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Low-Rent Program Predicts Losses
Tom Hill is a longtime resident of Galen Terrace, a one-time notorious District complex that was renovated after residents formed a tenants association to acquire the property and renewed its Section 8 contract for 20 years.
(By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)
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If that doesn't work, a right-of-first-refusal law gives Montgomery, the local housing authority and tenants associations the chance to match sale offers on certain apartment buildings. A housing preservation fund helps with acquisition costs. The fund was tapped recently to help save Forest Oak Towers, a 175-unit Section 8 complex for seniors in Gaithersburg.
When officials at the Housing Opportunities Commission, a housing authority that serves Montgomery, heard that Forest Oak Towers was going to be sold, the commission spent $20.7 million to buy the building and continue the HUD subsidy.
In June, tenants and housing officials celebrated the purchase of the building, which came with help from city, county, state and federal programs. "It was a very happy event," said Tedi Osias, the housing commission's director of legislative and public affairs.
Fairfax's Board of Supervisors has instituted a penny real estate tax earmarked to create and preserve affordable housing, including project-based Section 8 complexes. The fund will amount to $22.7 million in fiscal 2008, said Kristina Norvell, spokeswoman for the Fairfax Department of Housing and Community Development. She said officials are keeping an eye on properties where landlords are renewing their Section 8 contracts one year at a time.
In the District, tenants at Galen Terrace in Anacostia managed to save their hilltop complex when the owner decided to opt out of the program and sell the 84-unit building.
They organized a tenants association, acquired the property last year with the help of a D.C. tenants right-of-first-refusal law and then worked with nonprofit organizations -- including the National Housing Trust, Enterprise Community Partners and the private Somerset Development Co. -- to raise the money, renovate the complex and renew the Section 8 contract for 20 years.
At Galen Terrace, once one of the most notorious complexes in the District, residents now are guardedly celebrating a new beginning, complete with fresh paint, bright kitchens, a security system and a courtyard play area humming with children.
They say they rescued their complex just in time: A condominium conversion project is in progress across the street, and a few blocks away, on Good Hope Road, new homes are advertised for sale for nearly $500,000.
"It wouldn't have been any trouble to turn this into condos," said longtime resident Tom Hill, a Government Printing Office retiree, admiring the panoramic view of the city from his window. "You can see the fireworks on the Fourth of July."
