Ansonia cannot preserve land on Olson Drive as a park or open space once the decrepit public housing buildings there are torn down, a federal official said Wednesday.
In fact, continuing on that path could run the city afoul of federal Fair Housing regulations and possibly hold up the demolition of the subsidized Riverside apartment complex on Olson Drive.
HUD officials said federally subsidized housing of some kind must return to the property, per a “declaration of trust” between the city’s housing authority and the federal government.
Background
Ansonia city officials have been working to tear down the public housing complex on Olson Drive since 2005.
The apartments have been there for years and and are outdated in every way. The address carries a stigma within the city, officials readily admit, and have been the site of several shootings and stabbings.
In 2007, Ansonia voters approved spending $5 million to demolish the projects.
The city received permission from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to tear down two buildings, which they did in 2009.
Later, HUD also greenlit the demolition of five more buildings. That will be happening in the next few weeks.
Once those units are gone, four Riverside apartment buildings will remain.
The future of the Olson Drive property, however, remains a bit murky.
We’ll Take It! No, You Won’t.
City officials were planning to schedule a referendum asking voters to borrow $4.9 million for a laundry list of capital improvements.
Some of that money — $320,000 — was to be used to buy the Olson Drive land to be used as a park or open space.
Mayor James Della Volpe told the Valley Indy earlier this month that Ansonia already has high-density housing, with no open land. Leaving Olson Drive undeveloped would give the surrounding neighborhood much-needed green space, he said.
Della Volpe and Corporation Counsel Kevin Blake said the city was obligated to come up with 48 units of federally subsidized housing elsewhere in the city.
However, HUD apparently got wind of that plan, which triggered the presence of HUD official Jennifer Gottlieb at an Ansonia Aldermen meeting June 11 and a meeting of the Ansonia Housing Authority June 12.
Gottlieb repeatedly stressed several points with the city’s housing authority during Wednesday’s two-hour meeting, including:
1. Olson Drive cannot be left as open space or a park once the buildings come down. (Note — Gottlieb did not use the phrase “open space” during her meeting. She said “parks.” Members of the AHA didn’t ask for a clarification between “parks” and “open space.” The Valley Indy asked specifically about “open space” at the end of the meeting. The Valley Indy left a message with HUD, asking the question again.)
2. HUD and the Ansonia Housing Authority have an agreement from June 2012 calling for 100 units to be redeveloped at Olson Drive, 48 units of which are to be federally subsidized.
3. Ansonia has never submitted a detailed redevelopment plan for Olson Drive, as required by HUD, and the federal agency is losing patience. HUD sanctions are a possibility.
4. The housing authority had better hire a consultant to help them create a redevelopment plan.
5. If Ansonia doesn’t want 100 units to replace the Riverside complex, the Ansonia Housing Authority could submit revised paperwork to HUD in order to amend that June 2012 agreement.
Conflict
The majority of the members of the Ansonia Housing Authority are new — and they’re volunteers. Ansonia resident Ed Norman, for example, had been appointed to the authority just 24 hours prior to the meeting.
At one point, the volunteer commissioners, the housing authority employees and Gottlieb herself were all confused over whether the Ansonia Housing Authority even has an executive director at the moment.
(The meeting agenda listed the interim director as Jimmy Miller, a New Haven Housing Authority honcho — but he wasn’t at the meeting.)
The volunteer commissioners were trying to catch up on the convoluted, often contradictory history of the what’s been happening with at Riverside — as Gottlieb pressed them hard to push forward in the HUD redevelopment process.
Gottlieb kept telling them that the housing authority could get into trouble with HUD for not submitting a detailed plan to redevelop Olson Drive.
“We have an agreement. We were supposed to have a (Olson Drive redevelopment) plan submitted to us quite some time ago. You don’t even have an architect hired,” Gottlieb said.
“You have never come up with a fully fleshed out plan,” she said.
At one point, Norman said he would call his elected representatives in Washington D.C. if HUD continued to threaten Ansonia.
“I won’t take those threats seriously,” he said.
The audio clip below features an exchange between Gottlieb and Norman.
In some respect, the new Ansonia volunteers seemed to be paying for the sins of previous Ansonia Housing Authority executive directors and oversight boards.
Ansonia Housing Authority member Nancy Marini said the AHA is in the shape it’s in because of a decade of inaction under former executive director James Finnucan, who resigned in 2011.
After his resignation, the Valley Indy published a story revealing his family was collecting rents from Section 8 tenants in Ansonia, a clear violation’s of HUD practices.
In May 2012 the authority offered the executive director’s job to a Florida resident, who then turned them down.
In December 2012 the authority — in a highly controversial move — voted to dismiss an executive director they had just hired.
Gottlieb acknowledged the authority had suffered from a lack of leadership.
What’s Next For Olson Drive?
Ansonia Housing Authority member Eileen Krugel, who also serves as the chairperson of the city’s Democratic Town Committee and works for the city, said Ansonia doesn’t want to see high-density, low-income housing replace the Riverside apartments, which are already high-density, low-income housing.
Krugel said concentrated areas of low-income residents do not trigger economic development. Ansonia is already densely populated, lacks jobs and its school system can’t sustain itself.
“Your low income are not going out to dinner at Crave,” Krugel said, referencing a restaurant on Main Street.
Krugel said the city wanted to see the 48 low-income units scattered throughout the city.
Gottlieb said the housing authority needs to work with a consultant to figure out how to redevelop Olson Drive and give HUD the 48 units it requires.
She said a mix of Olson Drive and scattered low-income sites throughout Ansonia is an option — but a consultant said that type of development is difficult, because the low-income sites would have to go to more affluent parts of the city.
Gottlieb also said federal housing has changed in the 60-plus years the Riverside Apartments were built. The idea is no longer to concentrate hundreds of low-income residents in one place.
Instead, modern HUD housing programs promote “mixed finance” developments. That is, a mix of people with different income levels. Modern subsidized housing includes non-subsidized housing, and a development could generate tax revenue for the city, she said.
By the end of Wednesday’s meeting, the housing authority and Gottlieb seemed to have developed some level of trust.
“You have to trust me, it’s never going to be the same over there. I know you had a bad experience with that development,” she said.
The clip below features some of the conversation:
Ultimately, the Ansonia Housing Authority voted to:
- Authorize a contract with Ritter and Paratore Contracting, Inc. for the demolition of the southside Riverside Apartments, 31 – 105 Olson Drive, for up to $471,630.10.
- Authorize a contract with Tise Design Associates to help the AHA through HUD’s redevelopment process. A dollar amount wasn’t specified and money doesn’t change hands at this point. (Update — the resolution the AHA voted on said the amount is not to exceed $214,200.)
- Submit a revised agreement to HUD that doesn’t commit to 100 replacement units on Olson Drive.
