Affordable Housing Planned For Kensington Park

Community Builders Development Project Manager Kristin Anderson said all of the units will be deed-restricted for tenants earning 60 percent or less of the area median income, which is $55,680 for a family of four.

Snake-Oil and Three Card Monte Being sold.Affordable for who?

Not knowing the background on this project building much needed affordable housing, I can't help feeling sad that a small city park will be lost. Perhaps there will be enhancements to a nearby park as compensation?

Community builders has been a thorn in the side of this neighborhood for many years. Constant complaining from neighbors about questionable activities in their buildings has been the norm for at least two decades. The community police station at the corner of Day and Edgewood was located there partly to address the problems at The Community Builders properties.
And now they want to slap together a cheap stick built, brick veneer and plastic siding "building" that will most certainly begin deteriorating soon after the first tenants move in, and will not last 20 years before it mercifully crumbles into a pile of rubbish.

Tha article mentions a land swap, but doesn't mention the land being swapped in return for the park the developer wants. What land will New Haven get?

Dependent on Subsidies from the feds and state? Why bother to approve this at all unless you know the subsidies are there. Last I heard - none available. Nada. Zilch.

Why is the state concentrating low-income housing in areas that are already almost entirely low income? This policy is reinforcing segregation.

This should be a mixed-income site with high income, middle income, low income, and homeowners mixed together. Money for low-income housing should be mostly spent in places like Milford, Westport, and Darien that have virtually no places for middle and lower income people to live, even though they have access to plenty of public transit and jobs.

Short sighted. Wrong Density. Bad use of taxpayer dollars and valuable city property/greenspace.

PUT THE PROPERTY OUT TO BID. Find an outside for-profit NEW HAVEN developer who will build vertical - 5 or 6 stories. Make it Mixed Income. Set aside 15 Apts for 'affordable'. Reserve some space for a park/playground, and maybe even move the police substation to there. But, PUT IT ON THE TAX ROLLS.

Dennis Serfilippi
https://www.facebook.com/SerfilippiForAlder-675305186265543

Such a waste. 15 Parking spaces for 15 affordable units is crazy??? This is close to public transit on Whalley, Chapel and Edgewood. The density is way too low.

The swap was talked about at the community management team meeting in Dwight a few weeks/months ago. TCB has some long-term plan to move their offices or something. I dont know why the "community" supports this when there are so so many complaints about this poverty landlord.

More bad planning. And the LIHTC round will be extremely competitive. This will probably be a project in 2024. But this approval might still be good!!!!

I feel like there needs to be some mention of Community builder's involvement in Church Street South.

IC: What was its involvement in CSS?

I'm fairly certain they owned it for a decent period of time, not terribly long ago. Maybe in the early-mid 2000s

I feel that the parking lot is just wasted space and the building itself should have definitely been 5-6 stories. The proposed parking lot should still be a park but also a sitting area. This seems like poor development if you ask me. It probably would be smart to put a police sub-station nearby only because the area is known for having high crime~ and with having law enforcement around it probably would help with lowering the crime rate.

For the record the community did NOT find
The building compatible with the historic character of the neighborhood.

We have asked for numerous changes in design. I was unable to testify at the meeting
because I was attending the Historic District
Commission meeting. This project was not
endorsed by The Dwight Central Management Team. The acknowledgment of the developer saying the neighborhood was in favor is not a true statement.

IC: Thanks. Yes, I did a quick google search, and Community Builders owned CSS prior to Northland. One could say its initial physical decay, making it uneconomic to continue as section 8, began under Community Builders. When Northland bought it, it bought with the intention of razing it and using the land.

Anonymous, because land use is statutorily a local issue and most suburbs are uninterested in welcoming Those People, with Those People defined as much by class as race. In spite of the best efforts of advocates, the Affordable Housing Appeals law has resulted in little affordable housing being built in the suburbs.

These leaves city officials in a conundrum. Tens of thousands of lower income city residents can't afford their rents. In many cases, they would choose to live in the suburbs, where most jobs are located. Building low- and moderate-income housing in the city does not address the poor access to these jobs and continues the concentration of poverty. But failing to build the housing in the city leaves these households rent-burdened.

