Warren Commons granted tax credits despite Toledo City Council opposition
May 21—A 46-unit apartment building planned to provide permanent, supportive housing to Toledo's chronically homeless is one step closer to breaking ground despite Toledo City Council opposition to its development.
Treatment Accountability for Safer Communities of Northwest Ohio intends to build the apartments at 2011 Franklin Ave., a vacant lot between UpTown and the Old West End that once was home to Warren Elementary School. The project is called Warren Commons, and this week the Ohio Housing Finance Agency awarded competitive low-income housing tax credits to finance its estimated $11 million construction.
"It's a good day," said Johnetta McCollough, TASC's executive director. "It's been a long haul and getting this far is exciting to me."
The tax credits are competitive, and local housing advocates said Toledo hasn't received such an award in at least a decade. That's part of why Rachel Gagnon, the Toledo Lucas County Homelessness Board's executive director, was disappointed when city council passed a resolution March 2 opposing tax credits for the project.
Councilman Vanice Williams, whose District 4 includes the building site, in March said she sponsored the negative resolution because she believes her district is oversaturated with social-service programs and lacks the resources Warren Commons residents would need to maintain stability and sobriety.
Ms. Gagnon said Toledo desperately needs more apartments like Warren Commons, and she worried city officials taking a position against its financing would hurt Toledo's chances to receive low-income tax credits in the future. But the agency deemed the project worthy, and the next steps for TASC are to finalize building plans and complete a site-plan review before the Toledo City Plan Commission.
Councilman Nick Komives, the resolution's lone dissenter, said he was "thrilled" the project received the funding award.
The homelessness board has a list of about 155 individuals and families who would qualify for permanent supportive units — long-term housing that includes services for homeless people with disabilities or mental illness to help them live independently — if such were available. Most who qualify locally are already in shelters, but some are sleeping on the streets.
Ms. McCollough said shelters play a key role in providing stability to those in need, but it's tough to hold down a job, maintain transportation, keep therapy and doctor appointments, and eat healthily without a true place to call home.
Warren Commons will give qualifying individuals a better chance at stability, she said. Tenants will receive housing-choice vouchers through Lucas Metropolitan Housing to cover their rent.
"One of the major stumbling blocks and impediments to being successful is having a roof over your head," Ms. McCollough said.
Two other Toledo affordable-housing projects that applied for the low-income housing tax credits through OHFA but did not receive an award this time around were the Park Hotel and Collingwood Green Phase Four, both Lucas Metropolitan Housing developments.
The public housing agency wants to convert the Park Hotel at 201 Knapp St., just south of downtown, into 40 apartments for young adults aging out of the foster care system. The target age range for tenants is 18 to 24, and all will be referred through Lucas County Children Services or the Lucas County Juvenile Justice Center, which handles foster care cases.
Rent will be income-based, and tenants who don't already have a social worker will have access to one.
The Collingwood Green project will add 55 family townhomes to the development already in progress off Division Street near downtown Toledo. The build is a first for LMH because it will offer market-rate apartments alongside public housing, project-based vouchers, tenant-based vouchers, and other subsidized housing.
Matt Sutter, the housing authority's chief of public housing, development, and modernization, said he knows projects like these sometimes take multiple application attempts to receive OHFA financing. He said LMH has a strategy in place to both try again and to lean on other possible funding opportunities to move the projects forward.
"These are both very worthwhile projects. We're going to take a minute, regroup, and come back at it in the morning with a strategy," Mr. Sutter said. "We applaud the fact that Warren Commons got funded. We wish OHFA would fund more deals in Toledo. We know that there's a big need."
Side Cut Lofts, a 50-unit apartment building planned for Maumee, was the only other project in Lucas County to receive a low-income housing tax credit award this time around. The $11.5 million project pitched by MVAH Development is for what OHFA calls urban opportunity housing and is intended to provide affordable living to the area workforce.
MVAH Development's second application, this one for the similar Secor Lofts project in Toledo, did not receive approval.
First Published May 20, 2021, 3:49pm
