Officials with Little Rock's public housing agency said Wednesday that multimillion-dollar renovations at three downtown housing towers will begin around June, after the project's magnitude prompted a months-long delay.
Commissioners of the Metropolitan Housing Alliance's five-member board unanimously voted to push through any documentation or action needed to rehabilitate 597 units in the decades-old buildings, two of which house the elderly.
Executives from Gorman and Co., a Wisconsin-based investment firm hired to oversee development and construction activities for the $60 million project, told commissioners they expected funding to come through by May 2.
The project is being funded through several different tax-credit programs, Arkansas Development Finance Authority tax-exempt bonds, the housing agency's capital improvement funds and tax-exempt loans from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac.
Construction at the Fred W. Parris, Cumberland and Jesse Powell towers, estimated to take 18 months, would then begin within 30 days, they said.
The towers project will improve residents' quality of life and match private investments already happening in the city, Metropolitan Housing Alliance employees say.
Renovations will include new roofing, heating-and-cooling systems, kitchen appliances, countertops and cabinetry; expanded laundry facilities; and updated security technology. Apartments will have a modern look.
Developers also interviewed residents and tower staff one on one, assessing needs and drawing up a wish list. For instance, multipurpose rooms on the ground floor can be used by community-based providers offering services to tenants. Units will be updated with additional accommodations, such as installing corner guards to protect walls from wheelchair damage.
"We're re-establishing these buildings after 40 years," said Rodney Forte, executive director of the local housing agency. "We have new technology now. Our community should be able to benefit from that."
The towers redevelopment is part of a federal program that switches, or "converts," public housing projects to Section 8 properties involving private investors, known as Rental Assistance Demonstration. Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program in 2012, which eased financial restrictions on local agencies and allowed them to infuse private dollars into public housing.
Households can use Section 8 vouchers to subsidize rent at qualified privately owned housing.
The program also requires that contracts are long-term, ensuring that converted units would "remain permanently affordable to low-income households."
Scarce affordable housing is a nationwide problem. Federal data shows there's not one county where the supply of affordable housing meets the demand among the poverty-stricken, researchers say.
Pulaski County, for instance, only had 42 units available for every 100 "extremely low-income" households, according to the Urban Institute, a D.C.-based think tank. Nearly 16,000 families were in this category.
HUD defines extremely-low income families as those families with incomes that don't exceed the federal poverty level or 30 percent of the area's median income.
At Wednesday's meeting, Commissioner Leta Anthony expressed worry about the growing waiting list to live at one of the towers and homelessness in Little Rock. A 2017 count said there were roughly 990 homeless people in the city, about 550 of whom live without any shelter, according to the Central Arkansas Team Care for the Homeless.
The Metropolitan Housing Alliance stopped accepting new tenants a year ago. Current residents are to temporarily move into vacant units when construction workers make renovations one floor at a time.
As of Wednesday, there are 197 applicants on the waiting list, said Dana Arnette, the housing agency's deputy executive director.
The towers project is just one redevelopment effort led by the city's housing alliance. Cumberland Manor and Metropolitan Village are also converting under the program. These low-income properties, containing 120 units, are relatively intact and won't require much extensive remodeling, according to a previous Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article.
Other Arkansas cities, such as Fort Smith and Paragould, already participate in these public-private partnerships. The North Little Rock Housing Authority is also in the early stages of converting seven public housing projects, slated to cost about $100 million.
Metro on 03/29/2018