Christopher Peak photo
Antillean Manor on Day Street.
The State Bond Commission has approved a $3.1 million loan to help fund the redevelopment of Antillean Manor, a failed former co-op and 31-unit affordable housing complex owned by the Meriden-based landlord Carabetta Management.
The bond commission approved that loan on Friday.
The loan is slated to help fund the razing of the existing structure and the construction of a new 31-unit multifamily property that will contain five one-bedroom apartments reserved for households at or below 25 percent of the area median income (AMI), as well as 11 two-bedroom units, 14 three-bedroom units, and one four-bedroom unit set aide for families at or below 50 percent AMI.
“The longterm 20-year project-based HAP contracts ensures that residents will continue to pay 30% of their income towards the rent and no resident will experience a rent increase,” the bond commission’s agenda reads. “The Development will be 100% affordable and no existing residents will be permanently displaced.”
The agenda states the total estimated cost of redevelopment is $14.2 million. In addition to the new $3.1 million bond commission loan, other funding for the project includes $4.1 million in federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits, $5.65 million in Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) funds, and nearly $1.4 million in other funds.
“The need for affordable, quality housing is rising due to the devastating economic impact of COVID-19 on Connecticut residents,” New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney is quoted as saying in a Friday email press release about the bond commission vote. “The redevelopment of the Antillean Manor Co-op will improve quality of life and ease financial hardship for residing families.”
Former Livable City Initiative (LCI) chief Serena Neal-Sanjurjo agreed.
“We worked really hard on that, on getting the community and the residents and the developer working together,” she said about the planned Antillean Manor rebuild. She praised current LCI Acting Director Arlevia Samuel and Walker-Myers, who is the neighborhood’s alder, for pushing the project forward.
“It’s part of the larger plan” for the neighborhood, she said. “Dwight Gardens happened. There’s the work we’ve been doing with TCB. Antillean is going to completely transform that area in terms of good, decent affordable housing.”
Will the income from rents and HAP (RAP?) be sufficient to support the project, including paying the loan and maintaining it? The fact that no present tenants will be replaced bodes poorly for the project's viability. These same tenants have, at least twice, defaulted on their HUD loan and failed to maintain their home such that it must now be razed.