Harrisburg City Council, at Tuesday’s work session
Downtown development and affordable housing dominated another Harrisburg City Council meeting tonight, as members began to chew over the latest apartment proposal from Harristown Development.
As she has at several other meetings this year, council President Wanda Williams pressed Harristown on the relative affordability of its apartment units, this time for a proposal to convert a bank-owned, mostly vacant Pine Street building to 44 one- and two-bedroom units.
“We want you to be successful,” Williams told Harristown CEO Brad Jones, who presented the project to council. “But we want our residents to be able to live in safe housing, in comfortable housing, in affordable housing.”
At the council work session, Williams said that many city residents have told her that they want the chance to be able to live in the fully renovated Harristown units, but that they’re concerned that they can’t afford the rent.
“Our residents are living in slum housing,” Williams said. “I want to give residents a chance to live in those areas.”
Jones responded that many of his company’s apartments are considered affordable under federal housing guidelines. In recent years, Harristown has fully renovated several underused and rundown office buildings downtown, adding about 60 new residential units, which rent from $775 to $1,450 a month, he said.
He added that four of the 12 units in a 2nd Street building the company is now renovating “will be in the affordable category,” so that a tenant with a modest income would have to pay no more than one-third of his or her salary in rent.
“You could make $36,000, and that’s an affordable index, according to HUD,” Jones said, referring to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines.
He said that the rents in the proposed building at 116 Pine St. are projected to be $1,000 a month for one-bedroom unit and $1,400 for two bedrooms.
Jones also said that rents have to be high enough to justify the project financially. Early next year, Harristown plans to begin work on converting both 116 and 124 Pine St. to apartments, spending some $12 million on the renovations.
“These are very risky projects,” he said. “The fact that we’ve been able to convince two other partners to contribute has been a Herculean effort.”
Several other council members said that, while they also support affordable housing, Harristown can’t be held solely responsible for redressing any lack of affordable housing in Harrisburg. The city currently lacks an affordable housing policy for Harristown to follow.
“Affordable housing is a huge problem with our city, but City Council has failed to act on affordable housing,” said Councilwoman Shamaine Daniels.
Likewise, Councilman Cornelius Johnson said that the responsibility rests with council, not Harristown.
“The onus is not on you,” he told Jones. “It’s on us.”
To that end, the city, along with Harristown, the Harrisburg Redevelopment Authority and the Harrisburg Housing Authority, has commissioned a $10,000 housing study. The results of the study, conducted by Columbia, Md.-based Real Property Research Group, should be available later this year.
The city hopes that, through the study, it will learn more about its housing stock, rental rates and resident needs, so it can begin to craft more informed housing policies.
Following the meeting, Mayor Eric Papenfuse said that he supported Harristown’s apartment projects both to encourage investment in the city and to persuade people to choose Harrisburg over the suburbs, putting tax dollars in city coffers and money into city businesses.
“I definitely feel this brings new people into the city and expands the tax base,” he said. “This is exactly what Harrisburg needs.”
In April, City Council approved Harristown’s plan for 124 Pine St., with Williams casting the lone dissenting vote. Council is expected to vote on the land use plan for 116 Pine St. at an upcoming legislative session.
