Sarah Vanderbilt Photo
Home ownership remains an integral part of the vision for Quinnipiac Terrace. But for now it is a dream deferred.
As the Q Terrace public housing project embarks on its third and final phase of development, the City Plan Commission gave permission to delay the construction of 27 planned homeowner units. Work will begin on 33 rental units will proceed. The housing market is simply in no shape to finance the construction of new homes.
Where there was once a crumbling housing project on Front Street, the colorful new-urbanist Q Terrace now stands. The development is a product of a public-private partnership between the city, developer Trinity Financial, and the Housing Authority of New Haven. The project is part of the federal Hope VI program to replace failed housing projects.
Q Terrace has been underway for several years, and the last of three phases of construction is set to begin. This phase was meant to include 27 homeownership units. The city had requested their inclusion to ensure that Q Terrace was a mixed-income neighborhood.
But then the recession hit. First developers scaled back on the number of homeownership units. Then they announced last month that they would have to put them on hold all together. The City Plan Commission signed off on that plan on Wednesday evening.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Carolyn Kone (at right in photo), attorney for the developers, told commissioners that the project can’t find funding for homes for sale in the current economy. Project Architect Hank Keating (at left) later said that the developers simply can’t find banks willing to finance homeowner units.
With homeowner construction on hold, Q Terrace will move forward in new phases, Kone explained. On the south side of the development 22 rental units will be built, followed by 10 homeownership units and then seven more later, as funding allows. On the north side, 11 rental units will be built, followed by 10 homeownership units.
In the meantime, the empty lots will be seeded with grass and put behind chain-link fencing, Keating said.
Commissioner and East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker asked what happens if homeownership money isn’t forthcoming.
“Our goal is to get it done as quickly as possible,” Keating replied.
Elicker worried aloud about the appearance and upkeep of chain-link fencing if the money drought goes on for one, two, or even three years. Keating said he hoped work could begin in six months.
“We’re trying very hard” to find banks that will lend, Keating said after the meeting.
Asked how long it could take, Keating said “It’s anybody’s guess.” It could be as long as a year or two, he said.
Nevertheless, home ownership will be a part of the finished Q Terrace, Keating said. “It’s integral to the project that there be homeownership.”
Just build these:
http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs031.snc3/11855_1194862906822_1085910074_30489393_2999103_n.jpg
This is one of the most versatile, flexible and livable building types ever developed. With logical deployment over a landscape, this building type can create great and complete neighborhoods.
As a two family house, it can serve as a very large 4-5 bedroom house for a fairly wealthy family as well as a modest apartment or starter home for a couple, a young family or just one person. If also supplemented with a carriage house in the rear, it can have two rentable apartments that would allow a middle class family to live in the 4-5 bedroom house that is on the second and third floors. The basement can ever serve as a third rental unit, thus allowing the principle owner to have a very modest income.
Also, the house can be subdivided between the second and third floors, thus creating 3-4 sizable apartments if the principle owned does not live in the building itself.
If the owner of the building lives nearby (like on the street), then it can be divided up into even smaller apartments aimed at students, individuals, couple and young families.
Also, it can easily be converted into a retail unit on the first floor with minor adjustments.
This is the building type that can adjust to changes in its surroundings better than almost any other building type. Public housing projects should not be seen as being static; we will never comprehensively solve social problems in one fell swoop, we need to develop solutions that change over time and are flexible. We should have environments that change with us, buildings that can transition from public to private hands and from housing to retail to office back to housing.