by Mona Mahadevan The New Haven independent
The four-story, vinyl-sided building boasts sun-drenched, airy, and large units.
Dozens of people filled the community room to eat apizza and celebrate the new apartments.
Sixty-four affordable apartments are now open — and already half occupied — on the site of a formerly contaminated ex-laundry facility in the West River neighborhood.
The spacious, modern, below-market-rate units are part of a $28 million redevelopment made possible by public funds.
City and state officials gathered Monday morning to cut the ribbon on the city’s newest apartment complex, Monarch Apartments, located at 149 Derby Ave. Over 50 people crammed into the lobby to hear how subsidies from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA), state Department of Housing (DOH), and city of New Haven allowed the developers, the Avon-based Honeycomb Real Estate Partner and Weatogue-based Vesta Corporation, to finish the all-affordable construction just a year after breaking ground.
The four-story complex has been in the works for more than three years. It’s located next door to Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School and near the Cofield Estates, another affordable housing development in the West River neighborhood.
The complex offers one-, two-, and three-bedroom units. Four apartments are designated for residents earning no more than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), or $90,950 per year for a family of four. Twelve cap income at 50 percent of AMI, and the rest are set aside for people earning less than 60 percent of AMI.
During the press conference, city and state officials praised the development, citing its use of public-private collaboration and its reuse of a once-contaminated parcel.
Nandini Natarajan, chief executive officer of CHFA, called the complex’s lot an “underutilized site that needed to be moved in a different direction from its industrial past.”
That site previously housed Monarch Cleaners, a commercial laundry facility that washed and dried clothes for decades beginning in 1900. The lobby of Monarch Apartments is decorated with old pictures of the cleaners.
“The Monarch does represent what’s possible when we bring together public resources, private expertise, private dollars, and community priorities,” added Natarajan.
Mayor Justin Elicker and Board of Alders President / West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers emphasized the importance of the complex’s affordability and argued that developers in the city need to prioritize affordable units more broadly.
“We’re passionate about not just growing, but doing it inclusively,” declared Elicker. He criticized other cities for constructing “all market rate” buildings, often by destroying existing structures “to put up these fancy places.”
“We do not do that in New Haven,” said Elicker. “Almost all of our development is on two types of sites: parking lots or abandoned factories that are not used anymore.”
Walker-Myers echoed Elicker’s commitment to what she termed “responsible development.”
“If you look at the housing stock right now, people are being priced out of places that they grew up. I don’t want to be part of that,” said Walker-Myers. West River residents need affordable housing, she added. “I don’t like to come to the table unless somebody’s talking about affordable housing.”
Some housing advocates have argued that policies requiring apartment buildings to set aside below-market-rate units — such as the city’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, proposed by the Elicker administration and passed by the Board of Alders in 2022 — make it too expensive for developers to build and slow the construction needed to address the nation’s housing shortage.
In this case, said Lewis Brown, managing principal of Honeycomb, the abundance of state subsidies designated for affordable housing made it possible to build the complex with no market-rate units.
According to Brown, rough $8.5 million of the roughly $28 million project came from CHFA, with $7.5 million in the form of a first mortgage. The state DOH supplied the second mortgage with $4.7 million, and the city of New Haven contributed $500,000 of its American Rescue Plan Act funds. The project received roughly $11 million in the form of a tax credit equity: essentially, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits disbursed by CHFA and syndicated through PNC and Webster Banks. They also collected $1 million in a state brownfield grant for environmental remediation, and the developers themselves contributed $1.7 million.
“Because it’s rent controlled, we need all of the layered subsidies” for Monarch to be financially feasible, explained Brown. That’s true in part because it costs roughly the same to build a low-income building as a market-rate complex, especially if those low-income apartments offer the same quality and amenities as their market-rate counterparts.
“Connecticut has put their money where their mouth is,” said Brown. It’s “super refreshing” to see that, in addition to the non-financial support provided by state agencies.
Mark Wilson, the city Neighborhood and Commercial Development Manager, said many of the affordable developments he’s seen have shared a similarly large and layered capital stack.
“A lot of developers are finding the money that follows affordable development is quite attractive,” said Wilson, citing the abundance of subsidies and low-interest loans available in Connecticut. Once the initial tax benefits expire, he explained, public funds from places like the Local Capital Improvement Program are often needed for below-market-rate projects to remain financially feasible for developers.
Justin Elicker: “We’re passionate about not just growing, but doing it inclusively.”