Senior housing eyed for Yellow Springs land
Home Inc. plans to build affordable senior housing on the site.
A land trust will buy the vacant 1.8-acre site from Wright State University and erect a building with affordable apartments.
A land trust in Yellow Springs has plans to buy property from Wright State University and transform it into senior housing that the village says is very needed.
Yellow Springs Home Inc. is under contract with WSU to purchase 10 lots — about 1.8 acres — on Xenia Avenue between Marshall and East Herman streets, according to Emily Seibel, Yellow Springs Home Inc. executive director.
The purchase of the lots, where a health clinic was located until 2009, has a price of $270,000 and is being financed by the Morgan Family Foundation, Seibel said.
Home Inc. plans to build affordable senior housing in the form of rental units in an apartment building at the site.
“It’s not a done deal yet, but we’re very excited about the opportunity,” Seibel said.
The property has been vacant since 2009, when WSU’s family health clinic was closed and torn down, Seibel said. Home Inc. first contacted Wright State about the property in 2014.
In July 2015, Karen Wintrow,
continued from C1 then Yellow Springs village council president, sent a letter to the WSU board of trustees expressing the council’s support for the project.
“We’ve collaborated with Home Inc. on several projects because we are so committed to having a diversity of affordable housing for our citizens,” the letter reads. “Home Inc. has been an excellent partner and we look forward to this project that will provide affordable senior housing that doesn’t currently exist in Yellow Springs.”
Except for Friends Care Community, which is a senior care facility with some independent living quarters, Village Manager Patti Bates said there are no senior housing developments available in Yellow Springs.
“We do have a large, older population who are established village residents and are currently living in the same homes they have for years,” Bates said. “Now that their children have flown the coop, they are looking to downsize. Hence, the need for those units.”
This is the 20th anniversary of Home Inc.’s was created.
The nonprofit land trust’s mission is to “provide permanently affordable and sustainable housing in Yellow Spring/Miami Twp. to strengthen community and diversity,” Seibel said.
Seibel said this senior housing project has been a long time in the making. A petition was circulated that garnered 200 signatures, and there is a group of volunteers who have been working hard to bring more senior housing options to the village, she said.
“Every project we put together will continue to be affordable for low- to moderate-income people. The community comes together to determine what happens to their land forever. We’re definitely in it for the long haul,” Seibel said.