Horizon funding faces hurdle
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
By Tory Brecht | Tuesday, November 07, 2006 |
John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES Occupancy manager Vanessa Summers surveys the mess left by a Hurricane Katrina victim who moved to Davenport, lived free for nine months in the Section 8 housing at Horizon Homes and then departed, forcing her to bring in someone to clean up the apartment and repair the damage.
For 11 years, manager Vanessa Summers has fought an uphill battle booting troublemakers, riff-raff and petty criminals out of the Horizon Homes low-income housing project.
In the past 18 months, she has forcibly evicted a half-dozen troublesome tenants from the northwest Davenport complex on West 43rd Street.
The tenants had trashed apartments, generated noise complaints and were suspected of selling drugs.
She’s hopeful that an ambitious $7 million rehabilitation plan for the 30-year-old, 110-unit project by new owners will help attract responsible tenants. But she’s not holding her breath.
“There’s just not those stable families anymore,” she said. “We’re dealing with a different clientele now. We mostly have 18-, 19-, 20-year-old single moms. They have all these young guys coming over. They treat it like a flophouse.”
The rehabilitation plan is being proposed by West Des Moines-based Newbury Development Co. working for the nonprofit Ecumenical Housing Development Group, which is buying the complex from current owners Horizon Homes of Davenport. But it faces a serious hurdle from Davenport elected officials.
The group would like to partially fund the renovations with state historic tax credits. To do so, it needs a resolution of support from the city council. But several aldermen are leery of granting approval without adding requirements to reduce crime and increase public safety at Horizon.
“This is nothing against the current owners, or the potential sale, but we have to protect the city’s interest, and the interest of the neighbors around it,” said Alderman Shawn Hamerlinck, 2nd Ward.
Hamerlinck had the police department run a record of calls to Horizon over the past year. They totalled more than 200, with many domestic disputes, juvenile fights and noise violations. At a cost of about $120 per 911 call, Horizon cost the city $26,700 in law enforcement in 2005, Hamerlinck said.
And although Newbury has listed an enhanced security system and monthly unit inspections that would lead to eviction notices if poor housekeeping and damage were in evidence, aldermen want more, and in writing.
“We are running out of patience,” Hamerlinck said. “I’m hearing desire, but I’m not hearing commitment.”
Hamerlinck and other aldermen want to add the following conditions on the council’s support resolution:
* Requiring an employee of the management company to live on site.
* Requiring installation of a security camera system and physical barriers to address traffic problems.
* A reasonable effort to secure operating funds to hire a security patrol.
* Linking tenant eligibility with participation in a program to achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Frank Levy, vice president of Newbury Development, said his company concurs with the spirit of the city’s requirements but warned all of them may not be practical.
On site management, in particular, is a vexing problem.
Levy said requiring managers to live at the complex leads to a high burnout rate and fears of retaliation from tenants who are reprimanded. It can be a difficult position to fill with a qualified candidate.
Summers said she used to live at the previous Section 8 housing complex, Castlewood, where she used to work but moved out because she needed a break.
“You never get out of work,” she said. “It’s easy for an alderman to sit down there at city hall and say what should be done. If they want on-site management, we’d be more than happy to have one of them come and live on site.”
Summers said Horizon has hired two separate private security firms during the past two summers. However, the part-time employees often reported no problems, then she heard later of fights, noise and other incidents from tenants.
“It just didn’t work,” she said. “I started coming down here myself at 9 and 10 at night with our maintenance man to patrol around.”
That maintenance man, Roger Dell, has been doing inspections and fixing up the aging complex for 25 years.
“I’ve seen the place go up and down,” he said. “But as far as being super bad, as some would have you believe, it’s just not.”
Summers estimates that 80 percent to 90 percent of the tenants are decent, law-abiding folks. It’s the other 10 percent to 20 percent that sink Horizon’s reputation.
Any apartment complex of 100 or more units will draw a share of bad residents, Summers said. Couple that with the economic and social background of those eligible for Section 8 housing, and the portion of the population with problems increases.
In addition, federal rules can make it difficult to evict problem tenants. Under HUD guidelines, any tenant put on notice for a violation that could result in eviction is given six months probation. If they don’t commit the same violation within that six months, the notice is withdrawn, and they cannot be evicted.
“We see who our bad eggs are, and we try to get them out, but we can’t always do it,” she said.
This summer, Horizon had almost a 30 percent vacancy rate. That’s not because of a shortage of low-income residents looking for housing, however, Summers said.
“We had lots of applications, but not a lot of qualified applicants,” she said, noting a high percentage failed to pass the required criminal and credit background checks.
Levy is optimistic the proposed renovation will help turn that around.
“We believe the rehab will attract more desirable customers,” he said. “The physical improvements and all the things we plan will make it a much more pleasant and nice place to live.”
Claudia Roberts, who is on Social Security and has a fixed income, has lived at Horizon for 20 years. From her small and tidy one-bedroom apartment, she’s seen hundreds of good tenants and troublemakers. Last summer was real bad, she said, with lots of fights and noise. She hopes the city supports the renovation plan.
Most of her neighbors are decent people, she said.
“It would be nice for all of us,” she said. “Even some of the nicest neighborhoods have bad people in them.”
Tory Brecht can be contacted at (563) 383-2329 or tbrecht@qctimes.com
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
reddit» More Local Stories
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
- Technology News Articles
- Computers, MP3, Phones & More. See Product Pics, Specs & Reviews.
- www.NexTag.com
- Cheap Airfare
- Compare multiple travel sites. Discount web fares made easy.
- www.LowFares.com
- Promoter's Arsenal - Article Equalizer
- Content Generator For Your Website. Download fee, today only $97.00.
- promotearsenal.com/article
- Ads by Yahoo!
