Amid a nationwide affordable-housing crisis, the country’s top housing official visited Aurora to emphasize the importance of working with private partners to create sustainable places to live for low-income people.
Ben Carson, secretary of the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Authority, joined U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman and Aurora mayor Bob LeGare in touring the Village at Westerly Creek on Monday. The Aurora Housing Authority developed the nearly complete $50.4 million project through use of federal low-income housing tax credits, Section 8 relocation vouchers and other federal funding sources. The village, 144 affordable rental units for senior citizens and 50 affordable units for families at 10727 E. Kentucky Ave., replaced Buckingham Gardens, an outdated and unsafe government housing development that opened in 1979, officials say.
“It really goes to show what can be done when you plan it out well and when you spend time learning from other things that did not work well,” Carson said, “and more importantly, when you have public-private partnerships; when you have a conglomerate of different entities that focus on the problem.”
The Village at Westerly Creek, which is expected to be fully leased by fall, has private-sector financing, said Craig Maraschky, executive director of the Aurora Housing Authority. FirstBank holds the loan on the property, and American Express bought the tax credits that paid for the first two phases of construction there.
Maraschky supports the expansion of federal housing tax credit programs, saying, “If those go away we can’t do what we’re doing here.”
In brief comments after the tour, Carson touted “opportunity zones” as another tool that can improve neighborhoods. The zones, created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, are specially selected areas that have been left behind in the nation’s ongoing economic expansion. People who invest in the depressed areas can defer or even drive down taxes they would pay on capital gains achieved by doing so through the program. One of the zones is just east of the Westerly Creek project.
Carson, who has been scrutinized for floating a plan to increase rents on many people receiving federal rental assistance, said HUD is also looking to reduce regulatory burdens and knock down other barriers to getting affordable housing built. Ultimately, he said, his goal is to get more people in government housing into the workforce to create sustainable communities.
“Real compassion is not patting people on the head and saying. ‘There, there you poor little thing,” Carson said. “Real compassion is giving them an opportunity to realize the American dream.”
The demand for affordable housing is extensive in Aurora. Maraschky said the waiting list for the senior unit at Westerly Creek is five years long. The average senior household there lives on $12,500 per year.
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Mary Rodriguez and her husband Rudy have moved into Westerly Creek after living in a much smaller apartment in the project that proceeded it.
“If there were more, I’m sure there would be a lot of people who would want them,” Rodriguez, 70, said of her apartment. She added that if not for village, she and her husband, “would probably have to live with our kids to make it work.”
Coffman, R-Aurora, is sponsoring three bills at the moment that address housing. Two of them are aimed at helping people save for a down payment on a house and the third would reform portions of the tax code around the low-income housing credit, according to the congressman’s staff. Among the tweaks: increasing the credit for some projects that serve people with extremely low incomes.
“I am encouraged by what I saw today, but we need a lot more of it,” Coffman said.
