TheBurg

14 | theburgnews.com | 08.18 I n the 30 years that Mel Johnson has managed large construction projects, he's overseen jobs in airports, schools and sewage systems. But none of them prepared him for his most recent undertaking in Uptown Harrisburg. e Harrisburg Fair Housing Council, a nonprofit organization where Johnson serves as executive director, was renovating the top stories of its headquarters at 6th and Maclay streets—a stately former bank constructed around 1900. ey hoped to create eight, two- and three-bedroom apartments to rent at a below-market rate, adding much-needed quality, affordable housing in the Uptown neighborhood. But first, they had to replace the building's rubber roof. en they had to reinforce a retaining wall that was liable to collapse from water damage. Due to narrow hallways, they nixed plans to build an elevator and make the apartments ADA-compliant. ey rebuilt bay windows and abated asbestos. e cost of these contingent projects mounted, especially when they discovered that pigeons had colonized the abandoned structure, leaving excrement that required $20,000 of waste hauling and sanitization. Today, three apartments are under lease, and five more are still in the works. Johnson said that the finished units, which have original hardwood floors and all-new, custom-made windows, are beautiful. And even though HFHC expects to sink $1 million into the project by the time it's done, they've managed to keep rent rates affordable. Two-bedroom units go for $750 a month and the three-bedrooms for $850. But as for the process of restoring the building to a livable state? "It was absolutely horrendous what needed to be done here," Johnson said. Welcome to the world of vacant building renovation, where complications lurking from the roof to the foundation threaten to eat profit margins and disrupt best-laid work schedules. Left alone, a building's lumber rots, its pipes This Old, ExpEnsivE hOusE Harrisburg has more than 4,000 vacant properties. ose that can be saved from demolition could find a second life as affordable housing units—but at what cost? bY LIZZY hArDIson rust, and its roof sags under snow and rain. Some of these conditions emerge in an inspection, but others aren't revealed until construction is underway. In all, Harrisburg has 4,692 vacant units representing 18 percent of its total housing stock, according to census data from 2013. at figure includes more than 400 units on a list of critical properties that the city has targeted for demolition. Housing advocates across the city want to see some of the salvageable buildings renovated as affordable apartments. But those rehabilitations are costly, made possible only by shrinking pots of grant money from the county to federal levels. DoIng the mAth Developers in the private sector can pass the costs of an expensive renovation along to their tenants. But those who want to convert vacant houses into affordable units know that, somewhere along the way, someone else will have to eat the expense. More often than not, that someone is the federal government, which doles out housing subsidies through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Some nonprofit developers in Harrisburg rely on HOME grants and Community and Development Block Grants (CDBG) to raze blighted homes and renovate salvageable ones. e Fair Housing Council also got a sizable grant from the Dauphin County gaming fund for its 6th Street project. Even with subsidies, contingency fixes can drive up project costs—and, potentially, rents. Johnson said that the mounting cost overruns on the 6th Street project did jeopardize the price range that HFHC had originally planned for its units. In the end, Johnson said, price was a consideration in setting the rents, but it wasn't the only one. HFHC was able to keep the rents below market value as it originally intended. "We're a housing agency, and we still have too many people in this neighborhood living in houses who cannot afford to fix them up, or too many landlords who don't care about fixing them," Johnson said. "We are willing to go out and get money for a project like this." But the funding that many developers rely on for projects like these is getting increasingly competitive. Funding for HOME and CDBG has fallen 49 percent and 59 percent since 2000, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. ose trends show no sign of reversing, and an ever- decreasing availability of grant funds has slowed the pace of affordable housing projects across the country. at creates its own problem in cities like Harrisburg with high vacancy rates. e longer a building sits untended, the more expensive its rehabilitation becomes. Harrisburg Fair Housing Council

• Cover