New Ukiah senior apartments ready soon
If all goes as planned, the Ukiah Senior Apartments on West Gobbi and South Oak will be completed on May 15 with residents being able to move in on June 1.
In late 2017, the Ukiah City Council developed the first memorialized housing strategy with a two-pronged focus—facilitate more affordable housing and streamline regulatory requirements for the development of middle-income homes.
According to Craig Schlatter, City of Ukiah Director of Community Development, the first step was to create a housing trust fund.
“We had former redevelopment bonds that were in an account for the production of lowincome housing and we decided to take $500,000 from those funds to create a NOFA—A Notice of Funding Availability to incent the production of affordable housing for developers.”
One developer, AMG & Associates, Inc. out of Santa Clarita, was interested in building apartments on the site next to Rite Aid and wanted to apply for $500,000 from The City’s housing trust fund.
With two other applicants for the limited funds, AMG & Associates worked with Schlatter’s department and the city council to request that the city sponsor an application to the HOME Investment Partnership Program,
a federal assistance provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to states in order to provide decent and affordable housing, particularly housing for low- and very low-income Americans.
The developers dropped their request for the NOFA; the city applied on their behalf to HOME; and in late 2018 they received the maximum amount of $5 million.
“We were one of only a handful of cities to receive this award from HOME,” says Schlatter.
The city was able to access the money in 2019 and ground was broken on July 17th, 2020. With the total project coming in at $10.4 million, additional funding comes from low-income tax credits from the state and a bit of debt that will be carried on the project.
Ukiah Senior Apartments is a 100 percent senior community available to those who are 55 years of age with a maximum household income of 60 percent of Area Median income per household size.
For example, a household of two can earn no more $33,600 to qualify.
At the site, superintendent of construction Mike Barnes, who works for Pacific West Builders, explains that it takes multiple partners to bring this kind of project to fruition.
Their company, working with The City of Ukiah, builds the project, is the asset manager and acts as the umbrella organization for the property management team, Buckingham Property Management of Clovis, California.
The completed project will have 27 one-bedroom units at 607 square feet and 4 two-bedroom units at 805 square feet, all with balconies. Twenty-five of the units are adaptable accessibility units (all on the ground floor); four are fully ADA accessible and two are for the sensory impaired. There is a 1,820 square foot community center.
Thus, the City moves ahead with its plan to create more affordable housing.
As to streamlining regulatory requirements for middle-income housing, the Ukiah Planning Commission is considering the City’s first ever Housing Overlay Zone for three parcels on East Gobbi Street adjacent to Summercreek Village Apartments.
This will eliminate the need for a conditional use permit or a site development permit, no longer needing planning commission and design board approval, going straight to the building permit, as long as already-approved city council objective standards are met.
The project will have bottom-story commercial frontage with middle income affordable housing units on top and south toward the rear of the property.
“We’re hoping the developer will come in and make units available at the 80 percent area income bringing us closer to middle income. The homes will sell for between $385,000$430,000.”
“If you look at production of housing in the last five years, it has been remarkable. We’ve built 145 units and are on track to produce another 239 units to meet the goals in our housing element.”
He says that developing a good blend of housing is like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.
“If you only have one type of housing, then you don’t have housing for all. We need to have apartments for lower income folks and apartments at market rate for people who don’t have subsidies.
“If you look at market rates in Ukiah, they’re similar to the rents at some of these affordable housing complexes—with no subsidy.
“As you create more affordable housing and the people who have lower income go into those units, it frees up more of the market rate housing and hopefully reduces rents.
“When rents go down, we have, again hopefully, with more supply, more availability on the single-family side.”
As to concerns he hears from people about why the City is building more affordable housing,
“I don’t understand the stigma about people with different incomes. With statistics showing that 49 percent of Ukiah is considered low income, that includes a lot of people.”
“Having an income that is lower than someone else doesn’t mean that you’re less of a person. It means, in some cases, that you chose another path. I don’t understand that way of thinking; we need to provide housing for all our residents, regardless of their income.”
Those interested in applying for residency at Ukiah Senior Apartments can call 707-804-6507 or email Ukiahsenior@buckinghampm.com. Leave first and last names, contact phone number and mailing address.