Politics & Government

PEP Housing Receives $14 Million for Low-Income Housing

Will be spent on two projects, including a 50-unit senior complex off North McDowell Boulevard

has been awarded $13.8 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a part of which will be used to build new senior housing off North McDowell Boulevard.

The organization that builds and manages low-income senior housing throughout Northern California received the big news Wednesday, said Executive Director Mary Stompe. The money will be spent on , a 50-unit apartment complex on the eastside and another in Oroville, in Butte County.

“It’s hyper competitive out there and for an organization to get two projects funded is a huge accomplishment,” Stompe said. “We were competing with a lot of affordable housing developers, but we just focus on senior affordable housing and have quite a record with HUD…We couldn’t be happier.”

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An estimated $7 million of the grant will go to Kellgren Apartments on Wood Sorrel Drive, scheduled to break ground at the end of next year. Most of the money will be spent on construction, with about $800,000 going to pay for rental subsidies. The overall cost of the development is estimated at $16 million, meaning PEP Housing will have to take out a line of credit to complete the project.

The federal grant comes at a critical time, when both the state and federal government are allocating less to low-income housing. In addition, PEP Housing was counting on about $500,000 from the city’s redevelopment agency, but the money is in limbo following Gov. Jerry Brown’s announcement to disband redevelopment agencies in the state.

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Meanwhile, demand for low-income housing for seniors is growing.

“If you look at the projections for senior housing, they are increasing,” Stompe told Patch in an earlier interview. “As baby boomers age, there are more and more folks that need senior housing and a good percentage of them are below 50 percent the federal poverty line.”

The number of people over 60 is rapidly increasing and is projected to skyrocket in the near future, according to the Sonoma County Area Agency on Aging. Seniors aged 85 and older are estimated to increase by more than 250 percent by 2040, according to the group, something that is referred to as the “silver tsunami.”


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