Neighbors oppose low-income senior housing

Payment caveat could be deal breaker for HUD

The future appears cloudy for a proposed 23-unit apartment building for low-income senior citizens.

Many potential neighbors don't want it.

The Kalispell Planning Board gave it a thumbs-up Tuesday - with a recommended caveat that it must make payments in lieu of taxes.

But such payments could be a deal breaker to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is providing $3.5 million to the nonprofit corporation that wants to build it. Such payments make up for property taxes that nonprofits don't have to pay.

All this means that the issue now goes to the Kalispell City Council.

Minneapolis-based Accessible Space Inc. wants to obtain a conditional-use permit to construct the building on 1.9 acres at the eastern end of Indian Trail Road, between Grandview Drive and Indian Trail Road.

Accessible Space hopes to break ground in 2010 and finish construction in 2011, said Dan Billmark, the nonprofit corporation's development director.

This would be Accessible Space's 11th such project in Montana, and first in Kalispell. Overall, the corporation has several dozen projects scattered throughout the West.

The company is using federal HUD money -which has legal strings attached -to build the two-story complex for senior citizens who earn 50 percent or less of the area's median income.

The Flathead's median income is roughly $49,000 a year -meaning the complex would target people with annual incomes of $24,500 or less.

Accessible Space last year obtained the only 2008 HUD appropriation for this type of project in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota.

While Kalispell faces a shortage of affordable housing for lower-income and working-class people, it has few actual projects under way to tackle that need, City Planning Director Tom Jentz said. This project would address that shortage, he said.

Eight potential neighbors, including the president of the 80-member adjacent Ponderosa Park Homeowners Association, spoke against the project.

They contended it would increase traffic, create parking problems, block views of the mountains, block the sun to some homes, decrease property values, would not fit the neighborhood's character, and would not pay taxes.

"I don't think low-rent subsidized development belongs in our neighborhood," neighbor Ken Armstrong said.

The building's plans call for it to be 34 feet high. The maximum allowable height in that neighborhood is 35 feet. The neighborhood's tallest townhouse is 26 feet. The project's architect said the apartment building height could drop to 28 feet if the roof slope is changed.

The only supporter from the public was Michael Conner, representing the board of the nearby Buffalo Commons Multiple Family Homeowners Association.

Many, including Conner, said the city needs to address sidewalk and walking-trail needs in that area.

Billmark said HUD regulations forbid its appropriations to be used to expand a city's infrastructure and forbids payments in lieu of taxes - resulting in Accessible Space's request that Kalispell not levy those tax-like payments on it.

Billmark suggested ways might be found to work around HUD's policies.

Jentz said the city government is working on a policy to say which nonprofit projects should be assessed payments in lieu of taxes, and which should not be assessed.

Planning Board members Butch Clark and Troy Mendius voted to exempt this project from these payments. But board members Bryan Schutt, Rick Hull, Gordon Graham and Richard Griffin did not want to exempt the housing project from paying some type of city tax. John Hinchey was absent.

Mendius was the only nay vote in recommending that the council approve the overall project.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com