GDPM bought the buildings in May and has $500,000 set aside for improvements.
The agency is now paying the current tenants to leave.
It may raise the rents before moving in publicly subsidized residents.
The two apartment buildings, each holding 10 two-bedroom condos, are on Westerfield Drive, near historic downtown Centerville. Their purchase is the first by GDPM in Centerville and is the latest in an ongoing effort to move public housing out of concentrated areas of inner-city poverty and spread the housing throughout the region.
The effort has cost the local federally funded housing agency tens of millions of dollars in recent years.
Interim agency director Al Prude did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment.
Agency officials have stated that they need to bring housing to where the need is — including Centerville, Oakwood and other suburbs — instead of the past practice of encouraging public housing tenants to move to Dayton, into large public housing complexes.
The owner of identical neighboring apartment buildings, Irvin Harlamert, a former Oakwood municipal judge, is critical of the price GDPM paid.
“Both (an) appraiser and I reckoned the range of fair market value for these 20 townhouse units would be somewhere within a range of $800,000 to $850,000,” he said.
The previous property owners bought the buildings in 2005 for $800,000, according to county records. The listed sale price was $1.5 million.
“I think they probably sold it for a little more than it’s probably worth,” said Walter Cook, who has lived a block away from the apartments for 16 years. “It’s easy to spend somebody else’s money.”
Most of the buildings’ current tenants have been given 90 days to leave because their income disqualifies them from living there. Under a federal program, they are being offered a $950 cash moving stipend plus 42 months of rental assistance for the difference between their current $625 rent and higher rent somewhere else. This means if they rent an apartment elsewhere for $725, they’ll get a check from GDPM for $4,200.
Resident Clayton Rothwell, a 27-year-old doctoral student who lives there with his wife, said many residents were initially skeptical of the purchase. But he said the agency’s offer to them is “more than fair” and they hope to use it as a down payment to buy a home.
Rothwell, who is from Philadelphia, said the idea of offering public housing in a quiet area of Centerville with a good school system makes sense.
“I think public housing is more successful if it’s distributed, versus closer together,” he said. “Arguably, this is a better safety net than putting people in an unsafe environment.”
Once ineligible tenants leave, they’ll be replaced with eligible low-income families, whose rent and utilities will be subsidized. Under law, GDPM can raise the rent on the federal government. The federally estimated fair market value for Montgomery County is $685 per month.
The agency has budgeted $500,000 for renovations to the property, which Harlamert says is a mystery.
“My personal knowledge of the condition of these units is that they are not in need of rehabilitation,” he said.
The agency last year changed its name from Dayton Metropolitan Housing Authority in part to get away from the stigma attached to the “housing authority” name. GDPM often faces concerns over crime and property maintenance issues when it buys property in a new area. Controversy erupted in 2007 when the agency considered buying properties in Oakwood.
The Westerfield Drive buildings are the first GDPM has bought in Centerville, but it has housed clients in privately owned Section 8 apartments in the nearby Chevy Chase Apartment complex.
GDPM has almost 99 percent occupancy in the 2,800 apartments and other housing units it owns, with another 2,700 on a waiting list, agency officials have estimated. Participants pay 30 percent of their adjusted income in rent, ranging from $145 to $500 per month.
Almost all of the agency’s $46.5 million annual budget comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
About the Author
