Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Heights residents set to move
Public housing complex in need of renovation, official says
FAYETTEVILLE — Residents could move within five years from an out-of-date public housing complex to new homes in a better-connected neighborhood in the south part of town.
The Willow Heights public housing complex was built in the early 1970s and sits on 5 acres overlooking downtown. About 100 people, including adults and children, live there.
Residents have to weave through a winding series of steps to get to their homes. The hilly terrain frequently creates runoff issues. The bathrooms are on the second floor of the units. The structures and sidewalks don’t conform with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Firewalls don’t reach up to the roofs. There’s no central heat and air.
The whole site needs extensive repair and renovation and those costs lie beyond the Housing Authority’s budget limitation, said Mike Emery, board chairman. In March, the board’s commissioners agreed to sell the property for $1.25 million.
“The decision for this sale did not come without many months of discussion, thought and research to ensure that every step remained within the guidelines set forth by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and would be of benefit to our residents,” he said.
The plan is to move Willow Heights residents to new housing at Morgan Manor near Walker Park. A lot has to happen between now and then.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The Housing Authority operates public housing and rental assistance in the city. It manages four properties:
Willow Heights, Morgan Manor, Lewis Plaza near Ramay Junior High and Hillcrest Towers downtown.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides the Housing Authority its money. The amount of federal funding for capital projects the authority receives has gone down from more than $350,000 in 2008 to just under $240,000 in 2015.
The Washington Post reported President Donald Trump’s administration intends to cut $6 billion from Housing and Urban Development, from the $46.9 billion budgeted for 2017 to $40.7 billion in 2018.
The estimated $8 million project will be paid for with a combination of loans from state and federal agencies, a bank and money from the land sale, said Deniece Smiley, executive director. The cost includes paying for moving expenses and helping residents pack and unpack, she said.
Housing Authority officials hope to hear by summer if they’ll get any tax credits and, hopefully, HUD will give approval by fall, Smiley said.
The sale isn’t expected to close until October 2022, although that date could change, Emery said.
The terms of the agreement are intentionally malleable not only because of the uncertainty of how things might progress, but also to protect the residents from being thrown out on the street, said Vlad Tatter, the registered agent for Willow Heights LLC, the intended buyer.
“We took pretty much a standard real-estate contract and then we just added a lot of clauses that made it so that if anything didn’t work along the way for everyone to get a new house, then the contract would just stop,” he said. “A whole lot of stuff has to happen.”
Tatter, an electrician, lives across the street from Willow Heights. He knows people who live there and said he and two other investors made an offer on the property to preserve the integrity of the neighborhood and prevent some sort of massive apartment complex from moving in.
“My friends are the neighbors,” Tatter said. “I would never let anybody lose their home, period.”
The intention is to build single-family housing for residents with a mix of income levels and possibly some cluster homes that feature multiple houses with a shared courtyard. Prism Education Center’s facility down the way could become part of the development, although Prism has announced its intention to consolidate its campuses to East Joyce Boulevard.
Alderman Mark Kinion said he has concerns with selling the property and moving residents from Willow Heights to Morgan Manor.
“I know with the current structure public housing residents have a voice and are protected,” he said. “These are often folks who are marginalized.”
MOVIN’ ON
Jamey Voorhees, who has lived at Willow Heights with his wife and daughter for about three years, said he didn’t mind the idea of moving. Much of south Fayetteville suffers from poor design, Voorhees said, from treacherous sidewalks to streets in disrepair to faraway bus stops and necessary things such as grocery stores beyond walking distance.
“This whole area is becoming gentrified at a rate that’s kind of scary when you consider that the majority of the low-income people in the city live in this area,” he said. “The more we do that, the more their taxes are going to go up and the fewer of them are going to be able to stay in their own homes.”
Voorhees, who’s working on his master’s degree in geography and has undergraduate degrees in history and earth science, has an eye for these things. He’s watched the terrain at Willow Heights visibly creep ever so slowly down the hill, for example.
“These apartments are pushing the limits of what the city’s infrastructure can support,” Voorhees said. “If we get the slightest water leak here, everybody from here all the way up to the fancy houses up the hill — everybody loses water pressure for said number of days.”
Preliminary plans for Morgan Manor call for 58 additional units, more than doubling its capacity. Connectivity is a lot better in the area. There’s a bus stop nearby. All the units are one level. There’s central heat and air. Families can spend time at a playground and picnic area.
Affordable living has become a real problem in Fayetteville, Tatter said. He hopes to help solve part of that problem.
“I think the city and I are all completely on the same page,” he said. “We’re going to really try to make it so people can continue living in Fayetteville, basically. The home prices that I’ve seen lately — nobody that’s ever lived in this part of town could ever buy those houses.
“One of my big goals is the people who have lived in this area before can continue living there,” Tatter said.
Preliminary plans for Morgan Manor call for 58 additional units, more than doubling its capacity. Connectivity is a lot better in the area. There’s a bus stop nearby. All the units are one level. There’s central heat and air. Families can spend time at a playground and picnic area.