Senior citizen housing project in final planning stages
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
As other city agencies struggle to come up with ideas to create housing for local workers and the city’s homeless population, the Key West Housing Authority is finalizing plans to create a 116-unit facility for the area’s senior citizen population.
City commissioners on Oct. 2, 2013, directed Key West Housing Authority Executive Director Manuel Castillo to develop a plan to affordably house senior citizens in Key West. Thirteen months later, at the commissioner’s Nov. 18 meeting, Castillo presented the specifications for a new apartment complex along with the development company that will operate the facility.
The three-story complex will have 116 apartments: 60 of them will be designated as independent living units and the remaining 56 will provide assisted living services to those tenants. Apartment sizes will range from a studio to two-bedroom units in the independent living apartments. The assisted living units will range from a semi-private studio to a one-bedroom.
Proposed rents are set at $432 to $2,343 a month. Additional fees in the assisted living units will run from $750 to $4,900 a month, depending on the level of service provided to the tenant.
Apartment sizes will range from 220 square feet for a studio, 400 square feet for a one-bedroom and 600 square feet for a two-bedroom unit.
“Rents will be based on their apartment size and ability to pay,” said Jim Nichols, a principal at American House Senior Living, the parent company of Key West Senior Development, LLC, the subsidiary formed to direct and operate the housing complex.
Both Nichols and Castillo said the proposed rents are higher than average assisted living costs around the country. But in Key West, where housing costs are particularly high for all residents, not just senior citizens, this is the best deal that can be made.
“Assisted living and affordability are a very difficult combination to achieve,” Nichols said.
“Assisted living and affordable are oxymorons,” Castillo said. “They don’t exist. There is no such thing. But I think we’ve put a project together that will help.”
The as-yet-unnamed housing development will be located at Poinciana Plaza on Duck Avenue. The new building will be set among existing affordable rental housing on that property, as well as offices for Samuel’s House and Volunteers of America.
The three-story building will include lounges and social areas, a theater, indoor and outdoor dining, and administrative offices.
Castillo and Nichols are hammering out the final details of the contract, which will outline the private-public partnership that has the Key West Housing Authority financing and owning the facility and American House Senior Living building and operating the complex. Once that agreement is finalized by either year end or the beginning of January, the permitting process can proceed. And, if all goes as planned, the new apartment building will be completed 28 months later.
“There is a need for this,” said City Commissioner Tony Yaniz. “I think this is a start. We need to look at the nursing home. We need to look at cradle to the grave so that people don’t have to leave the facilities.”
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