Former hotel reopens as affordable housing for poor senior citizens
LONDON: A former hotel has been recrafted as affordable housing for income poor senior citizens.
Bakersfield’s historically tight housing market got a modicum of relief Thursday with the opening of a 26-unit apartment complex reserved for people 62 and older earning no more than half the city’s median income.
Local housing officials gathered to celebrate the grand opening of Westchester Senior Village, built on the site at 2027 19th St. where the 31-unit Decatur Hotel had stood until it was purchased early last year. The city financed the site’s rehabilitation for the purpose of providing housing to poor local seniors.
The nonprofit that bought the 8,800-square-foot property, Golden Empire Affordable Housing Inc. II, said it has received about 1,000 applications from would-be tenants. At least half a dozen people were scheduled to move in Thursday, with others expected to take up residence Friday.
“Let’s press on,” Mayor Karen Goh said before a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the site. “Let’s pursue the good of providing many more” affordable housing projects around the city, she added.
Delayed about four months by pandemic-related construction delays, Thursday’s opening adds new housing inventory at a time of intense demand for virtually every kind of housing, including homes for sale but also apartments. Property managers say they receive many calls from applicants as soon as an apartment becomes vacant.
Heather Kimmel, assistant executive director of the Housing Authority of the County of Kern, with which the nonprofit it affiliated, said the project will help address the shortage of affordable housing in particular, and possibly prevent seniors from ending up on the street.
“We know people living on the brink have limited housing options,” she told Thursday’s audience gathered on the hotel’s parking lot at the southeast corner of 19th and D streets.
The housing authority has said fixing up the property serves dual purposes, as does the agency’s work fixing up other former low-rent hotels: They provide housing at a time of need while also making surrounding neighborhoods more attractive.
Financing and covenant terms made the Decatur’s purchase and conversion different from the agency’s other recent hotel rehabilitation projects at the former Tropicana Motor Inn and the former Vagabond Inn on Chester Avenue. Whereas the other two come with rent caps lasting 55 years, the Westchester must keep rents low — currently less than $600, but the caps can change yearly — for only 20 years.
City officials said it’s possible the project could be sold and converted to market-rate housing at the end of that period. A benefit of the shorter covenant period is that the property could qualify sooner for new financing to pay for rehabilitation.
But the housing authority’s executive director, Stephen Pelz, dismissed the idea that the nonprofit will sell the property and allow the rent cap to expire.
“We’re not in the business of market-rate housing,” he said Thursday.
The building holds 21 studio apartments and five one-bedroom units. All have new flooring, kitchenettes, granite countertops, a refrigerator, their own bathroom and microwave. It also offers a community kitchen and three laundry rooms.
The family that owned the property since the late 1970s, the Arvind and Madhu Patel family, helped finance the rehabilitation project.
