Laura Glesby Photo
Karen DuBois-Walton with Sens. Blumenthal and Murphy, Mayor Elicker, and Alder Smith.
Fifty new low-income elderly housing units are coming to Level Street, bringing new life to the site of an abandoned nursing home and more options for aging tenants waiting for an affordable home.
Elm City Communities, the agency encompassing the Housing Authority of New Haven and its non-profit affiliates, is planning to demolish the long-vacant former residence of West Rock Nursing Home at 34 Level — and to build in its place a 50-unit senior housing complex designed specifically with the needs of elderly tenants in mind.
According to Elm City Communities Director Karen DuBois-Walton, elderly tenants make up about half of the 30,000 households on the wait list for affordable housing through Elm City Communities. “We know the need is great,” she said at a press conference outside the agency’s Orange Street headquarters on Friday morning.
The project is estimated to cost $20 million in total, with funds from Elm City Communities itself, private investors, and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section 202 program specifically designed to fund senior housing.
The complex is set to comprise 47 one-bedrooms and 3 two-bedrooms, all of which will be reserved for tenants who are at least 62 years old and who are making a maximum of 60 percent of the county’s area median income (or about $50,580 for a one-person household in 2023).
Though an exact timeline for construction was not available on Friday, the agency estimates that the project will be completed roughly by 2025.
A rendering of the proposed development.
Markeshia Ricks File Photo
The former nursing home as photographed in 2018.
DuBois-Walton joined local and state politicians on Friday to spotlight the impact of Section 202 — which is supplying $4 million toward the Level Street project — as they announced the proposed development in West Rock.
At the press conference, speakers highlighted the sore need for housing that low-income seniors can afford.
“A lot of people want to live in New Haven,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who sits on the HUD subcommittee of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee. At the same time, “we have one of the tightest housing markets in the nation.”
“For a senior seeing the end of a life ahead to be without housing is criminal,” added U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
The site has been vacant for about 13 years since the state shuttered the nursing home after discovering “deplorable” living conditions and practices there. A subsequent attempt by a private developer to transform the site into housing failed.
The housing authority purchased the 43,000-square-foot property in 2020 for $1.17 million, more than $100,000 under the parcel’s current appraised value, after initially failing to acquire it years earlier via a foreclosure sale.
Through its non-profit development arm, the Glendower Group, Elm City Communities has secured nearly $1 million in state brownfield funds to do an environmental cleanup of the site, which may have lingering asbestos and chemical spills from its life as a nursing home.
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Down the road from the West Rock Senior Center, the Level Street building will add to a cluster of Elm City Communities housing in the West Rock neighborhood, including Westville Manor, Brookside, Rockview, and Wilmont Crossing, as well as McConaughy Terrace and Valley Townhouses in the nearby West Hills neighborhood.
Mayor Justin Elicker praised the attention to accessibility baked into Elm City Communities’ design. “It’s not just affordable housing. It’s housing that brings dignity,” he said.
As DuBois-Walton detailed, the complex will be designed with automatic door openers, hand rails, large-lettered signage, “two elevators to reduce the wait time,” accessibility and safety-oriented bathrooms, covered drop-off spots, lighting beneath cabinets, and “areas to sit and rest along well-lit corridors” among other features.
The complex will include common spaces, private rooms designed for telehealth appointments, gardens, a laundry room and gym, onsite resident services, and an emergency phone system connecting residents directly to property management.
“I want to move in here!” she said.
This is great for the tenants, and I am happy for them. But each apartment will cost $400,000. This is not a scaleable approach to the city or region’s shortage of affordable housing. Using this approach would cost $6 billion to clear the Housing Authority’s waiting list, just for seniors. And the seniors who will benefit from this development will likely be moderate-, rather than low-income. (They definitely need the help, but low-income seniors need it even more.)
There is no easy or inexpensive way of dealing with the shortage. The market, by itself, has shown itself incapable of meeting the needs of low-income households. But there have to be less complicated and expensive responses.