Eastview Terrace’s multi-colored townhomes on Wednesday.
New kitchens, bathrooms, and windows are en route to Eastview Terrace, as the city’s housing authority prepares to upgrade the east-side affordable housing complex that was last rehabilitated nearly 20 years ago.
Those new amenities, among others, will be coming to 102 apartments at the Fair Haven Heights complex, as part of the Housing Authority of New Haven’s (HANH) plan to once again rehab Eastview Terrace, located at 185 Eastern St, at an estimated total development cost of $41.2 million.
For Maria Matos, who has been living in her Eastview Terrace apartment for three years, she’s not too worried about the condition of her unit. She’s just sad she has to leave for three months while it’s being renovated. “A makeover would be nice,” she said about her apartment on Wednesday. Still, “I hate moving.”
Eastview Terrace is a 127-unit apartment complex. The Glendower Group redeveloped the same 102 of those units in 2008 as part of a major rehab of the complex, which had once been known as Eastern Circle and been marked by disrepair and drug activity. The rehabilitation plan modernized old units and built new ones.
“It’s in need of a lot of work, as any housing unit would be” after 17 years, said LaChance to the housing authority’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday at their latest monthly meeting at 360 Orange St. LaChance is the vice president of development for the Glendower Group, the housing authority’s nonprofit development arm.
The remaining 25 units were completed in 2015. They won’t be rehabbed any time soon, as they don’t require major work, according to LaChance.
LaChance described the upcoming renovations to Eastview Terrace as a “very substantial rehab.”
LaChance said that funds are lined up for the project and Glendower expects to reach closing in late April and begin construction around a month later. “We’re working through the final pieces,” he said. Construction will take 20 months to complete.
Construction will consist of five phases, about 20 apartments per phase. Those apartments’ tenants will be temporarily relocated and will return when their apartments are ready. Then the next 20 units will be rehabbed.
“New kitchens, new baths, new windows, new roofs, new decks, new flooring, painting,” LaChance said. (LaChance said they would not be replacing doors, furnaces, or some site work.)
Torres’ kitchen, which she hopes will get a little bigger.
Ysela Torres, who lives with her mom, is part of the first group of tenants to have their apartments renovated. She said on Wednesday that she’s excited for a new bathroom, which she said is needed, and for a new kitchen, which she hopes might be a little bigger than the one she has now.
“I love it,” she said of Eastview Terrace. Torres has been living in her unit for four years. “I like this area, it’s comfortable.”
Torres isn’t looking forward to being relocated, which she’s expecting to happen in late March or early April. Right now, the plan is for her to move to Wayfarer Street, on the other side of town. “It’s too far,” she said. “I don’t have a car, I have a lot of appointments.” Right now, she gets a ride to her appointments from someone who lives nearby in Bella Vista. Torres also goes to church nearby on Ferry Street, where services are at night.
So Torres is applying for a different place. She still has to do an interview for the process. In the meantime, she’s packing up her apartment at Eastview. “I have boxes, containers,” she said.
She plans to come back when her unit is ready. The only problem with Eastview Terrace, she said, is that it can be a little hard to get around as a cane user. When a winter storm brought a foot of snow to New Haven in January, she said that she was stuck in her apartment for 15 days.
Matos, who is also part of the first phase of tenants whose units will be renovated, said that the renovations are a “very good” idea. Still, she said that learning she would have to be relocated had made her cry. “I love it, I love the community,” Matos said. She said that she feels taken care of by the housing authority and the staff, who she said show concern for residents and are responsible. She likes the view, the amount of outdoor space that she has, the fact that her grandkids can play freely.
It’s not the first time that Matos has been relocated from Eastview Terrace because of construction. She had moved into another unit at Eastview, when it was still Eastern Circle, back in the ’90s — a unit that can still be seen from the front porch she has now. Matos estimated that she had lived there for more than a decade before she was relocated to a place on Valley Street during the first renovation at Eastview.
Matos stayed at Valley Street for a while, until a few years ago, when a corner unit opened up for her at Eastview. (“I love my corner,” she said.) When she was asked if she wanted to come back, she joked that her bags were already packed and ready. “I said, ‘Hell yeah!’”
Matos lives in her unit with her son, who has epilepsy. She herself has many different health issues, she said. She recently had a big surgery and is preparing for another. (She’s on the lookout for a donated small electronic chair and an electronic bed.) She doesn’t know where she’ll be relocated to, but since she doesn’t drive, she’s hoping for a place that’s close to her doctors, to the bus line, to the store — like Eastview is.
“We create a community between us. Doesn’t matter what color you are, what language you speak. This is a safe place to be,” she said. She checks on her neighbors, asks if they need anything, translates for the ones who only speak Spanish. She wishes that they could all be relocated to the same place until they come back.
The 102 units to be rehabbed are all restricted to tenants whose incomes average below 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), or $54,600 for a two-person household. They are all Project Based Voucher (PBV) units, meaning that the housing authority subsidizes rents and tenants pay a third of their income.
In 2008, those 102 units had been rehabbed as part of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. LIHTC has a mandatory compliance period of 15 years. When that period ended in December 2023, the housing authority decided to use its option of rehabbing Eastview Terrace and getting new credits based on how much it spends on acquisition and rehabilitation. Glendower bought out Eastview’s other investor interests in 2024. Now, Glendower is selling Eastview from one Glendower-controlled LLC to another.
LaChance said that the total construction cost is estimated at $20.5 million and the total development cost — including of that construction cost — is estimated at $41.2 million. “The [total development cost] appears high because $8.75MM of that amount is a loan from the new LLC to the old LLC. It’s a way to generate Low Income Housing Tax Credits while assuring that [Elm City Communities, also known as the housing authority] retains final control of the property,” LaChance said in an email statement.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, LaChance presented a resolution to authorize the issuance of no more than $25 million in Multifamily Housing Revenue Bonds and the making of a loan to finance part of the project.
Housing authorities are able to issue bonds to finance affordable housing. A lender will buy the bonds and give funds back to the housing authority as necessary. The bond proceeds will fund a loan for a Glendower-controlled LLC. LaChance said that this is what’s required to meet the “bond test” for 4 percent Low Income Housing Tax Credit financing.
Board chair William Kilpatrick and commissioners Danya Keene and Kevin Alvarez all voted unanimously in support of the resolution.
The Eastview Terrace rehab comes at the same time that the housing authority is also preparing to overhaul another decades-old complex, the 109-unit George Crawford Manor on Park Street.
HANH Director of Compliance Evelise Ribeiro and board commissioners Bill Kilpatrick and Danya Keene on Tuesday.
Bella Vista in the distance.