|
PROJECT PROFILE:
|
|
Westgate Apartments, Brattleboro
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Governor Jim Douglas and Senator Patrick Leahy with members of the residents
association and Byron Stookey at a ribbon cutting for the new community center.
|
Westgate Apartments in Brattleboro got a new lease on life back in 2000. The complex is one of four federally-funded housing projects built in Vermont in the 1970s. Each of these complexes was at risk of being converted to market-rate housing, because federal rules only required affordable rentals to be available for 20 years. When the affordability requirement expired, Westgate and the other complexes could be sold or converted to condominiums, displacing many of the low-income residents.
VHCB has now funded the acquisition and rehabilitation of each of the four “Gates.” In Brattleboro, Westgate’s 100 units were acquired by a tax credit partnership, and the land was acquired by the Brattleboro Area Community Land Trust (now the Windham Housing Trust). Contractors re-graded the grounds to remedy poor drainage that had waterlogged many apartments; resurfaced interior and exterior surfaces on all 17 buildings; installed new kitchens and baths; created a number of wheelchair accessible units; and constructed a long-sought playground and community center.
“The name of the game, as with the other Gates, was to devise an ownership arrangement that would keep it permanently affordable— and to help the tenants eventually take control,” said Byron Stookey, president of Westgate Housing. “The more housing becomes unaffordable, the harder it is, among other things, to attract businesses—because employees need a place to live.”
- adapted by Ethan Parke from an article written by Doug Wilhelm
Westgate Apartments during rehabilitation.
Return to Profiles | VHCB Home page
