Once more, something beautiful being built over Hilltop blight

There has been a lovely balance to the Hilltop’s transformation over the past decade.

Standards have risen, but they have not become exclusionary.

Residents have made their neighborhoods beautiful, even peaceful, again, without destroying the economic and ethnic diversity that has been part of Hilltop’s fabric from the beginning.

As homebuyers have renovated once-shabby rentals into comfortable houses, nonprofits have filled in some of the blanks, literally, to maintain affordable living options.

Tacoma Housing Authority, for example, retrieved two of its properties from the shameful disrepair into which they had fallen. Now a passerby would be hard-pressed to tell whether they are public housing or market-rate. Hint: They have better handrails, safer steps and more spacious shared spaces.

In that vein, Mercy Housing bought the aging Catalina Apartments and did a from-the-studs remodel that has made it comfortable, accessible, lovely and affordable. It managed that without forcing Catalina residents out of the neighborhood where they had built a genuine community.

Now Mercy Housing has affordable apartments for 73 low-income seniors under construction at 1717 S. G St., just down the hill from the Catalina.

Sure, there was affordable housing on the site before, but the worst kind. Two red-tagged apartments, too new, cheap and bland to have historical value, sat on the half-acre among scabby grass and trashy parking spaces. They were the kind of place where hard-working people would not live if they had any other choice.

Their replacement will be every good thing that they were not. For starters, it will provide safe homes for some of the estimated 2,000 to 2,500 seniors in Tacoma whose housing costs eat up more than half their modest incomes.

These are people whose incomes hover around $11,000 a year, and they won’t pay more than 30 percent of that for rent, said Paul Chiocco, Mercy’s vice president of operations and resource development.

For them, nine months to two years on a waiting list for affordable housing can be the end of a lifetime.

For them, this new building will be a dream with a view.

It will have a garage, broad hallways and accessibility features. Each of the roughly 600-square-foot units will have an emergency call system. There will be an exercise room, a library and common rooms, as well as a courtyard with planters where residents will be welcome to grow flowers and vegetables. Catalina folks who have plots at the LaGrande community garden down the street have said they’re excited to see if any of their new neighbors will want to join them.

Granted, this project isn’t cheap. The construction standard for affordable housing in Tacoma is high. It will have to withstand constant wear, and it’s built tough to last 50-plus years. That’s a lesson housing agencies learned the hard way, investing in poorly planned or shoddily built properties that seemed like a bargain at the time but have since failed.

Mercy’s budget is $21,519,743, including land, planning and permitting. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will pay $8.9 million, and Union Bank will handle $5.9 million in low-income tax credits. The state’s Housing Trust Fund, Pierce County, the City of Tacoma and the United Way of Pierce County all are contributing.

The bulk of that $21.5 million will pay for materials and labor, another plus for the Hilltop.

Start to finish, the project will create 230 family-wage jobs. Wages will tickle $15 an hour at the bottom of the scale and run to about $40 for, say, electricians.

Among those workers will be young people learning trades through employment programs. They’ll be getting the foundation for steady, productive careers in the building trades.

Dennis Maples, Walsh Construction Co. site manager, said that, counting subcontractors, he’s had 25 to 50 workers on any given day as they’ve built the foundation and the parking garage.

“We’ll get more as we start framing,” he said.

In an economy that has stalled other construction projects on the Hilltop, that’s good news.

Better yet is the fact that they are replacing blight with beautiful housing for people who will help maintain the delicate balance of diversity that is the Hilltop’s history.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street