Resources:
Rylee Barnsdale's Feature Article: Three affordable housing developments set to open soon in Ypsi
City of Ypsilanti Community Benefits Ordinance
Huron Vista and the Residences of Huron
Transcription:
Rylee Barnsdale: You're listening to 89 one WEMU. I'm Rylee Barnsdale, and this is On the Ground Ypsi. A number of affordable housing developments have broken ground around Ypsi, hoping to not only provide the opportunity of brand new, high quality housing, but to open the door to financial stability and growth to folks who may have never thought that could be possible. Affordable housing developers Renovare in Ypsi, Lincoln Avenue Communities in California and Avalon Housing in Ann Arbor have all been invited to Ypsi to build these new housing options, targeting residents whose previous selection may have been limited due to size and cost. These developers also went through a city process known as the Community Benefits Ordinance, in order to determine whether or not these spaces will be good for the community at large, a process which they say has thoroughly aided in the decision making process of home development. With me today is Michael Appel, senior developer from Avalon Housing, to tell us more about Avalon's project at 206 Washington Street. Hi, Michael! Thanks so much for being here!
Michael Appel: I'm happy to be here!
Rylee Barnsdale: So, let's start with just a breakdown of what these apartments Avalon is building look like. How many tenants can they support? Who is the target demographic that you are hoping to house with these?
Michael Appel: Sure. We are proposing to build a 22-unit apartment building on 206 North Washington Street, as you mentioned. They'll all be one-bedroom apartments. There's also going to be tenant amenities, community amenities and community room laundry. As one bedroom apartments, most of them will be for single adults, but, certainly, they'll be large enough for two people. So, there could be two adults. There could be adults with children.
Rylee Barnsdale: And as far as I understand, there aren't just these standard one-bedroom apartments as well. There's going to be some units set aside for permanent supportive housing for those exiting homelessness.
Michael Appel: Exactly. So, Avalon, from our beginnings 32 years ago, has always focused on supportive housing, which is a housing model that not only provides affordable, quality housing, but pairs it with voluntary supportive services. Our goal is to help residents who have experienced housing instability--very often, homelessness--by having these supportive services to make our units not just affordable, but to help them address whatever the issues that contributed to housing instability in the past.
Rylee Barnsdale: And you mentioned things like some amenities that will be available as well. What kinds of services and benefits will living in this particular development have for the residents?
Michael Appel: Sure. So, it's worth calling out eight of the units will be specifically supportive housing, meaning those tenants will be referred to us from our local...it's called the HARA, or the Chip List. It's a process by which the homeless service providers in this county prioritize and refer to us those who need supportive housing. The other units will be filled off of a waitlist that we will maintain at the site, and the services are available to anybody who lives at the building, whether or not they're part of the eight supportive housing residents or the others who came off the waitlist. The services range greatly there. As I said, they're voluntary. They are focused on those issues that contribute to and address housing stability. Often, that's issues around mental health, maybe issues around substance abuse. But it can be medication management. It can be just if someone's been homeless for an extended period of time, some of the skills of daily living in a residential apartment.
Rylee Barnsdale: This is WEMU's On the Ground Ypsi. I'm Rylee Barnsdale, talking with Avalon Housing senior developer Michael Appel. Michael, like you mentioned, building these safe and quality spaces to live in is nothing new for Avalon. You operate other spaces. You're mostly in Ann Arbor. I understand that there are some projects in Chelsea and Dexter as well. So, what brought Avalon to Ypsi?
Michael Appel: So, for our first 25 or so years, all of our developments were in the City of Ann Arbor. And that flowed from a number of reasons, some of which just had to do with the way federal funds were available, which are needed for housing development for a period of time. The political leadership in the City of Ypsilanti really was not supportive of additional affordable housing. That's changed dramatically in recent years. So, we were very excited to have a physical presence here. We have been working in Ypsilanti and more broadly on the eastern side of U.S. 23 and the eastern side of the county for many years. We provide supportive services not just to residents who live in the apartments that we own and manage, but we also provide supportive services to residents who have vouchers and are living in the private sector. And many of those of vouchers over the years have been in the Ypsilanti area.
Rylee Barnsdale: Branching off of that, obviously, Avalon isn't just in the business of building apartments and housing, but having those other wraparound kind of services, too, to provide aid to community members throughout the county. What does having this new physical space and being able to put a face to a name, so to speak, for folks in Ypsi, mean for those connections that you already have here?
Michael Appel: Let me tie it to something you mentioned earlier in the introduction, which was the Community Benefits Ordinance process. One of the requests that came out of that process was how could we make our space available to the broader community. And we had many conversations. We've met about five times with the Community Benefits Ordinance Group, wanting to find the right balance between acknowledging that the spaces within that building are part of people's homes. 22 people live there. It's not public space.
Rylee Barnsdale: Sure.
