Slew of affordable housing in works

A couple of the projects are well underway, including a series of improvements at the Mountain View Mobile Home Park on Stewart Street. The park, which was built in the late 1940s, consists of 105 residential mobile home spaces spread over about 5 acres. City Hall purchased the park and about 36 mobile home units in December 2000 as part of a settlement with the previous owner to keep the location for affordable housing, a 2008 staff report stated.

The project includes various infrastructure improvements, including new electrical power lines, water and drain pipes and the installation of natural gas lines. Nearly all of the units at the park are currently serviced with propane.

About 78 of the units are occupied.

“The idea is to complete the infrastructure improvements and then look at a longer-term vision of any kind of renewal or replacement of some units because some out there are travel trailers,” Jim Kemper, the housing administrator with City Hall, said. “We’re not sure if they were intended for occupancy.”

Construction, which is about halfway complete, is estimated to cost more than $6 million.

MacFarlane CostaHousing Partners and LINC Housing are currently building affordable units for senior citizens at 1458 14th St. The units will be targeted for low-income seniors. The estimated $11 million project is scheduled to be completed at the end of this year.

Ling said that the round of rehab projects is CCSM’s first concerted effort toward greening its older buildings. Many of its newer developments were constructed with sustainability in mind.

“If you look at new construction, in any given year we may be building enough housing to replace 1 percent of the existing housing stock,” she said. “If you only focus on doing sustainable projects for new construction, it would take 100 years to make all the units sustainable.”

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