Affordable housing plan for former Monroe school gets unanimous Cedar Rapids council backing

The Affordable Housing Network Inc. easily cleared a final hurdle last night as it now seeks to secure federal funding to transform the shuttered Monroe Elementary School and grounds into affordable apartments and homes.

The City Council, on a 7-0 vote and with expressions of strong support for the housing concept, approved a change of the city's future land use map and a change of zoning to permit the $9 million Monroe Villas project to proceed.

The council must approve the zone change on two addition readings, which is expected to be routine.

The council backing came despite a petition in opposition with 284 signatures, which included a sufficient number from near the school at 3200 Pioneer Ave. SE to require six council votes to pass the zoning measure.

Neighbor Karen Humbert, of 3014 14th Ave. SE, reminded council members of the petition and then asked about 15 or so members of the Monroe Neighborhood Pride Committee to stand in a show of opposition.

Matt Preston spoke on behalf of his mother, who he said lives near Monroe Elementary School, and told the council that the Monroe Villas development did not qualify as a low-density residential project according to the city's comprehensive plan and as the city's professional staff maintained. The development failed in the plan's call for new development to be suitable and compatible with existing development. He called plan "entirely incompatible" with the existing single-family homes nearby.

Vern Zakostelecky, a planner with the city's Community Development Department, said the Monroe Villas plan did qualify as a low-density plan, adding there were fewer residential units per area in the plan than in the existing single-family neighborhood nearby.

Council member Ann Poe asked Joe Lock, executive director of the Affordable Housing Network Inc. (AHNI), about potential crime in the properties that the agency owns and manages. Lock said it would not be true to say the agency's properties are crime-free, but he said the agency is a proponent of the city's new nuisance abatement initiative called SAFE-CR and is willing to come down on tenants that break the law and don't follow rules.

Poe asked Lock why the agency was in court so much, and Lock said the 42 court cases this year prove that the agency is serious about evictions when tenants break rules.

Council member Pat Shey pointed to AHNI's ambitious Total Child initiative, a part of which involves the agency's effort to purchase and renovate 100 rundown residential properties in the Wellington Heights neighborhood. Only about 10 percent of the tenants in those properties qualified to live under AHNI's strict tenant rules, Shey and Lock said.

Council member Monica Vernon said she liked the idea that AHNI was enforcing tenant rules and ending up in court. The city has been asking landlords "to get after it," she said.

Vernon said, too, that the area around Monroe school offers some natural buffers to the existing homes with woods and a city park.

Council member Don Karr said he liked that there was a lot of green space around the site for children to use. He said, too, that he did not agree with some emails he had received that suggested that poorer families are prone to crime.

AHNI's Lock said the agency's plan is to convert the school into 19 apartments and to build 16 single-family homes and four duplexes on school property around the school.

All the units will be rentals and will be designed with three and four bedrooms, which Lock said the city had identified as an affordable-housing need.

Lock called the residential units "work force housing," and said that families will need to hold down jobs to pay the rents. Those who qualify will have household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 a year and will pay monthly rents between $625 and $750 depending on unit size, household size and income.

The project will use federal low-income housing tax credits - a common source nationwide for affordable housing construction - to help with the funding, which will require the agency to manage the properties for 30 years, Lock said.

The agency will learn in March from the Iowa Finance Authority if it has been awarded funding.

On another matter, the council also approved a zoning change for the site of the former Vernon Inn restaurant, 2663 Mount Vernon Rd. SE. No neighbors objected. Council members noted that they will have the ability to reject a site plan if they don't like any proposed development on the site. The council turned down a proposal there from Kum & Go in January 2012.