Housing agency: LR site now safe
41 lots proposed in ’90s ‘Sin City’
On the footprint of what was once a notoriously crime-ridden apartment complex, the Metropolitan Housing Alliance is making moves to develop a 41-lot subdivision in southwest Little Rock.
After the Housing Alliance’s board approved last week the purchase of 10 acres, valued at about $180,000, directors are now working to finalize the deal. The Housing Alliance will then sell the lots to developers to create affordable housing aimed at first-time homebuyers and veterans.
The 10-acre property, located on the 7000 block of Preston Drive off Chicot Road, is in a fast-growing part of the city about 3 miles east of the Outlets of Little Rock.
“With the growth of activity going on out in the Bass Pro Shops area … we believe the neighborhood that’s around this land is a very stable, older neighborhood,” said Rodney Forte, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Alliance. “And the property has now been rezoned and ready to go.”
On that plat once stood a group of apartments infamously known as “Sin City” that became a hive of criminal activity after it was vacated in 1995. Riddled with asbestos, the empty and decrepit buildings haunted the surrounding community for years as they became a haven for drug dealing, prostitution and violent crimes during the height of the city’s gang wars.
“That area has been a problem area for the city and for that community for quite some time,” City Manager Bruce Moore said.
“There was not only a criminal element, there were significant code issues, so it developed that name for a reason,” Moore said. “It was not in great condition, both from a public safety and an environmental standpoint.”
In 2012 the city board condemned the buildings and voted to spend $70,000 for demolition and to place a lien on the property worth the cost of the demolition. Today, only the buildings’ concrete slabs remain.
The lien was later paid off, said Pat Joyner, whose real estate agency First Step Realty Inc. owns a portion of the property being acquired by the Housing Alliance. Now, she says, it’s a great area for low-income families and single-family housing to flourish.
“It’s changed quite a bit, especially due to the housing market. A lot of the homes were foreclosed, and now its buyers are coming back into the area, and people are fixing up their homes,” Joyner said. “It’s coming back to life.”
The project is one way in which the Housing Alliance, which manages and administers the city’s public housing and Section 8 programs, is branching out in search of new revenue streams.
Many public housing authorities across the country have begun entering the private real estate market to make up for decreases in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“All metropolitan housing authorities are beginning to look to their existence and how they are going forward with what’s coming from HUD and changes of administration,” Commissioner Leta Anthony of the Metropolitan Housing Alliance said.
“IF HUD decides tomorrow, ‘we’re not going to do this anymore,’ how do we continue? We need to look at new revenue streams to keep up what we do, and I think that’s forward thinking,” Anthony said.
The Housing Alliance approved a different revenue-making deal last year, in which Memphis-based LEDIC Realty Co. is to renovate a building on Vance Street into an apartment complex. That property will be developed and managed by LEDIC, but the Metropolitan Housing Alliance will have 25 percent ownership and receive 25 percent of all net profits, officials said.
In the latest project, the revenue generated from selling the 41 lots to developers will go into the public housing fund, Forte said.
“We have an understanding about real estate development, and we see that there’s a need for quality housing in the city, so we want to facilitate that by being involved in the assembly of land and then putting it out to the private sector,” Forte said.
The Housing Alliance will begin soliciting developers for bids within the next 30 days, keeping an eye on price to ensure that the houses will be affordable, Forte said.