SIMI VALLEY : Ground Broken for Low-Income Units

Simi Valley officials held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a 75-unit apartment complex that will probably be the last federally financed housing development for senior citizens and disabled people to be built in the city this decade, housing consultants said.

The new project, called Heywood Gardens, will be open only to senior citizens and handicapped people who have incomes at or below 50% of Ventura County’s median income.

According to county statistics for 1992, the maximum allowable income for tenants of one-bedroom apartments will be $16,950 for individuals and $19,350 for households of two people.

The tenants of the complex, located on Heywood Street just west of Erringer Road, will be charged rents equal to 30% of their monthly incomes.

About 1,400 senior citizens in Simi Valley have incomes low enough to qualify for the 75 new apartments, according to Bob Lippman, chairman of the Simi Valley Council on Aging.

But, Lippman said, the seniors most in need are not visible in the city.

“You don’t see them,” Lippmann said. “They’re hidden in some back room or some rented place.”

Although the new apartments will not fill the city’s need for affordable senior housing, it will probably be the last such project to be built in Simi Valley with federal funds during the 1990s, said Susan Phipps-Carr, a private housing consultant who worked on the project.

The developer of Heywood Gardens, the Atlanta-based Christian Senior Housing Foundation, is financing the project with a $5.6-million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a grant of $877,146 from Simi Valley’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

But since HUD set money aside for the project in 1987, it has severely cut back funding for such developments, Phipps-Carr said.