Does this project back up to Antillean Manor? was this park part of the original Antillean Manor project, with the city retaining a right-of-way through Antillean Manor from Day Street to this park? How does this proposal mesh with the new, privately managed Antillean Manor reconstruction?

@Kevin McCarthy

I'm going to respectfully disagree that there are tens of thousands of residents who can't afford their rents. The housing court probably handles 200 cases per month maximum. Even if 80 percent are nonpayment of rent cases, that still only leaves about 2000 residents per year facing eviction for not being able to afford their rent. Many of them are not Those People. Most of them do not actually lose their housing they make long term payment plans and stay in place.

Certainly, people struggle to pay their rent and rent is an annoying imposition. But it should be priority number one for people and many, many residents would rather take on a $600 per month car payment and struggle to pay the rent than be prudent with finances. I see it all the time.

And new haven is not unaffordable. I feel like I say the same thing over and over again but there are many good housing options below $1000 in every neighborhood (except downtown and Wooster square maybe) that are not subsidized.

We don't have a housing crisis. We have a poverty issue. There will always be a small portion of the population that just struggles. Our system is set up that way currently. Thinking that adding affordable housing will help solve any problems is naive. If you make $700-2000 per month in CT, you're going to struggle. The math doesn't work even if you have no rent . How we fix that conundrum is up for debate and incredibly hard.

This is not dense enough. LCI continues to make bad deals for the city. Wasteful.

@BenTrachten, thanks for the civility - it's in short supply these days.

There is no magic number as to what constitutes affordability, but 30% of income is the commonly used metric. Almost exactly a year ago, Housing Authority executive director Karen DuBois-Walton testified to the Board of Alders that 41% of New Haven households are housing cost burdened using that metric. That's over 25,000 households, the vast majority of whom are renters. Most of these tenants will pay their rents and never see the inside of Housing Court. But their rents aren't affordable, as that term is commonly defined.
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/1500_new_affordable_units_down_23500_to_go/id_108254

Ben, I agree that poverty is the root cause of the problem. The average (median) rent in the city is almost identical to that of the region, but incomes in the city are far lower. But affordability is a problem for moderate-income as well as poor households. You note that if a household makes $2,000 a month they're going to struggle. But even if they make 20% more than that, they can only afford a rent of $720 using the 30% metric. Good luck with that!

Most people I know under 50 are "housing cost burdened"; it's not just an affliction of class or race. to get kids into Edgewood or Hooker people choose to buy houses in westville and East Rock with payments (PITI) well over $4000 per month or rent of $2500-3000 per month. It's a choice.

I think the housing authority statement is a vast oversimplification of a complex issue meant to cause hysteria and confusion. That's why so many people think we have an affordability crisis when we don't. People in high positions with agendas spout nonsense with manipulated data to excite the activist class into action on an issue that really isn't an issue. Then our elected officials, barely able to think for themselves, respond by... wait for it... creating a task force and a workshop. Because we live in this crazy City where everyone gets a say in everything.

Im starting to understand why people move to the suburbs. I never would, but I can now understand the many motivations to flee our insane City.

Ben, you may disagree with using 30% of income as the benchmark of an affordable rent. But this metric has been widely used for decades, notably in the Section 8 program. And DuBois-Walton did not manipulate the data. They are taken from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey,

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_17_5YR_B25106&prodType=table

Housing affordability is a statewide issue. According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, over 20% of CT renters are severely rent-burdened, i.e., they pay more than half of their income on rent.

https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/son-2019-cost-burdens-map

Arcari, the developer is absolutely lying. The Dwight Central Management Team did have a presentation by Community Builders on Tuesday October 1st. We absolutely rejected the project - and had a negative reaction to everything about it. I cannot believe that this group has the nerve to present this to the City Plan Commission and act as though there was any kind of endorsement by the DCMT. This is outrageous! We will fight it tooth and nail. Community Builders has destroyed the Historic Dwight District over the past 25 years. It is a terrible land lord. Its own tenants suffer, the neighbors suffer and the health and safety of all who reside in this area have been harmed by their neglect and mismanagement. They already own over 40 buildings in my neighborhood and two large projects. Why the concentration here? They are a multi-billion dollar corporation with facilities in over 15 states across the country. They milk the government for money, have slick corporate marketing and pillage the poor. I have owned my home here in Dwight for 40 years. I know the history of this whole situation. They have zero credibility.

