Lawndale Wary of Builder’s Offer to Settle Senior Housing Dispute

The developer of Lawndale’s only federally subsidized housing project for senior citizens has offered to settle a dispute with the city over the way a lottery to select tenants was conducted, but city officials said they are still considering a lawsuit against the company.

City officials contend that the developer, Cooperative Services Inc., a Detroit-based company that builds subsidized housing units nationwide, did not give Lawndale residents adequate notification of the lottery and that Latinos, especially, were under-represented on the list of people selected as potential tenants. Although Latinos make up 28.4% of the area’s population, they make up only 15% of potential tenants, city officials said.

In an effort to resolve the dispute, Cooperative Services, in a letter to Assistant City Atty. Robert Owen dated Aug. 2, offered to give Lawndale residents preference on apartment units that become available in the future. The company intends to fill the first vacancies from the list of eligible seniors whose names were drawn in the March 13 lottery.

But a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provided grant money to build the project, said it was highly unlikely that the agency would allow the developer to give preference to Lawndale residents for future vacancies.

“We would have to receive a written request (from the owner) to attach a residency requirement to any established federal (requirements),” spokesman Bill Christiansen said. “I don’t know of a time when we approved a residency requirement.”

HUD requires a lottery to ensure that all eligible seniors receive an equal chance at obtaining subsidized housing. Those eligible for units are the disabled and low-income people who are at least 62 years old.

Nevertheless, the developer’s offer said Lawndale seniors who live in “substandard housing” or are homeless would be given preference for the subsidized apartment units that become vacant in the future. Lawndale residents who were involuntarily displaced or who pay more than 50% of their income for rent would have next priority, the letter said. Residents of other cities would then be considered, it said.

Noting that it was unlikely HUD would approve the proposal and that it could be years before an apartment becomes available, Lawndale Councilwoman Carol Norman said the offer “sounds impressive, but it could mean absolutely nothing.”

In the letter, Mel Atkinson, the developer’s national operations manager, pointed out that 17 seniors expected to move into the three-story, 56-unit apartment building on 153rd Place, or 30% of those on the list, are Lawndale residents. Norman, however, said she would have expected 90% of the tenants to be Lawndale residents if the community had been better informed before the lottery took place.

City officials planned to send Lawndale seniors a mailer shortly before the March 13 lottery but ran out of time. The oversight apparently occurred when key employees in the city’s housing office left their jobs, Norman said. When officials asked that the lottery be postponed a couple of weeks, the developer refused, saying it would be too expensive to change the date.

The city then asked HUD to force the developer to schedule a new lottery, but the federal agency late last month turned down the request, saying the lottery met all the agency’s requirements.

Although Lawndale officials have vowed to file a lawsuit against the developer and the federal agency, City Atty. David Aleshire said no legal action would be taken while possible negotiations with the developer are pending.