Affordable Plan Replaces Market-Rate

One of the city’s major landlords is about to spend $1.17 million to buy a long-vacant six-acre nursing home site in order to build 100 to 150 apartments — almost all of it needed affordable units.

The landlord in question is not Pike or Mandy or Yale, but Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven.

The six-acre parcel, with a long vacant and to-be-razed nursing home on it, sits among the hills of West Rock at 34 Level St.

The 34 Level St. plan was authorized in a unanimous vote at Tuesday night’s regular meeting of HANH’s Board of Commissioners.

The plan has wider ramifications for New Haven, for two reasons:

• A private developer originally planned to build market-rate apartments there. Now the project, under HANH, will feature homes almost exclusively for lower-income families.

• The plan fits into a broader rebuilding of the West Rock neighborhood, with Westville Manor the latest public-housign development about to be razed and reconstructed. The 34 Level property stands across from Westville Manor. The 34 Level plan is ​“extremely critical for the redevelopment of Westville Manor,” said Shenae Draughn, the senior vice president for HANH’s development arm, the Glendower Group.

The Westville Manor project was formally approved by the Board of Alders in March. The first families — 63 of the approximately 143 families there — are set to move out early next year into off-site temporary dwellings in the nearby Rockview development, Draughn said. That will allow the housing authority to begin to demolish Westville Manor’s existing 26 two-story barracks-like buildings and 150 residential units and replace them with a mix of townhouses and apartment buildings. The current residents can move back if they choose to.

The purchase of the 34 Level Street lot directly across the street will make it possible for HANH to create 100 more units, if not more, said Draughn. Plans are too inchoate to be specific; no architect has yet been on the case, pending the closing.

The purchase, to be closed on within about 60 days, will ​“round out” the Westville Manor redevelopment and function as an entryway to the new community, Draughn said.

The Westville Manor redevelopment is the latest complex to undergo a complete modernization in a wave that has transformed public housing across New Haven. It also will be the last of the West Rock housing authority communities to get a much-needed overhaul. The housing authority has redeveloped Brookside Estates, Twin Brook Properties (formerly Ribicoff Cottages), and Rockview.

Westville Manor’s future units will break down as follows: 20 one-bedroom units, 29 two-bedroom units, 32 three-bedroom units, 21 four-bedroom units, and seven five-bedroom units. Eighty-seven of those residential units will be in the new townhouses, and the remaining 22 will be in a central three-story apartment complex and resident services building.

Draughn said it is far too early to describe what combination of apartment buildings and townhouses and what mix of market-rate and affordable units will be decided upon for the 34 Level Street project. HANH’s usual mix is 80 percent affordable and 20 percent market rate.

It will be treated as a separate project, with HANH likely going to the city to request a PDD (planned development district) or PDU (planned development unit), planning instruments that expedite the rezoning and building process.

The deal won’t in the end cost taxpayers or HANH money, Draughn said. HANH deals such as this one are largely based on the authority applying for tax credits through CHFA, the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority. HANH leverages the credits into raising private equity, receiving grants from nonprofit affordable housing organizations, and arranging also for private mortgages. As those finances fall into place, HANH, in effect, repays itself through Glendower, and makes a modest profit on the arrangement.

Draughn said HANH had wanted to buy the property a year ago as it was in foreclosure. Then a private developer got control and planned to convert the nursing home property into into a 51-unit market-rate apartment complex

When that plan fell through and the developer wanted to sell, the asking price, Draughn reported, was $1.7 million. ​“We were not amenable,” to that amount, she said.

HANH did its own appraisal and offered $1.17 million. The deal is expected to close at that price.

In the long calendar for modernizing its portfolio, Westville Manor is moving along first. Draughn estimated that HANH will apply for the vital state tax credits for the 34 Level project no sooner than 2022, with the first shovels in the ground there expected in the following year.

When HANH builds new units, it is often right on property that it already owns and razes. Therefore new HANH construction usually replaces old construction with not that much of a net gain in number of units.

This project is different. ​“It is a big deal,” Draughn said. ​“Now we can put in more affordable housing when the need is great.”