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Senior, workforce housing may ease shortage


Two developments are in the works that could ease Henderson County’s shortage of affordable housing.


Although it failed to qualify for tax credit financing that makes a development financially attractive to investors, the Housing Assistance Corp. is moving ahead with plans to build rental apartments and owner-occupied homes on North Main Street.


And a Hendersonville couple has plans to provide affordable living for seniors in a manufactured home development off Sugarloaf Road near Fire Station 2. At a Hendersonville City Council meeting on Thursday night they will ask for a waiver of the city’s impact fee for up to 31 new doublewide homes.


The Housing Assistance Corp., the nonprofit agency that provides lower-cost housing for seniors, the disabled and working families, has submitted an amended plan for Oklawaha Village that increases the number of apartments from 66 to 78 and adds open space. The final building plan goes before the City Council Thursday night after receiving a positive recommendation on Feb. 9 from the Planning Board.


Along with rental units, the 18-acre development on North Main Street between Mud Creek and Duncan Hill Road includes 17 single-family homes, a 2,200-square-foot community building, a 4,200-square-foot office building, a park and playground. The apartment development is made up of six three-story buildings and a total of 90,654 square feet.


The agency missed getting state approval for tax credit financing last fall but a Charlotte-based developer won approval for an 80-unit complex on Frances Road.


“Since we’re not using tax creditfinancing we’re able to increase the number of units,” said Noelle McKay, executive director of the Housing Assistance Corp. “Because we’re not using tax credit there are some changes. One of those is the project is now considered mixed income development.”


Instead of renting only to tenants with a household income of 60 percent or less of the county median of $56,500, Oklawaha Village will rent to higher income families.


“In total everybody that lives here must be below 115 percent of the area median income,” McKay said. “So there’s a greater variety of incomes that can be served.”


The agency expects to win approval for a loan guarantee known as RD538, a rural development program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It’s a loan that we have been looking into,” McKay said. “We do anticipate being able to receive that funding. Essentially what that 538 does is provide a guarantee for the financing we do get through the lender. It’s still considered affordable but there’s a wider range of affordability for the units.”


“This will be a more income integrated community and that’s nice as well,” she added. “It’s going to be convenient for so many of the workers. It’s within a quarter mile of the Oklawaha Trail. You can access the two parks” — Jackson Park and Patton Park, and soon a third, with the extension now under way of the Oklawaha Greenway to Berkeley Park.

Sweat equity required
Of the 17 single-family homes, 12 will be available through HAC’s Self-Help homeownership program, which requires applicants to invest their own labor in house construction.


“They do 65 percent of the labor,” McKay said. “They have a significant labor contribution that they’re required to provide. They have to be loan worthy and be able to contribute a significant amount of sweat equity labor to the construction.”


Five more will be available for working families who qualify for a loan but cannot meet the labor requirement. The income requirement is 80 percent or less of the median household income.


“Sometimes folks are working third shift and they can’t meet the construction requirements we have,” McKay said. “You still have to be loan worthy.”


The 17 lots would be accessed by a 24-foot road the developer would turn over to the state. Plans calls for sidewalks on either side of the road and a sidewalk along North Main Street. Housing Assistance hopes to start construction in late April.


The potential for 95 units of affordable housing — either rented or owned — and 80 more in the Cedar Terrace development on Frances Road would make a dent in what housing advocates say is a shortage of decent homes for working families. Subsidized housing in Henderson County remains filled with waiting lists, a 2014 housing study said.


“It’s a new model to the area,” McKay said of the rural development program. “A lot of groups are trying to gain some independence from the tax credit program. It’s very competitive. There’s another one going in. But it will have been five years since the last one. We just don’t get them with any regularity.”

Senior living on Sugarloaf
On Sugarloaf Road, Cheria, Billy and Tony Duncan hope to buy Whiteside’s Green Acres mobile home park and upgrade it with new manufactured homes and landscaping.

“A lot of people have moved out because there were a lot of violations,” Cheria Duncan said. “The sewer system here is failing.”


In a report to the City Council summarizing the Duncans’ request, Utilities Director Lee Smith confirmed that. “The existing septic system is continuing to fail,” preventing the current owner from replacing units, he said. The Duncans, who are in the due diligence phase of a prospective purchase of the park, are asking the city to waive system development charges of up to $26,350 — or $850 for each unit. Running the sewer lines in the park would cost $170,000, an investment the Duncans say they’re willing to make.


The Duncans may have a more difficult sell because current city policy allows impact fee waivers for nonprofit developers only.

“I guess I’ve got more questions than answers at this point,” said City Manager John Connet. “We feel like this is
a request we’re probably going to see more and more coming down the pike as we look at affordable housing. As much as we’d like to encourage and support good safe clean affordable housing the question is how do we make sure that what we’re waiving does in fact result in affordable housing.”


Connet said he could envision the city trying to draft a policy that applies to for-profit developers, one that would require a legal commitment by the landlord to keep rents low.


The new owners of Green Acres plan to replace existing units with new ones that they would sell for under $100,000. With rental of the lots at around $350, Cheria Duncan said, that would get a seniors into the park at an affordable rate for the Hendersonville market. The Duncans are working with Premier Homes of the Carolinas in Hendersonville to offer a selection of new homes.


“I want a very cohesive look with three different colors,” Duncan said. She wants to require porches. “If you’ve got front porches people tend to congregate and socialize and that’s what we want,” she said. “It’s close to Wal-Mart and everything. It lends itself to a really nice, safe community for seniors. It’s right across from the new fire station and that’s also a first responder.”


As for the current residents of Green Acres, Duncan said if the purchase goes through the investors would offer them the chance to buy a new home. They plan to rename the park Claystone: A Retirement Community.


“We want to upgrade the community and improve the integrity for everything,” she said, adding that she and her husband plan to live in the park as owner-managers.