FAYETTEVILLE, AR - It's the newest creation of the Fayetteville Public Housing Authority, and Hugh Earnest, authority member, thinks the Partners for Better Housing nonprofit organization is the key to getting more affordable housing in Fayetteville.
The group is starting with a patch of 7 acres in south Fayetteville. Earnest said the Partners for Better Housing was created in 2008 by the FPHA so it could accomplish things quicker and more efficient than the authority, which often gets tied up by bureaucratic rules and regulations, can.
"You don't have quite the 40-plus years of rules and regulations the (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) has generated," Earnest said. "The (authority) has not constructed any new housing since 1983."
The Partners for Better Housing voted at its last meeting at the beginning of February to go ahead and start the process of purchasing the 7.6-acres between Fifteenth Street and Huntsville Road, just east of College Avenue. Earnest said the Partners for Better Housing plans to use about $150,000 of authority money towards the $250,000 land purchase and it will look to procure a loan for the extra $100,000.
After that's done, the Partners for Better Housing needs to find someone, or a group of people, willing to help design the development that Earnest said would include 50-100 single and multifamily units. Earnest said the development would be aimed towards accommodating low- to mediumincome families and would include rental and purchase properties. He said the average cost on purchase properties would be about $50-60 per square foot, and the size of the units would run around 1,000-1,500 square feet.
Once a group is hired to design the development's master plan, Earnest said the Partners for Better Housing will begin working on ways to fund the actual construction and infrastructure of the project. He said the FPHA is allowed to use 30 percent of its yearly capitol improvement funds received from the federal government to service debt, which means the FPHA could service a little more than $1 million in bonds a year. Earnest said the rest will hopefully come from public and private grants, and maybe a little from the city of Fayetteville if he can persuade the City Council.
"The city just got $172,000 in extra money. It might be possible to get some of that," Earnest said. "There certainly will be more stimulus money down the line."
Earnest said he's already had conversations about the plan with Don Marr, chief of Mayor Lioneld Jordan's staff, and he also plans to make his way onto a City Council agenda so he can present aldermen with the project and hopefully gain their support.
Earnest said the land purchase should be done within a few weeks and the Partners for Better Housing plan to meet with the University of Arkansas' Community Design Center to talk about a possible partnership for creation of the project's master plan. "The more people we get involved in this, the better it's going to be," Earnest said.
He said the group also plans to hold meetings for the local neighbor hood associations in May or June to keep the community fully informed on what's going on in their area. Earnest hopes the project will take one to two years to complete and it will help alleviate the one year waiting list the FPHA currently has for people seeking lowincome housing.
Source: NWAnews.com