“Congratulations! Your housing authority is selected to receive a Public Housing Transformation grant. The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development is awarding $5,000,000 in funding to the category 2 (Public Housing Transformation) Capital Fund Recovery Competition (CFRC) application listed below.”
The lingo is bureaucratic, but the congrats and money are real.
The Housing Authority of New Haven, (HANH), per this email of earlier this month, was informed it will get a $5 million grant of additional federal “stimulus” money. Previously it received $6 million on a formula basis. This new award HANH competed for, and won.
The money will be used for Phase III completion of the successful Quinnipiac Terrace development in Fair Haven. The final phase consists of some 60 units of new housing north and south of the current mixed income development along the Quinnipiac River.
“This will allow HANH to build additional rental and homeownership units on the site,” said HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton.Of the 60 homes, 27 will be homeownership units. That’s fewer than originally hoped for, but increased from a previous number. That previous number was lowered because of draconian economic conditions that struck as Phase III was being planned. Click here and here for previous stories.
“We are very proud of this redevelopment effort,” DuBois-Walton asaid.
Trinity Financial Group is teaming up with HANH to implement the last phase of the development, after a previous partner, Elm City Congregations United (ECCO) dropped out.
The project has helped improve a crime-ridden set of unattractive 1950s-era brick buildings into a lively mixed-income neighborhood. With its combination of rental and homeownership units, Q Terrace is comparable to Monterey Homes across town, another federal Hope VI project.
Under the stimulus grant, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced earlier this month the award of $96 million in competitive awards to 15 housing authorities nationwide, Elm City’s among them.
Earlier in February, as part of the first wave of the stimulus, $3 billion was distributed to more than 3,100 public housing authorities on a formula basis.
Of that amount, HANH received $6 million for what is known in the public housing lingo as vacancy rehabilitation. That is, to keep its stock in repair and rented.
DeBois-Walton said tthat money will help rehabilitate vacated units at George Crawford Manor on Park Street downtown and to repair that building’s facade, among other projects.
This new grant of $5 million was awarded on a competitive basis from a pool of about $1 billion. The new funds were awarded in four categories according to documents provided by HANH.
These were: $200 million for aid with projects stalled due to financing; $95 million for improving units for the elderly and disabled; $600 million to augment energy efficiency, such as new windows and doors and appliances in public housing units; and, $100 million in the public housing transformation category.
The last category was the one in which Q Terrace qualified. Of the total pot of $100 million in this category, HANH received its $5 million to complete the transformation of the Q Terrace project into a newly built development.
DuBois-Walton said HANH has grant applications pending in the three remaining categories. In the gap financing category, application was made for Brookside and Wiliam T. Rowe. In the green technology category, application was also made on behalf of Brookside.
In the elderly/disabled housing category, DuBois-Walton said application was made to make units and common areas throughout the system more wheelchair accessible.
The authority’s regular monthly board meeting Tuesday evening had to be resecheduled. When the board meets, the directors must formally approve acceptance of the grant. The expectation is that the vote will be in the affirmative, and unanimous.
“The creation of jobs and new quality affordable housing units that will result from this project are a needed boost for the City of New Haven,” DuBois-Walton added.
Phase 3 will include homeownership, which will actually cost more to build than it will make on the sale, ie. the units will lose money. PLEASE follow up on this. As we have seen with other stimulus funds, new jobs are not created and the economy is not stimulated. Our tax money is simply spent in order to create the illusion of a benefit. The group that will benefit is the developer, Trinity, and the many consultants hired by HANH to perform work that the employees of HANH are unable or unwilling to do.