S.L. Housing plans to sell units
Director says budget cuts, expenses forcing her hand
Rosemary Kappes, executive director of the housing authority, told City Council members Thursday that her agency has been sliced to the bone by budget cuts. "I can't cut any more or I'm going to be laying off so many staff members," Kappes said. "We won't have paint to paint the units, and I don't want to turn our lovely units into slums."
The housing authority has had to pay rising utility, supplies and salary costs without a comparable increase in federal and state money. Kappes' solution is to sell the city's public housing to save money.
"I never thought that I would be the one advocating for doing away with public housing," said Kappes, who has a 25-year career in low-income housing. "It just feels really odd to me to be up against this wall."
Under her plan, the housing authority would convert all of its public housing — 633 units — to Section 8 housing, a federal rental assistance program. The agency would still own around 400 of those in a mix of elderly and family housing complexes, but it would sell the rest to nonprofit groups or private businesses. The impact on renters, who pay 30 percent of their income, would be minimal, Kappes said, because they would pay the same amount of money to a different owner.
The first of the two stations, 125 S. 400 West, is scheduled to be running by November 2007; the second, 525 W. 200 South, is to be built by 2010 or whenever TRAX rider numbers demand it.
E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com
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