Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment, Inc., on June 29, 2001, submitted an alternate restructuring plan for the Broad Street portfolio to the U.S. Office of Multi-family Housing Assistance Restructuring (OMHAR) and to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Accompanying the plan were support letters from Mayor Michael Coleman, City Council Member Charleta Tavares, Ohio State President William Kirwan, and leaders of the Columbus Compact, University Area Commission, Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, COHHIO, Columbus Urban League, Godman Guild Association and B.R.E.A.D. Campus Partners hopes to hear later in July from OMHAR staff on their reaction to the plan.

The Broad Street portfolio in Columbus is composed of some 242 buildings with a total of 1,335 units of project-based, Section 8 housing. These units are managed by Broad Street Management Co. and are owned through 13 limited partnerships. Unless the alternate plan is accepted, OMHAR plans to restructure and extend the Section 8 contracts with the current owners under the federal "Mark-to-Market Program."

Campus Partners in January 2001 secured an option to acquire the Broad Street portfolio and began an intensive effort to prepare an alternate restructuring plan. A broad-based community advisory panel met three times to offer advice and guidance as this alternate plan was developed. Meetings were held with area commissions and neighborhood civic associations. The plan is an effective compromise between two legitimate community goals: 1) the need to preserve the supply of Section 8 housing, and 2) the desire to encourage greater economic diversity in center city neighborhoods.

In brief, the alternate plan would:

• Preserve 1,335 units of Section 8, project-based housing for an additional 30 years under new, community-based, non-profit ownership.
• Invest more than $35 million in the rehabilitation of this distressed housing stock, including exterior and interior renovations and the provision of basic amenities (e.g., showers, carpet), to improve the quality of life for residents and the appearance of the neighborhoods.
• Provide for an unprecedented commitment to human services, including improved access to child care, counseling and educational services.
• Increase the investment in site management, maintenance and security to improve the quality of life for residents of the development.
• Adopt a nationally unique strategy for enabling the voluntary relocation of several hundred Broad Street residents and the assignment of the Section 8 contracts to newly developed, and permanently affordable, housing units.
• Provide 300 to 500 new opportunities for affordable homeownership and market-rate rental housing through the conversion of a portion of the existing Section 8 properties, upon reassignment of their Section 8 HAP agreements.

Ownership and management: Campus Partners will not own or manage properties under the alternate plan, but will assign its option to acquire the portfolio to a new owner or owners. Over the next few months, Campus Partners will work with city officials, community agencies, neighborhood civic associations, and Broad Street residents to identify a new ownership and management team. One approach may be creation of a new non-profit housing organization which would work with perhaps five or six new neighborhood-based organizations to each own and manage the units in a particular neighborhood.

Supportive services: The vast majority of Broad Street residents are single women with young children. Campus Partners believes that the affordable housing can be an important organizing element for critical services to help these families move to self-sufficiency. Such services might include day care and pre-school activities, family living skills, and GED preparation, as well as counseling for employment, credit and home-buying. Again, over the next several months, Campus Partners will work with Broad Street residents, social service providers and others to determine the supportive services needed and to seek foundation and federal grants to endow a permanent fund for such services.

Financing: The alternate plan assumes about $60 million in funding for rehabilitation, development costs, contingency funds, and human services. The financing would come from a variety of sources, including tax exempt bond financing, low income housing tax credits, a HUD grant, city and other local funds, and donations.

Dispersal of Section 8 housing: During preparation of the alternate plan, neighborhood civic leaders strongly urged that efforts be made to disperse more widely the project-based, Section 8 housing throughout Columbus, rather than concentrate the housing in these center-city neighborhoods. As a result, the alternate plan proposes that the total number of project-based, Section 8 units be maintained, but that there be a provision for the voluntary relocation of several hundred Broad Street residents to newly developed and permanently affordable units in other neighborhoods of Columbus. This provision could make the alternate plan a national model for affordable housing and urban neighborhood revitalization, but it also may require special federal funding.

Advisory Panel: In preparing this alternate plan, Campus Partners convened an advisory panel to offer advice and guidance. Serving on this panel are leaders from Columbus Compact, Near East Area Commission, Main Street Business Association, Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, Columbus Urban League, University Area Commission, Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, Godman Guild Association, Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO), Columbus Community Relations Commission, Columbus Department of Trade and Development, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Campus Partners

(614) 294-7300 * fax (614) 294-7333 * www.osu.edu/CampusPartners/

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March 2001 news release