The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority says it will sell a portion of City West a year after taking ownership of the 25-year-old West End housing development.
CMHA CEO Gregory Johnson says the sale is part of a larger plan to rehabilitate the rest of the complex to make it sustainable long-term. That project will start this time next year, could cost $200 million and be done by 2030, the housing authority estimates.
CMHA will partner with developers Gorman & Company on the larger renovation of City West. That process will make use of HUD's Rental Assistance Demonstration program as well as other funding sources. According to CMHA documents, it will take place in three phases and will involve applications for Low Income Housing Tax Credits in 2026, 2027 and 2028.
Sale of housing
In a discussion with media Friday, Johnson acknowledged the sale of some of City West could cause anxiety among residents. But he said the housing authority is committed to making sure the 93 households living in the units going up for sale have a place in the neighborhood.
"Giving them the maximum opportunity to live in the West End, to live in City West, is our number one goal," he said.
Johnson says the housing authority will soon list 105 units between Wade Street and Betton Street and John Street and Clayers Lane for sale. That's about 10% of the overall City West development. The property appraised at roughly $12 million, according to CMHA.
Forty-one of the units CMHA will sell are currently public housing, while another 64 are units deed restricted for residents making between 0-60% of the area median income. Those restrictions exist because federal funding was used to construct City West, but they're expiring soon, meaning the housing could become market rate or be developed into something else entirely.
Johnson says other units at City West will become public housing so that there is no loss in public housing units at the complex. He also pledged that no changes to affordability at City West will happen due to the plan.
City West currently has 85 vacant units either undergoing renovation or ready to be occupied, and the housing authority says residents of buildings up for sale will be given the opportunity to move to those. The housing authority also is looking to provide opportunities for those residents to relocate to other affordable housing in the neighborhood if necessary.
Resident response
That's important to Ernestine King, who lives in one of the buildings that will be up for sale. She says she wouldn't mind at all moving to another part of the West End — she throws out Court or Elizabeth Streets as possible destinations — but wants to stay in the neighborhood because she's been there "a number of years" and because it's close to daily necessities and people she knows.
"Just get me somewhere, basically," she says.
Some West End residents WVXU talked to said they were waiting to go to a tenant engagement meeting held by CMHA before making up their mind about the plan. Others expressed anxiety or anger at the prospect of the sale, citing past displacements in the West End due to urban renewal, the construction of City West and TQL Stadium.
CMHA says the planned sale doesn't have anything to do with neighboring TQL, nor are the sale or the broader project related to a complaint some West End residents lodged with HUD against the city about a concentration of low-income housing in the neighborhood. A city spokesperson acknowledged Friday that HUD notified the city that complaint is no longer active.
City West's history
CMHA used $60 million in federal HOPE VI funds and partnered with a private developer to build City West in 2000. The development was intended to be mixed-income. It replaced public housing development Laurel Homes and much of Lincoln Courts, which were built in the late 1930s and were the nation's first contemporary public housing complexes.
Originally, City West was planned to have more than 1,000 units — roughly what the previous public housing complexes had. It fell short of that goal, however, and currently has 686 units.
Last year, a development group calling itself City West LLC announced plans to build 69 townhomes on land originally intended for the City West project. About 10% of those would be set aside for moderate income residents. The rest would start at roughly $500,000 apiece.
Boston-based affordable housing developer The Community Builders owned and managed City West until last year. CMHA assumed ownership and management after Community Builders.
Cincinnati Assistant City Manager Billy Weber said City West has significant challenges for continued sustainability that CMHA is trying to address.
"The property has pretty severe deferred capital maintenance," he said. "There are uninhabitable units in it. Financially, it has a $4 million loan on it that was in default. And it's losing money."
Weber says the city will help with gap funding for the broader renovation project, though he said it was too early to talk about specific dollar amounts.
Read more: