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LMHA Announces Opening of Collingwood Green Phase III
Sojourner’s Truth Staff
Lucas Metropolitan Housing
Authority (LMHA) announced the grand opening of Collingwood
Green Phase II on Monday, February 10 with a press
conference in the mixed income community near the Toledo
central business district. The development will add 55
additional 2-, 3- and 4- bedroom family apartments within
eight new buildings.
Twenty-eight of the
apartments are HUD Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD)
Transfer of Assistance rental units. The RAD program allows
public housing authorities to convert public housing unites
to Project Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) or Project Based
Voucher (PBV) rental units. The remaining 27 unites are Low
Income Housing Tax Credit rental units.
Thirty-four apartments and
five of the eight buildings have been completed since
construction started in November of 2018. The remaining 21
units are scheduled to be finished this spring.
“There is an affordable
housing crisis,” said LMHA President and CEO Demetria
Simpson, as she opened Monday’s press conference. The LMHA
waiting list is now 2,000 applicants long, she said speaking
of the “aggressive approach” the local housing authority is
taking to solving the crisis.
The Phase III project
brought together $19 million in funding from various
partners such as Low Income Housing Tax Credits, City of
Toledo HOME Funds, HUD FHA 221 (d)(4), LMHA Capital Fund
Program and Turnkey funds.
Phase I of the Collingwood
Green project began in 2012 with 65 units for senior
citizens; Phase II in 2015 with 68 two and three-bedroom
family units
Soon to come is Phase IV
which will include a mixture of commercial space, play area
for children, a community building – the “wraparound
support” system, as Simpson described it.
“We’re building a
community here,” said Bill Brennan, LMHA board president,
during his remarks, “an urban village with everything anyone
would need.”
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