The Essex Townhouses will get a major overhaul, and a plan to raze and rebuild Farnam Courts will move forward, as part of a $81.5 million budget the housing authority approved for fiscal year 2013 – 2014.
Allan Appel Photo
Fenced and boarded up, Essex Townhouses is slated for a “RAD” redo in 2014
The unanimous vote occurred at the authority’s regular meeting last week at the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) headquarters at 360 Orange St. The fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
The budget includes line items ranging from large expenditures like new buildings, to replacement keys.
HANH Board of Commissioners Chair Erik Clemons and Alberta Witherspoon.
HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton said the budget reflects an ongoing trend of rebuilding housing authority developments from the ground up. The authority has recently done that at Brookside and the $33 million Rockview projects.
Both of those developments are part of a $200 million West Rock Revitalization Project, which reflects a shift from dense and isolated public housing to more suburban, family-oriented, self-sustaining communities.
Another major project for HANH is the ongoing financing and design work to redo the crime-ridden Farnam Courts on Grand Avenue and to relocate families in Fair Haven. Some Farnam Courts tenants will move to a to-be-built family-oriented development on the site of an old bottling factory at Ferry and Chatham streets (pictured).
The budget includes $22 million allocated for redevelopment programs. These are funded with grants that HANH has recently received from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)‘s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program.
The RAD program is designed to convert aging public housing like HANH’s Essex Townhouses on Quinnipiac Avenue into higher-caliber apartments, through major rehabilitation. Rehabbed projects are then eligible for larger subsidies under Section 8 housing programs, explained Shenae Draughn, HANH’s executive project manager.
Another big-ticket line in the budget is $8.7 million for what, in the alphabet soup of HANH, is termed “COCC,” or the Central Office Cost Center, the housing authority’s administration.
In addition, $3.2 million has been allocated for HANH’s Glendower Group, Inc. That’s the authority’s separate development entity that helps structure the often complex borrowing and financing for new construction.
Due to this arrangement, a number of developments around town associated with HANH are not included in the budget, because the authority is the “moving entity” but not legally the owner. These “third-party sites,” in which HANH has ownership rights but not fullpfledged ownership, include Eastview Terrace and 122 Wilmot Rd. in West Rock.
Notes to the budget say that “these properties are separate legal entities from HANH, have separate budgets from HANH, have different approval processes than HANH and are on a different budget cycle than HANH.”
The budget passed without any discussion by the commissioners or the 35 people in attendance at the public meeting, most of whom are HANH staffers.
The budget had been previously reviewed and endorsed by the commission’s finance committee.
There are two particular attention grabbing headlines extracted from this story.
The budget had been previously reviewed and endorsed by the commission's finance committee".
Sounds eerily like the action or lack of action by the New Haven Board of Alderman.
The story also highlights the lack citizen participation, a hall mark requirement of HUD.