Michael Appel: But it's also an amenity that can add value to the broader community while also adding value to the lives of our residents. So, one of the things we are going to be doing is working with other community groups in Ypsilanti and, as appropriate, make that community room available for activities that could benefit both our tenants, but also may benefit the broader community in some ways.
Rylee Barnsdale: As far as those possible future community partnerships go, too, do you see future collaborations that maybe we can get a hint about that Avalon is hoping for furthering those connections in the area?
Michael Appel: Sure. We don't have specific ones lined up yet. The development process is slow.
Rylee Barnsdale: Sure.
Michael Appel: We hope to close this summer on our financing and begin construction this summer, so we would therefore be open and renting towards the end of 2025. But we've already built relationships with organizations. We, for example, have often done food pantries in our properties, but, in this case, realized it made no sense to create a brand new food pantry so close to the one that SOS already operates. So, that's a partnership that will continue. I've no doubt that there are health care providers in Ypsilanti that we already work with. Now, we will have a physical space for them potentially to come on site and meet with our tenants.
Rylee Barnsdale: This is WEMU's On the Ground Ypsi. I'm talking with Michael Appel, senior developer at Avalon Housing. So, Michael, we mentioned the Community Benefits Ordinance--this process that all potential developers in Ypsi are required to go through. Residents can speak directly to the developers to determine those benefits of a new project to the community. You mentioned a possible community space that will be open to not just residents, but everyone in the community. Are there other things that you learned from those meetings that impacted the way that you are now going about developing this project?
Michael Appel: Yeah, absolutely! And it's also worth noting it wasn't just the Community Benefits Ordinance, because this property is located in the historic district. Along with the usual approvals from city council and from planning, we've been working with the historic district commission first to get permission to tear down the existing structure, which is so seriously damaged by fire. And also, the oldest portion of the historic original building is nearly invisible at this point. There's been so many additions. But I'll give you an example. The Community Benefits Ordinance folks talked about some sort of bench--some sort of public amenity--that we could add near the streetscape. And with the historic district commission, we talked about signage that acknowledged--that described, not just acknowledged, but described--the history of the property. So, if we were losing this original building, we would add to our development a physical sign that showed what used to be there, not just the building we tore down, but the fact going further back. And we've combined that. And I think our initial thoughts are to create a bench with some signage right next to it, so that it feels a bit more like it's towards facing towards the sidewalk, as opposed to deep into our property, which is where we would have tenants feel in control rather than something outward facing towards the community.
Rylee Barnsdale: In addition to the work being done with not just the community members, we also have the historical side of things. What are, overall from those findings, the benefits to this project for the city? You know, why should folks care about this new development? Obviously, we've had a lot of construction over the past summer--over last year. I'm sure there are folks who are maybe a little tired of it. But how does this project kind of set apart? And why should folks care?
Michael Appel: Well, I think the first thing, of course, is the affordability of the units. My experience over many years is sometimes people are surprised at the relatively high rents that can be charged and still calling a project affordable. And Avalon has always focused very hard on not taking advantage of that fact. So, the eight units that are for supportive housing, everybody there will benefit from a section eight voucher that stays with the unit, meaning they will pay 30% of their income for rent. For some of them, that could be zero if they have no source of income. For many, it'll be a couple hundred a month based on their income sources. The section eight allows Avalon, as the owner, to collect a market rent with the section eight voucher paying us the difference. The other units--we have set the initial rent at $675 a month. And we didn't do that because that's the most we could have charged, given the funding we were seeking. We could have charged significantly more than that. We set that because we felt that that added a unit to the neighborhood that contributed to affordability and long-term access to units for folks working in Ypsilanti at fairly low wages. There are very few, if any, brand new units in the neighborhood, so it's hard to have a direct comparison. But $675 is a good deal less than what a brand new unit would typically cost. And that was Avalon following our strategy, our priorities, and our mission.
Rylee Barnsdale: I'll wrap up our conversation with the question I'm sure some folks who are listening may have? You mentioned a possible opening date or year of 2025. How can folks stay up to date and maybe learn more?
Michael Appel: Sure. We will, of course, like any nonprofit or developer, try to inform the public as to the progress we're making. We hope we will break ground towards the end of this summer. And I would imagine that, a year from now, maybe we will start to go through the process of opening up a waitlist. Maybe, it might be a little more into summer 2025, and that would be an important moment for us to be very loud and effective at making sure the community is aware. As I said, the eight units that are supportive housing will be referred from the homeless system and from HAWK, it's called. But the other units--we will be advertising it publicly and we'll have a publicly available waitlist.
Rylee Barnsdale: Michael, thank you so much for being here to give us some insight on this current development project Avalon is working on, and we appreciate you being here and, hopefully, helping more folks call Ypsi home!
Michael Appel: All right! Thank you!
Rylee Barnsdale: For more information on today's topic and links to the full article, visit our website at wemu.org. On the Ground Ypsi is brought to you in partnership with Concentrate Media. I'm Rylee Barnsdale, and this is your community NPR station, 89 one WEMU FM, Ypsilanti.
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