Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Housing Authority to ask for judge’s decision in land deal
FAYETTEVILLE — The Housing Authority board is going to court to stop the sale of one of its public housing properties.
The authority will ask a Washington County Circuit judge to terminate a deal to sell Willow Heights at 10 S. Willow Ave.
The board in March 2017 agreed to sell the 40-unit complex to Vlad Tatter under his limited liability company, Willow Heights LLC, for $1.25 million. The contract has certain contingencies the authority says it cannot meet.
Executive Director Angela Belford said she hopes to have the authority’s attorneys file a petition in court within the next few weeks to ask a judge to decide if the contract is valid.
The authority in January returned a $62,500 check, which was the deposit on the sale, to Tatter. He didn’t cash it, Belford said. The authority sent a cashier’s check in July for the same amount and asked Tatter to terminate the contract.
Tatter’s attorney, Bob Estes, told the authority’s attorney, Jim Crouch, Tatter won’t sign the termination, Belford said.
“The bottom line is they agreed if we couldn’t meet the contingencies, they would sign a cancellation of contract,” Belford said. “They are not upholding that end of the deal.”
The contract says the deal is contingent upon the Housing Authority’s ability
to meet the conditions. If the contingencies aren’t met, the contract will be terminated and the buyer will receive a refund on the deposit.
Estes and Tatter declined to comment. Tatter has said he wants to build homes in place of the apartment complex.
The contract has three conditions to be met for the sale to happen: The Arkansas Development Finance Authority would have to award the Housing Authority a tax credit; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would have to release the property to be sold; and residents would have to be moved.
Belford said the authority can’t meet the first two conditions in the contract.
The Arkansas agency didn’t award the tax credit to the authority in 2017. The contract doesn’t say the authority has to keep applying, she said. The tax credit program is highly competitive, and having the backing of a community significantly helps the chances of gaining the award, Belford said. Mayor Lioneld Jordan has said he won’t endorse the plan.
Belford said field officers with Housing and Urban Development have told her the agency won’t release
the property. The authority is seeking written confirmation to take to court, she said.
“If they, based on the information they’ve gathered during this process, do not feel like the proposed project is in the best interest of the residents, then they’re not going to do it,” Belford said.
The plan was to move Willow Heights residents to an expansion at Morgan Manor, another Housing Authority property, to meet the third condition.
The potential sale drew the ire of several resident for about a year. Jordan called a meeting at City Hall in July 2018 to get public input. The meeting lasted more than five hours.
The authority’s board in a meeting later agreed to follow the City Council’s recommendation to get out of the contract to sell Willow Heights. Three of the five board members resigned, and then-Executive Director Deniece Smiley was fired that September. Belford began a year ago as executive director.
Chandra Hilton, who has lived at Willow Heights for about four years, said the
uncertainty over the place is worrisome. She said she never wanted to move to Morgan Manor. Hilton said she feels the Housing Authority doesn’t have any other choice but to go to court.
“That means it’s in the hands of one person who, for one reason or another, might decide to draw this out or might decide, ‘No, you can’t cancel it,’ despite what the contingencies say,” Hilton said. “It adds more uncertainty to my knowledge about what can happen or what will happen.”