Social Development Sweeps Downtown Remodeling Projects And House Rules Are Cleaning Up Gritty Buildings, Giving Low-Income Residents Safer Places To Live

For some Spokane residents, the buzz about downtown revitalization has nothing to do with a lipstick bar.

They’re glad that a heroin dealer no longer lives next door, and that the carpet in their rooms smells like a new car, not an old tire.

While upscale projects like the new River Park Square shopping center draw scrutiny, tens of millions of dollars have been quietly spent over the past few years to boost the lifestyle of those in the lowest income brackets.

The work has transformed some of the grittiest slums in the city core into textbook examples of urban renewal.

At least 10 buildings have seen varying degrees of restoration - from total “gut rehabs” to aesthetic improvements - in the past four years. Work on at least three others is planned in the near future.

For subsidized rents as low as $25 a month, elderly, poor, mentally ill and disabled tenants can get small units with new refrigerators, hardwood floors and hightech wiring.

“Dead” buildings - abandoned to transients - are reborn into safe and clean apartments. The Del Mar - condemned by health officials in 1996 when inspectors found drifts of garbage and exposed wires dangling above pools of sewer water - is now a renovated homeless shelter.

The list of fixed-up properties continues to grow. The Merlin Apartments, a dive so notorious that outof-town hobos drop by to score drugs, is getting a $600,000 face lift under new ownership.

The new Christian owner of the Alberta Apartments, The City Gate religious nonprofit organization, plans to close the West First building for three months, beginning in October.

Out goes sticky, stained carpet. In goes a soup kitchen.

A half-block away, there are tentative plans for a remodel of the 170-room Otis Hotel, from the beams up.

It’s part coincidence that many long-planned projects are surfacing at once. But most share a common theme: a socially-minded developer with enough savvy to pull together complex financing.

Jim Delegans, who is trying to buy and remodel the Otis, suggests that welfare reform drew new attention to the needs of the disadvantaged.

“In every community, you have cycles,” Delegans said. “Perhaps Spokane is in a cycle where our social conscience is being raised, … to the point where we are unwilling to let low-income people live in dilapidated conditions.”

Renovations bring a different type of management. Alcohol and drug bans are enforced. Prostitution isn’t ignored.

And many of the renovated properties - such as Delegans’ Commercial Building - have social workers and drug counselors on site.

“If you’re looking for a place to shoot up, there are fewer places to go,” said Melora Sharts, a city employee who manages federal low-income housing programs.

The new breed of developments will stick around. Most of the government money financing renovations requires a commitment as long as 50 years to housing low-income tenants.

“If someone wants to fix up a building and sell it in 5 years, it’s not going to work,” Sharts said.

But new walls and carpet don’t end the complications of cheap downtown housing. Lax management can, in a flash, cause an entire block to become a crime pocket and waste public dollars.

Public-private success

Many of the recently finished projects can be traced back to the 1991 Downtown Housing Stabilization Program.

Hoping to retain deteriorating historic apartment buildings and to channel more money to developers, the committee patched together private and public money. It was considered a success: Eight buildings were remodeled, several as complete “gut rehabs.”

Creative financing is often necessary for big remodeling jobs, developers say.

Government funds are not expanding. The state Housing Trust Fund, for example, which issues low-interest loans for low-income housing, has remained at about $50 million per biennium since 1992.

Julie Dhatt, housing services coordinator for the nonprofit Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs, said competition for limited public funding has forced developers to get creative.

“It used to be one public source and a bank,” she said. “Now we’re looking at projects with eight different sources. If you look back, you’ll see a rising sophistication in the deals.”

She just completed such a deal - a $1.2 million remodeling of the Collins Apartments, a SNAP-owned building at 204 S. Wall.

The deal is a quilt of grants, loans and donations: a 1 percent interest, $550,000 loan from the state Housing Trust Fund; a $110,000 loan from Washington Trust; grants from federal programs; private grants; donated labor.

The result is a drastically improved building that opened in July. Rents hover from $225 to $275 a month. Most tenants are formerly homeless.

Hallways are carpeted in elegant floral print. Rooms have hardwood floors. Well-stocked bookcases line a TV room with a leather couch. Solid wood doors and insulated windows quiet the din of passing trains.

Dan McGhee, a two-year tenant in Room 21, says the remodeling transformed the attitude of residents.

“The mood in the building before was that people were dying,” said McGhee, 48. “It was living in the slums. I was embarrassed to tell people I lived here. I’d just say I lived downtown. Now, it’s totally different.”

Residents pick up trash in the hall and keep the laundry room clean. Neighbors are friendly to each other. Chronic drunks who used to hang around outside moved elsewhere.

A disabled laborer who broke his neck last year, McGhee shares a one-bedroom apartment with his son Abe. The 20-year-old is headed to college soon.

“There would be no way I’d bring home a lady here” before, McGhee said. “Now, my boy’s going off to college, and I told him I might have a lady over for dinner.”

Housing backlog

If it all sounds too good to be true, it might be. The successes downtown are overshadowed by a continuing low-income housing shortage, particularly for families.

Less than 6 percent of affordable apartments with three bedrooms or more countywide were vacant in July, according to a survey by the Spokane Low-Income Housing Consortium. The Spokane Housing Authority’s waiting list stands at 3,100 families and three years.

And as quickly as a building can be renovated, it can fall back into disrepair.

“It can go bad a lot quicker than it can get fixed up,” said Rubio, owner of the Merlin.

John McGrath, a 59-year-old retired cab driver with a voice as rough as a chain saw, says his third-floor apartment in the Wilton, at 156 S. Browne, is spiffy, if a little small.

The 52-room building was renovated in 1995 at a cost of $660,000, and relies on public housing subsidies.

But he laughed when asked about the building’s drug and alcohol ban, posted on the front door.

“You can buy all the crack cocaine you want right here,” said McGrath, who lives on disability checks. Kim Rasp, who manages the building for the nonprofit Spokane Housing Ventures, sighs at the comment.

“It’s a never-ending battle we face,” she said.

A handful of residents believed to be selling drugs were recently evicted, she said. An armed security guard patrols the sidewalks after the bars close, and a ban on overnight guests is enforced.

“We do what we can,” she said. “If we had a security camera and someone at the top of the stairs 24-7, it might be better. But it would be prohibitive to go that far.”