EVERETT — The 552 people who live at Baker Heights now have a date to save: come December, they will begin moving out, if everything goes according to plan.
Within two years from then, everyone will be gone, and the Everett Housing Authority will put the property up for sale.
Baker Heights is an aging 244-residence public housing tract in north Everett, composed of World War II-era bungalows once used as military barracks.
Residents have known for about a year that Baker Heights’ days were numbered. What hasn’t been known until now is how long they’d have, and where they’d go afterward.
They now have an answer to the first question. And the second, if not answered definitively, at least is getting narrowed down.
The Housing Authority has spent a lot of money to renovate other properties: Baker View, a mid-rise building adjacent to Baker Heights, was completely renovated a couple years ago. Every unit in the Grand View project nearby also was renovated, and The Meadows, a three-building senior housing project near Hawthorne Elementary School, is in the midst of a $7 million face-lift.
“Baker Heights is one of those that is not viable, we simply do not have the resources to save it,” said Ashley Lommers-Johnson, the director of the housing authority.
The decision to close the community is one of finances: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development prohibits the use of federal funds to renovate public housing considered “physically obsolete.”
That’s defined as a residence whose renovation cost is above 57.14 percent of its total replacement value.
For Baker Heights, the buildings are in such poor condition that the renovation cost is about $42 million, 81 percent of the total cost to rebuild them all.
Lommers-Johnson acknowledged that many residents are anxious about the pending changes, which will involve obtaining tenant-based vouchers for all households. Those vouchers could be used to help pay for housing in other public units or on the private housing market.
At a meeting in the Baker Community Center on Wednesday, many questioned their ability to find housing.
Lommers-Johnson told the crowd packing the 130-capacity room that over a seven-month period in 2015, approximately 170 people or families with those vouchers were able to find housing in Everett. Given the turnover rate in other housing authority properties, he said he expected about 160 one-bedroom units will become available in the coming two years, more than enough for the 101 one-bedroom units in Baker Heights now.
At the same time, the authority is looking to purchase more units in the city, and plans to build a 60-unit townhome-style facility on the southern part of the Baker Heights property. Current residents would be given preference.
“I have high confidence that we will have replacement housing, decent housing, that you can move to from Baker Heights,” he told the crowd.
There are still a lot of unknowns. Baker Heights resident Beverly Bowers, who has lived there for 17 years, said she’s anxious to move out, and even found a good place near Issaquah.
It had a two-year waiting list, however, Bowers said.
Mary Dixon, another Baker Heights resident, said she was concerned about the kinds of housing available: she has bad knees and can’t handle stairs, so the low-slung bungalows with yards have been ideal.
“I’d like to get a duplex or something similar,” she said.
Dixon has lived in Baker Heights for three years, and had been on a waiting list for two-and-a-half years prior to that.
She said she feels safe in this community, compared to her previous home in the city, which was bracketed by $500,000 homes on one side and a drug lab on the other.
“I’ve liked living here,” she said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
