Five vacant lots in downtown New Brunswick’s Unity Square will become homes for low-income families because of the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment approval of the Catholic Charities’ development plan.
Catholic Charities’ Metuchen Community Services, which provides various services to those in need in the community, obtained special permission to build affordable housing on five undersized lots, which the city sold to them at a reduced price, Director of New Brunswick’s Department of Economic Development Glenn Patterson said.
“It eliminates five properties that are currently a drain on city taxes [due to the cost of maintaining them]… and provides homes for people who are otherwise priced out of the market,” City Spokesman Bill Bray said.
The development allows the city to address both the problems of rundown vacant lots and the need for affordable housing, Bray said.
Unity Square is a 37-square block neighborhood roughly bounded by Commercial and Livingston Avenues, and Sanford and Welton Streets, according to the Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen Web site.
The Catholic Charities’ community development project partnered with Sacred Heart Parish to organize the Unity Square neighborhood and develop a state-approved plan to revitalize it, Director of Asset Management at Catholic Charities Diocese of Metuchen Marlene Sigman said.
“One of the main issues brought up by the people in the community at our meetings was the lack of affordable housing,” Sigman said. “So one of our goals was to help … deal with that problem [and] to actually create some affordable housing.”
They hope to finish building the homes by the middle to the end of 2010, Sigman said.
The new three-bedroom single-family houses built on the lots will be rented for $670 to $910 per month, Patterson said.
The average monthly rent is $1,755 for a three-bedroom house in the New Brunswick area, according to Rutgers University Off-Campus Housing.
Unity Square is targeting families who make between 40 and 50 percent of median income in the area to live in these houses, Sigman said. Thirty percent of such families’ income was determined as an affordable rate for rent.
“A substantial number of people fall into [the low-moderate income] category [in New Brunswick],” Patterson said. “We’re always working on new affordable housing projects. … There’s always a demand.”
The city also supports the project by providing $785,000 in HOME grant funds, a subsidy that will allow the houses to be rented out at reduced rates, Patterson said.
HOME is the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed to create affordable housing for low-income households, according to National Housing and Urban Development Web site. It allocates approximately $2 billion annually among the states and hundreds of localities nationwide.
The city worked on a couple of projects with Metuchen Community Services in the past, including the Ozanam Inn Men’s Shelter and the Naomi’s Way Transitional Housing Project for single mothers, Patterson said.
Unity Square is a comprehensive, multifaceted project that consists of housing, economic development, security, parks and recreation and social services, and works with the city in a number of ways, Sigman said.
It was devised four years ago with assistance from a class at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and receives funding from the Wachovia Regional Foundation, she said.
Zoning board approves housing project
Published: Sunday, November 8, 2009
Updated: Sunday, November 8, 2009
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