New housing to be named for mayor
♦ Bill Collins Village at Summerville Park is expected to open by the end of the year.
New senior housing under construction at the intersection of Martha Berry Highway Highway and Charlton Street will be named Bill Collins Village at Summerville Park.
Northwest Georgia Housing Authority Director Sandra Hudson said the neighborhood’s community association submitted three names for the 10-residence duplex townhome development: Heritage Place, Summerville Park Place and The Village at Summerville Park.
Hudson and the authority chose to honor Mayor Bill Collins, who pushed the housing authority to purchase the property from a hotelier who targeted the site for a Sleep Inn hotel that the community group adamantly opposed.
Director of Modernization Howard Gibson told the authority board that if the weather permits, brick work on the exterior of the homes would begin next week.
“Hopefully they’ll be ready for us to lease up in November or December,” Hudson said. The authority is already taking applications for the new homes.
In other actions, Gibson got the green light to alter the site plan at Joe Wright Village to allow the authority to construct the full 28 units originally submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Some of the first homes in the development crossed original lot lines, creating an issue with completing the rest of the development as originally planned.
Hudson said she didn’t think HUD would have an issue with the number of single-family units versus the number of duplex units as long as there is a total of 28 residences in the development, as planned.
The housing authority also accepted its audit for 2019, which resulted in a clean opinion from Malcolm Johnson & Co.
Johnson’s report said NWGHA was one of very few housing agencies the company audits that gets significant fundraising support from the community.
“That is such a plus,” Johnson said. Johnson did say the audit found errors related to low-income housing eligibility files. But he told the board there were fewer errors than a year ago related to verification of income.
“It’s not anything but human error and it’s not systemic,” Johnson said.
The board also heard from Envision Center Director Greg Shropshire. He said he is working to figure out the best means of providing after-school tutorial support to public housing students in the local school system.
Shropshire said he has not decided yet if the support will be done face to face or virtually.
“I really prefer in- person, so we just need to figure out how we do that safely,” Shropshire said.
He is also working with the local public health office to schedule additional opportunities for COVID-19 testing in various public housing communities.