Housing Authority To Build Apartments In Hillyard For Poor

A 10-acre field in Hillyard is the future site of two landscaped apartment complexes for the poor.

The Spokane Housing Authority announced Tuesday that it plans to build 172 apartments at Garland and Cook this spring.

Designed to ease the city’s low-income housing pinch, the project is geared for both poor families and the elderly.

The $9 million project will be built with a combination of bank loans and tax-credit investments.

Westfall Village and Heritage Heights will not resemble grim, low-income housing projects, assured Lonnie Wheeler of the housing authority.

Located near the North East Community Center and the Hillyard library branch, the apartments will have a “green belt and lots of landscaping,” she said.

Kay Preston, community development coordinator for the Hillyard neighborhood, said she hasn’t heard any criticism of the projects yet.

“The neighborhood’s thrilled,” she said.

“We need so much more low-income and senior handicapped housing in Hillyard.”

The project competed against 75 other Washington housing proposals to secure the $9 million in federal tax credits needed to build it.

The Spokane apartments consumed more than a tenth of all tax credits issued by the Washington State Housing Finance Commission in 1995, said Mark Santos-Johnson, manager of the commission’s tax credit program.

The way the tax credits work, investors spend about 55 cents on the project to get $1 taken off their annual income taxes. The tax credits are spread out over 10 years.

Wheeler said the housing authority already has interested investors.

The project won support in part because of its commitment to low rents, Johnson said.

Apartments are expected to rent for between $265 and $399 a month.

The project reflects the authority’s realization that federal housing subsidies are shrinking, Wheeler said.

She hopes the project will help poor people find homes after they lose their Section 8 housing subsidies and other programs that may be cut by the federal government.

The housing authority spent $395,000 to buy the vacant Hillyard property.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WINNING PROPOSAL: The project competed against 75 other Washington housing proposals to secure the $9 million in federal tax credits needed to build the apartments.