By Greg Paeth
NKyTribune Senior Reporter
Although it’s highly doubtful that the Housing Authority of Covington will finish the centerpiece project in its $45 million Hope VI development in the next couple of months, the agency is plowing ahead – literally – on the much smaller final phase of the long-overdue replacement for the Jacob Price Homes.
Demolition crews have been busy in recent weeks tearing down buildings, including two churches, and then excavating the sites for nine single-family homes that will be built on the north side of Robbins Street and the south side of Tenth Street in the 200 East blocks of both streets.
The new homes will be immediately north of the new residential development, River’s Edge at Eastside Pointe, which is being built on the former Jacob Price site at 11th and Greenup.
The nine homes, five on Robbins Street and four on Tenth Street, will cost in the neighborhood of $2 million and are scheduled for completion by Sept. 30, said Jeff Rieck, executive director of the housing authority. The nine homes will sell for about half of the construction costs through government subsidies that were created to help low- and moderate-income people buy homes.
More homes may be built on Robbins and Tenth streets if the housing authority can acquire additional property, Rieck said. He said he may sign a contract with a builder sometime next week. Rieck declined to identify the builder because the housing agency is completing its “due diligence” on companies that are candidates to do the work.
“It’s not prudent to comment about that now,” Rieck said when asked which other properties might be acquired by the housing authority.
Plans call for construction of single-story homes on Tenth Street with two-story buildings on Robbins Street across from River’s Edge, where many of the buildings are multi-story in a style that mimics the taller Victorian-era homes that are found in Covington’s older neighborhoods. The homes are being designed by PCA Architecture, a Covington firm.
River’s Edge will be completed this summer or early in the fall, said Rieck, who was hired by the housing authority last June. He said that because he’s relatively new to the project he does not know when the project was originally scheduled for completion.
“It’s about two years past the due date. We keep getting new due dates and it never happens,” said Covington Mayor Sherry Carran, who is, by virtue of her office, one of the five members of the board that oversees the housing authority.
A status report prepared for the housing authority by a consultant last October said the project would be finished by mid- 2015. But Carran said she believes contractors won’t wrap up their work until September.
The Rev. Richard Fowler, pastor of the Ninth Street Missionary Baptist Church, which is about one block from River’s Edge, said he remembers being told that much of the project would be completed within a year of the groundbreaking for construction. Rev. Fowler is among the people who posed for photos with shiny new shovels in late March of 2012 for the ceremonial groundbreaking, which was attended by former U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis.
“It started in 2010, and here we are five years later and we still see it going on,” said Rev. Fowler, who also is the executive director of OASIS, a social service agency that had been working with the housing authority up until last Dec. 1. OASIS moved out of the building at 1016 Greenup, which is owned by the housing agency, and ended its relationship with the agency when OASIS was asked to begin paying $1,550 per month in rent.
Fowler said his organization could not afford the new rent and moved to a nearby building at 232 E. Tenth Street that is owned by the church. It is directly across Tenth Street from the new sites.
In lieu of paying $600 a month in rent for the building on Greenup Street, OASIS had been working with housing authority tenants who needed help with their rent, food or other necessities, the clergyman said. OASIS had occupied the building since 2006.
Fowler said he hoped that the tight timetable for building the new homes and the completion of River’s Edge would not jeopardize the quality of the construction. He said he was especially concerned about mold in buildings that had not been sealed tightly when bad weather hit.
Bennie Doggett, a longtime neighborhood activist in the Eastside neighborhood where many of the residents are African-American, said she also was concerned about how long it’s taken to complete the project and how the delay has affected some of the “oldtimers” from Jacob Price who had hoped to move back to the new development.
Doggett also is president of the Eastside Neighborhood Association, which works to improve the neighborhood. Until February, Doggett had worked for many years as a volunteer at OASIS. She said she decided to quit volunteering after she and Rev. Fowler disagreed about a policy issue.
Although they may have disagreed about policy, Rev. Fowler and Doggett both said the housing authority has provided little information to OASIS or the neighborhood group about the home construction work on Tenth and Robbins streets. But both acknowledged that they have not made requests for information.
When completed, River’s Edge will include 120 apartments and townhouses: 43 of which are considered public housing and 47 that are classified as “affordable housing” through a government tax credit program. Another 30 units would be “market rate” rentals where monthly rates reflect average prices for similar units in the area.
Those rents would range from $650 to $1,100 per month, according to the upbeat status report that was prepared for the housing authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last year.
Three of the buildings, which include a total of 14 housing units, are fully occupied and include 11 public housing tenants, two market rate tenants and one “tax credit” tenant, according to Brittney Coyne, community manager for Integral Property Management, which is handling the leasing for River’s Edge. She said six of the nine units in a fourth building are occupied by a blend of “tax credit” and market rate tenants.
One person renting a one-bedroom unit would pay $360 per month as a public housing tenant and $674 a month if they qualified through the affordable housing plan. Both of those rental rates include utilities. The market rate rent for the one-bedroom unit would be $725 per month and does not include utilities, Coyne said.
With all of the rental rates, the objective is to keep the total for rent and utilities at no more than 30 percent of the tenant’s monthly income, Coyne said.
She said she has waiting list of 189 people who are seeking public housing units and 30 who have asked for “tax credit” units. Another 86 people are seeking market rate apartments and townhouses, Coyne said
Mayor Carran said the original schedule for completion fell apart quickly because some of the foundation work that was completed by a contractor was flawed and had to be done again.
River’s Edge as well as the single-family home construction work and some earlier housing rehab work are all part of a Hope VI project that was designed to replace the 169 living units in Jacob Price Homes, a gloomy and deteriorating complex that had been built in 1939. For westbound traffic over the 12th Street Bridge, the rundown Jacob Price property provided a less than impressive first impression of Covington for motorists whose route ran along 11th Street.
The St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church on Robbins Street and the Solid Rock Fire Baptized Church on Tenth Street were demolished for the new home construction, according to Rev. Fowler. He said St. Paul’s merged with another congregation in Cincinnati while Solid Rock is now part of the Word of Life Christian Fellowship near 20th and Greenup Streets.