Also, forgot to mention how ugly and cheap the design is. What an insult. But that is irrelevant. Why would we want to lose a very nice small park that took considerable effort to get fixed up? They met earlier in June with neighborhood leaders about this and we rejected the concept then for many reasons that other comments have already stated. In June they said the trade off would be that they would agree to sell a 6 unit building on Elm Street between the entrance and exit of University Place to a small business owner that would owner occupy one of the units. How did that turn into a trade for 15 parking spaces? Community Builders is shameless and has exploited this city and its taxpayers and all taxpayers since they started in Boston in the 1970's. The harvest millions and millions of dollars from all of us.

@kevin McCarthy

I'm confused. The ACS data shows the household incomes of people in housing. How do we know anything about how rent burdened households are based solely on the number of people with household incomes of $x? Are we extrapolating based on the average rent in town and then saying x number of people can't "afford" the average rent in town to therefore we have an affordability issue?

What struck me is that only half of the owner occupants have incomes at or over $75000. That's a lot of low-middle income and low income families who own their homes. We can incentivize that and get people into an "ownership" society and away from rentals. Slowly.

Ben Trachten, happy to explain. ACS, which is also the basis of the Harvard study, surveys individual households. It asks them a wide range of demographic and housing questions, including household income, whether they own or rent, and if the latter what their rent is. The calculation is done at the household level; there is no extrapolation.

The ACS data have their limitations. The most recent data are from 2017 and the data are from a sample and therefore estimates. But it is clear that a large proportion of New Haven renters are spending well over 30% of their income on rent.

I'm really enjoying the discussion between Kevin and Ben, and would like to see the conversation continue..perhaps a roundtable with people familiar with the city, the zoning and building code, our neighborhoods, the cost of building, and the economics.

Personally I think we have quite a bit of affordable housing and would like to see more home ownership opportunities for long time New Haven residents. But I can be persuaded otherwise.

The findings and recommendations of the affordable housing commission should be a starting point and not the final word. This very enlightening discussion btw Ben and Kevin speaks to the need to open and extend the conversation.

Dennis Serfilippi

Dennis, thanks, happy to participate.

Ben and I agree that there is housing available for middle-income households. If your household income is $50,000, you can afford $1,250/month rent. This is actually a bit above the median (average) rent in town. We also agree that there is very little housing that is affordable for low-income folks. If you are working full-time at a minimum wage job, you can only afford a rent of $550/month. There are few if any such apartments in the private market.. Finally, we agree that building more market rate housing is part of the answer. The filtering process will help some moderate-income households. But it will do very little for low income households.

Kevin - Got it. So there is plenty of housing for middle income (household income of $50,000 or more). But not enough for low income. But low income is 1 person working FT and earning only minimum wage - $11/hr. 1 person heading a household is very hard - for anyone. I know bc I'm in that camp. But if you have a household where 1 person is working FT at $15 an hour and another is working PT at $15 an hour, then that's about $47K a year in income and 30% of $47K is $14K, or $1,170 a month. So, we have rents where there are more than 1 wage earner, but not enough for households with only 1 household. Many of the apts in New Haven have 5 rooms; 2 bedrooms, LR, DR, and Kitchen and enough room for a family of 4 or 5. Again, I know bc that's how my family has lived in New Haven.

So, it seems when people say we need more 'affordable housing' they really mean we need more 'low income housing'. Or am i missing something or am I oversimplifying it? It's a sincere question, not rhetorical.

Thank you, Dennis

Dennis, affordability is a real issue for moderate- as well as low-income people. Let's say your household income is $30,000.This is nearly double the federal poverty level for a two-person household. But you can only afford $750/month. You might be able to find a small apartment for this amount. But if you need a two-bedroom (say if you have a school-age child) you are going to hard-pressed to find a place.

The design issue raised by a couple of commentators is tied to affordability. I'm not fond of the cookie-cutter look of recent developments (and my wife hates it). But using real bricks rather than veneer will increase the cost of the developments, and thus their rents.