#13Investigates: Is developing old schools into affordable housing helping seniors?
Developers have renovated several old public school buildings around Macon to create spaces for seniors to live affordably. Are seniors really being served and making good use of public investment?
In recent years, developers renovated several old public school buildings around Macon to create spaces for seniors to live affordably.
At last count, there were more than 120 units completed with more being built.
“It did look bad when you rode by the school on Shurling Drive,” Patricia Graham said.
She remembers the eyesore Hunt Elementary became when it closed in 2003. After it sat vacant for more than a decade, Macon-Bibb leaders and investors had a new vision for the old schoolhouse.
“They took it and they redone it, rebuilt it, and made it a beautiful place,” Graham said. “This place where we live, we love it.”
The Macon Housing Authority manages Hunt School Village.
CEO Mike Austin says it's an affordable housing option for seniors 62 and older.
“As market rents in the private market go up, it continually places people who need affordable housing out of reach,” Austin said. “They can’t get affordable housing, it’s very difficult.”
Funding for Hunt and other similar communities comes from different sources.
“You’ll see tax credits come to the table,” Austin said. “You'll see other forms of subsidy grants and loans to try to make obsolete housing a lot better.”
Austin says every project is different. The Hunt project got nearly $7 million in federal and state tax credits, and Macon-Bibb contributed nearly $1.5 million in federal grant money.
Old schools renovated into senior housing
He says this is how affordable housing is built these days -- no more red brick cookie-cutter homes like Pendleton Homes.
“We like to see for profit and nonprofit developers come to the table to try to create ways to build new sustainable attractive affordable housing,” Austin said.
Rent at Hunt starts at $556 for a one-bedroom unit. He says people who live there will pay 30 percent of their monthly income, and federal Section 8 subsidies pick up the rest. The same is true at another senior community, Pearl Stephens Village on Napier Avenue. It was also built with tax credits.
Each complex is at capacity.
“At Hunt School, we have anywhere between 30 to 50 people on the waiting list,” Austin said. “That’s pretty typical with every tax credit property, not only here in Macon, but across the United States.”
For Graham's neighbor, Betty Jean Driskell, it's where she plans to stay forever.
“The only way I’m going to leave up out of here is foot first,” Driskell said. “Foot first means Jones Brothers Mortuary -- that’s who’s going take me up out of here.”
Another senior housing development is already in the works. Tindall Senior Towers is already under construction. They are building 76 units on the site of the old Tindall Heights.