller, who presided over the Eastview Terrace success story, hoped Dodd might help, or at least through his appearance, give a HUD blessing to the second phase of Eastview.
Although the Wednesday morning event was very much of a poignant welcome home to individuals like Kathy Talton, one of Eastview’s residents displaced from the formerly run-down and drug ridden enclave at the foot of Bella Vista, only 102 units of the planned 127 are now complete.
“We need $25 million more,” Miller said, “to launch phase two.” He hoped that might come out of a special $1 billion fund that has been set aside for housing authorities nationwide to compete for.
HANH previously received $6 million from another stimulus pot set aside for HUD’s various housing authorities on a formula basis. Most of those funds have been earmarked for rehabilitation of existing units, not the building of new ones.
The additional $25 million will be for 25 new units, Miller said, which would fill out the several vacant plots of land at Eastview.
Ken Boroson, of Boroson-Falconer, the architect of Eastview indicated that these new 25 units would likely be heated geothermally. That would be a first for HANH. It would also be a green feature that might make HANH’s application for the $25 million more attractive from a more green-conscious Obama administration.
Miller seemed concerned that if HANH couldn’t get the $25 million from the stimulus, which would enable the phase two to start in October, there might be problems. “Yes, indeed, we’re counting on this second pot of stimulus money,” he said, indicating that previous monies were already committed for rehabbing units at other HANH sites.
Miller said jocularly that he hoped a check was in the mail.
Dodd only said, with reference to a previous Miller remark, “I’m getting the message. Hope VI, Hope VI. But please don’t tell anyone in Hartford or Bridgeport!”
A Quiet Place
In the most personal ways, Wednesday’s ceremony belonged to families such as Talton’s. HANH chief Karen Dubois-Walton said Eastview would be truly successful “when residents put their pictures on the wall and celebrate birthday parties, and form block watches.”
Talton stood proudly in front of her new house, 38 Jackson Lane, with her son Fabian and Julie Fagan, who represented the federal Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentHUD at the ceremony. Fagan said that as far back as 2001, when her job at HUD was eliminating drugs from housing projects, she remembered the fear in the eyes of families who were trying to survive at the old Eastern Circle housing complex. “Now their eyes are full of hope.”
Fabian, a ninth grader at Amistad High, said he liked the quiet of the place best of all.
A public-private partnership, funding for Eastview’s first phase included $26 million from HUD, $9 million in equity generated by tax credits from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, and $3.6 million through the Bank of America.
The city contributed no money, although they did gain two new streets, Jackson and Bouchet Lanes. These were named after two local African-American heroes, Levi Jackson, Yale’s first black football captain and Edward Bouchet, the university’s first black graduate.
"That's why [housing costs] a lot of young people are leaving the state" I remember leaving CT (as a young person) because it was boring [no street life - see the car], and the cities, where many young people want to live, were [are] dangerous, and one needs to own a car, whereas housing costs in a more expensive city, like Seattle or Portland, are offset by the ability to function without owning a car, and the culture is a little more open. Also, how many young people aspire to live in a public housing project, or isolated in a strip mall suburb?