Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

HOUSING:

Feds nix apartment demolition plans

HUD gives county, North Las Vegas a month to come up with new proposal

demolition

Leila Navidi / FILE

Part of the Buena Vista Springs apartment complex is vacant, but tenants still call other parts of it home. The federal Housing and Urban Development Department has rejected the use of foreclosure relief funding to demolish part of the complex.

The federal government has rejected a $7.6 million proposal to tear down hundreds of apartments in a gritty North Las Vegas neighborhood.

The funding is part of $54 million granted to Southern Nevada for fighting the foreclosure crisis.

The 250 apartments at Buena Vista Springs had not been foreclosed on, so the city could not use the Housing and Urban Development Department money to buy and demolish the buildings, according to Kenny Young, senior assistant to the North Las Vegas city manager and the official overseeing the project.

Also, the federal agency nixed the idea because “people who reviewed the application in Washington” saw it as controversial after reading about it in the Las Vegas Sun, Young said.

Now the joint Clark County-North Las Vegas proposal must be altered and sent back to the federal government by Feb. 12, according to Clark County Commissioner Chris Giun-

chigliani.

She was among several officials who approved the joint proposal under the mistaken impression the complex was vacant. Local officials who said they did know were unable to explain whether the demolition would affect its residents. Also, several officials said they didn’t think tearing down housing and building a “public services campus” was the best use of emergency money meant to turn around neighborhoods affected by foreclosures.

Weeks after approving the plan, Chairman Rory Reid said he didn’t know people were living on the property. Neither did Giunchigliani, who said she might have voted differently had she known about the tenants.

“We should have been told there were people living there,” Giunchigliani said. “We were not given complete information.”

She and Commissioner Susan Brager said they also thought the money would stretch far enough to build something new on the site. Young said it wouldn’t.

So not only would the project have failed to result in a net gain of housing, it might have left the neighborhood with an empty lot.

North Las Vegas City Council members Robert Eliason and Stephanie Smith said they voted against the Buena Vista package because it did not offer direct help to people affected by the foreclosure crisis.

“Buena Vista has been a blight for years,” Smith said. “But I don’t think it has anything to do with the foreclosure crisis.”

Young said the proposal was meant to get rid of the blight and thereby help improve the surrounding neighborhood.

Buena Vista is no stranger to HUD money.

The agency gave occupants of 233 apartments at the site subsidies totaling $212,000 a month until late 2007. But after owner Creative Choice West failed its fifth HUD inspection in four years, the federal agency removed the subsidy and, together with other agencies, used Section 8 rental vouchers to relocate most of the tenants throughout the valley.

Now North Las Vegas and Clark County have to submit a new plan for the money they had earmarked for Buena Vista. For North Las Vegas, that amount is $4.6 million; Clark County’s share is $3 million.

Young said the city will apply for more administrative funding — about $775,000 total, and direct the rest of the money to buying and fixing rental properties for low-income tenants, as well as to buying foreclosed homes for resale at below-market prices.

Giunchigliani said the county might also propose the purchase of foreclosed homes, as well as education for homeowners about avoiding foreclosure.

The commissioner said she thought the federal decision was “for the better,” because she had concerns about the Buena Vista proposal not being fully vetted or based on a careful analysis of need.

But Young contends HUD officials were “misled by the media ... (and) made whatever decision they had to make.”

As for whether local elected officials had been fully informed about the plan, he said: “Everyone had the opportunity to ask whatever questions they wanted.”

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