Affordable Housing

The City’s Affordable Housing Commission has announced grants and loans of more than $6 million to improve city living. The projects supported range from lead abatement to rent assistance to new housing construction.

You’ll be reading more about them all later this week. But, a recent note from AHC director Angela Morton Conley directed my attention to four very special projects.

Centenary Cares is the new homeless drop-in center I announced here last summer. Centenary’s programming will include counseling, meals, job placement, temporary storage, hygiene, and mental health referrals. Angela argues that this comprehensive approach to chronic homelessness better addresses the needs of downtown’s chronically homeless people who have been displaced from other parts of the metropolitan area and who now live in City parks and accept hand-outs from well-meaning county donors.

Palm Place is a block of six new homes in the Wells-Goodfellow section of the 22nd Ward. Angela makes the good point in her note that six new homes on any block lends a better look to an area and reassures prospective buyers that a neighborhood is on the upswing.

Traylor Chateau is the colorful name that Rena Traylor has given to the 26-unit rental rehab project she is renovating in the 26th ward. Angela calls Ms. Traylor a “grassroots developer.” The units will rent to people earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income.

Majestic Stove Lofts is a Bob Wood project that will, says Angela, set aside 50 of its 120 rental lofts as “affordable to moderate income tenants” — and contribute some economic diversity to the loft district’s burgeoning residential population.

Funding for these and the other AHC-supported projects is generated through the City Use Tax.