Tool Found To Land $18.7M For Repairs

A leaky roof stains ceilings. People enter at all hours past lax security. Kitchens are cramped, an elevator often broken, bathrooms covered with mildew.

A top-to-bottom renovation is aimed at fixing those and other problems at two 1970s-vintage public-housing complexes for the elderly and disabled, aided by a new legal run around federal cuts.

The Housing Authority of New Haven’s Board of Commissioners voted unanimously voted Tuesday to authorize the issuance of $18.7 million in multifamily housing revenue bonds to finance those and long-overdue improvements at Fairmont Heights in the Annex and Matthew Ruoppolo Manor on Ferry Street in Fair Haven.

Federal money has dried up for repairs and maintenance and capital improvement, the commissioners said, so they have been looking for other financing ideas.

Enter the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program, or RAD.

Created under the Obama administration, it allows authorities like HANH to basically find a new way to get reliable money for public housing. They do it by changing the legal ownership of housing developments.

RAD allows complexes owned by nonprofit affiliates of housing authorities — like HANH’s Glendower Group, a ten-year-old development and management arm — to receive Section 8 ​“project-based” rental subsidies the way private landlords do.

So HANH can transfer ownership of Fairmont Heights and Ruoppolo to new limited-liability corporations controlled by Glendower. Then the complexes will be eligible for Section 8 subsidies, rather than traditional direct (and unpredictable funding) that comes directly from HUD to housing authority to run authority-owned complexes.

Why that matters: Housing authorities can’t leverage complexes they own to borrow money to fund repairs. Banks won’t lend money for complexes that rely on traditional direct HUD funding to authorities, explained HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton. But they will lend money to private owners of complexes that rely on Section 8 subsidies for their funding streams.

So HANH plans to transfer Ruoppolo and Fairmont to the new Glendower-run LLCs in September and borrow the $18.7 million to make long-term repairs.

If the $18 million in bonds sell as expected, by the fall of this year, residents, in stages, can expect to be moved out of the 103 units at the two buildings at Fairmont Heights and from the 214 units at Ruoppolo Manor on Ferry Street as the work commences.

When the work is finished, only 700 of HANH’s 2,400 units of public housing will be owned directly by HANH rather than RAD affiliates, said DuBois-Walton.

Tenants: Good Idea

In general, this was all received as good news by a half-dozen current residents of those developments consulted on the prospect before HANH commissioners voted.

“I love my apartment,” said Frank Cocza, who has lived in Ruoppolo Manor for ten years. ​“I want to die in it.” He praised the spaciousness of his living room/dining room combo, kitchen, and bedroom, but he said the kitchen is too small and needs new cabinets. He said he looks forward to a renovation. He would be eager to get back in afterwards, he added.

During a visit to the development, the critique of the place was a little more vivid, as Monica Kelley, James Bell, Nathaniel Walker, and Rane Robinson held court. They function as informal resident/monitors of who enters their building.

“We need real security here,” said Walker, who used to play football at Hillhouse High School.

“People come in and go out all night,” he said,

James Bell, a 19-year resident of Ruoppolo, added, ​“The [security] cameras work when they want to work.”

Security upgrades are one of the items on the long list of a RAD conversion’s scope of work, said Shenae Draughn, the Glendower Group’s senior vice president. In order to price out the project, the agency starts with these big ticket items, and then add what needs to be done in individual units’ bathrooms and kitchens.

The big other big ticket items in the upcoming scope of work also include new roof, HVAC, energy efficiencies, and sustainable flooring, Draughn added.

That also, of course, includes elevators. At Ruoppolo, Rane Robinson said he and his aunt have continuing anxiety that both the elevators in the tall tower of a building would go out at the same time. Only one has worked consistently, he said, and his friends — Kelley, Walker, and Bell — concurred.

“My aunt’s in a wheelchair. What does she do if it [the elevator] goes out?” When repairs are made to a broken elevator, these folks said the repairs often did not do the trick. ​“My worry is she’ll be stuck down here [with no working elevator] and not be able to get upstairs. And what does she do if she needs to use the bathroom?” he asked.

Over at Fairmont Heights — two attractive three-story buildings off Fairmont Avenue and on a little sunny plateau overlooking the harbor district — five-year resident Dennis Jenkins and his little dog named Lady were in the common room with his friend Laryy Sanders and three other people.

They both very much like living at Fairmont Heights, they said. ​“It’s peaceful, people stick to themselves, and the building’s secure,” said Sanders who has been a resident for a dozen years.

But Jenkins added, as his chihuahua settled into his lap, that ​“the whole building, top to bottom, needs new plumbing, new kitchens.” He pointed to the tiles, which at one time may have been beige, but are now faded, and worn.

The corner chair Sanders was sitting was big, capacious, and comfortable-looking, but there were also holes and gashes where the stuffing was emerging.

Draughn said that new furniture and appointments for the public areas in the buildings are also covered in the scope of work.

While some RAD conversions involve tear downs, both Ruoppolo and Fairmont will see renovations done in stages, with the residents re-located temporarily as needed as the work gets done in their apartments. HANH has all kinds of rules, as well, giving priority to residents in a building to move back, along with choice to move elsewhere.

Everyone at Fairmont was eager to move back when the work is completed. That would be about a year from the issuance of the bonds, approximately September, 2020, said DuBois-Walton.