North Little Rock will stop adding names to housing list

Open units held for renters displaced by construction

A map showing North Little Rock public housing properties that will close waiting lists
A map showing North Little Rock public housing properties that will close waiting lists

For the first time since the agency's inception, wait lists for seven North Little Rock Housing Authority public housing properties will close Friday as it gears up to start renovating the buildings, the executive director said.

The agency is closing the list to new applicants in order to keep a handful of apartments in each property open as construction begins through the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program, Executive Director Belinda Snow said.

The program allows housing authorities to partner with private companies to refurbish aging housing stock and switch public housing properties to project-based Section 8.

"Until we start leasing up again from the wait list, there is no sense in putting more names on the list," Snow said.

Properties with wait lists scheduled to close are Hemlock Courts, Eastgate Terrace, Windemere Hills, Heritage House, S.W. Bowker, Willow House and Campus Towers, according to a news release from the housing authority.

The wait list for public housing has more than 200 names, and the Section 8 wait list is closed, Snow said.

The closure comes as the availability of housing that people with low incomes can afford dwindles nationwide, experts have said.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy and research group, conducts an annual study of the nation's housing shortage called The Gap. A report, released earlier this year, said that no state has enough housing that residents with the lowest incomes can afford.

Arkansas has about 56 homes available for every 100 of the lowest-income renters, according to the study.

Renovations to the North Little Rock public housing properties will include plumbing and electrical system upgrades, redone parking lots and new elevators. Apartments will be more accessible, modern and energy-efficient, Shanta Nano-Barro, the special-projects director for the housing authority, said in a previous interview.

"It's just past due to give them [residents] something fresh and new to be proud of," Snow said.

Construction is set to begin, pending completion of some funding-related paperwork, at the start of September and will take about two years, Snow said.

The agency will start construction first on Heritage House and S.W. Bowker, which have 245 total households. The budget for the combined projects is about $36.7 million, she said.

The money for the project will come from the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Bank of America, the housing authority, the Federal Housing Administration and low-income housing tax credits, Snow added.

Construction will continue on two projects at a time until they are all finished. Willow House and Campus Towers, which have 286 total households, are scheduled for construction next. Willow House has a set preference for elderly residents.

The agency is keeping a few apartments open so residents can rotate to new spaces as construction continues, Snow said. They've also been offered vouchers or the chance to move into Hemlock Courts on Palm Street because it has available slots.

So far, most people are opting to move around in their buildings until renovations are finished, she said.

The North Little Rock Housing Authority is the oldest housing authority in the state, and Snow said this is -- to her knowledge -- the first time the public housing waitlists have been closed.

Nationwide, waitlists for Section 8 vouchers are notoriously long, and Snow said North Little Rock's waitlist opens up about every two years. Section 8 allows recipients to find a landlord anywhere in the city, and the housing authority covers a portion of their monthly rent.

For public housing residents, the housing authority owns and operates the apartment building or complex. But Snow said most people prefer Section 8 because it offers more choices on where to live.

"When you open the waitlist for the Section 8 side, people are in line and ready to go," Snow said. "It's a very high demand."

The agency decided to begin the transition process in 2012, although Snow said that work on the process began in 2013.

"It moves slow," she said.

She added that the housing authority will save money in particular on repairs for the old air conditioning units and elevators.

Some of the North Little Rock housing authority properties were built in the 1940s. The agency gets about $1 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development per year, Nano-Barro said in a previous interview.

A lack of federal funding for housing authorities has contributed to the disrepair of many public-housing facilities across the country. North Little Rock has deferred about $90 million in maintenance over the years.

The Rental Assistance Demonstration is an effort to fix the housing and started during former President Barack Obama's time in office. It has expanded under President Donald Trump's administration.

Oliver Dillingham, the vice chairman of the board of commissioners for the housing authority, said after the years of work he's "tired, fatigued, worn out and happy," that construction is about to start.

"It's been so long coming that I'm looking forward to all of it," he said. "Hopefully, I'll be around long enough to see it completed. I'm excited about it for the housing authority. I'm excited about it for the city of North Little Rock."

Metro on 08/24/2019

Upcoming Events