City Buys YMCA Facility to Create Housing for Poor : Accommodation: Santa Ana plans to turn it into single-occupancy residences for up to 150 people. Homeless advocates have lukewarm praise.

The city has purchased the YMCA building downtown and plans to renovate it over the next two years to create housing for up to 150 low-income tenants.

After more than a year of negotiations, the city’s redevelopment agency bought the 68-year-old, three-story building on Wednesday for $619,000, City Housing Manager Patricia Whitaker said.

The city will now seek a nonprofit organization to develop and run the housing facility at 205 W. Civic Center Drive. It will charge rent of about $300 to $400 a month for the single rooms.

Advocates for the homeless responded to the news Wednesday with lukewarm praise, calling the decision a small step in the right direction. They said that although the decision will help some low-income residents, the city needs to do more to help those with virtually no income.

Whitaker said that the project was never intended to provide shelter for the homeless, but instead offer affordable housing for low-income residents.

“This was an opportunity for the city to help the working poor, those getting minimum wage,” Whitaker said. “These are truly people who are in need of housing--perhaps they live in overcrowded conditions, perhaps substandard conditions. There are people who will be happy that this will be open.”

Whitaker said Santa Ana is “very cognizant of the need for affordable housing,” adding that the city is now looking into a similar expansion of a YWCA shelter on Broadway.

For years, the Civic Center Drive YMCA offered 80 single rooms, plus a health and fitness center. But it closed in May because it had become a financial drain on the nonprofit group, which runs eight facilities throughout the county.

The city’s plan to purchase the building hit a snag in May when city officials found it contained more asbestos than they were willing to clean up. But Bob Hoffman, the city’s redevelopment and real estate manager, said that last week the city and YMCA agreed to reduce the purchase price by $58,000 to offset the cost of asbestos removal.

Brad Karelius, rector of Episcopal Church of the Messiah and a member of a group of clergy who have encouraged the city to build inexpensive single-occupancy residences, said that he is pleased with the city’s plan.

Although the proposed $300 to $400 monthly rent is about $100 higher than what they had hoped, the low end of that range would still be affordable to the working poor, he said.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction in terms of the city beginning to address the problems of homelessness,” said Crystal Sims, director of litigation for the Legal Aid Society.

But she said her view of the YMCA proposal is tempered by the city’s continuing effort to pass a no-camping ordinance aimed at prohibiting homeless people from sleeping on public property.

“They are taking a baby step forward and they have taken a giant step backward. But any progress is better than none,” Sims said.

She said that the proposed rents will make the new facility out of reach for most of the city’s indigent population. The city should coordinate with the county to provide shelter for the homeless and offer drug rehabilitation, counseling and housing assistance, Sims said.